hension what has been said in the preceding pages. It consists in basing the statement of a problem upon the recognition of certain distinctions, and then, by the obliteration of these same distinctions, rendering the solution of the problem impossible. If I begin by saying that another man and I are at the same time looking at a tree, I have no right to deny the distinctions that make this statement a significant one. Either one has a right to make it, or one has not. If one has not, there is no problem. If one has, one must not lose sight of the fact that one mind has been distinguished from another, and both minds from an external world. Such being the case, it is manifestly inconsistent to put the external world into either mind, and it is a palpable absurdity to put the same external world into both. If the two minds are really two, are mutually exclusive, what is a part of one cannot be identical with what is a part of the other. To say that it is in some sense the same, although in two minds, is to take refuge in an ambiguous word, and to rest content with that.

We have seen that reflective thought recognizes the justice of distinguishing between the mind and the world, and between one mind and another. My mind is to be distinguished from the external world. No one of my percepts is to be confounded with any object in the external world. As my percept it has its place in the subjective order, not in the objective. To symbolize this, I grant my body a "halo," after the fashion of the parallelist, and I call this my consciousness. I must never forget that my consciousness, as my consciousness, simply disappears, if the objective order be wholly abstracted from.

Following the golden rule, I treat my neighbor to a halo, i.e. I treat him as I treat myself. But to what is the halo affixed? to a body in the objective order; in the same objective order which contains my body. No one of my neighbor's percepts is to be identified with any one of my percepts. Such an identification means an obliteration of the whole construction; my neighbor's percept would not be his percept, my percept would not be my percept, the external object would not be the external object.

It should be borne in mind that it is not one and the same thing to say "the external world," and to say "the external world as revealed to me." The words to me indicate clearly that, in making use of the latter expression, one is referring a given experience to the subjective order, not to the objective. It is easy to forget this,

to say, all I can know of the world is the world as it is revealed in my consciousness and having said this, to conclude that the world can only be known as percept. The error has, as I have pointed out, a relative justification in the fact that an experience that can take its place in the objective order can also, under appropriate circumstances, be relegated to the subjective order, though not, of course, without losing its character as objective. But when it is clearly seen that, if no world can be known as notpercept, no world can be known as percept, the pitfall should be avoided.

But the world that is known as not-percept is neither my world, nor the world of my neighbor. It cannot be put into my halo; the halos are many, it is one. It is not the world as it exists in my consciousness, nor is it the world as it exists in the consciousness of any one else. But how, then, can we even speak of it? Can a man talk about a world which is not the world revealed to him, the world in his consciousness?

He who raises this question has taken the parallelistic figure too literally. I have pointed out in the chapter on "The Distinction between the Mind and the World" that an objective order is revealed as well as a subjective. By the words "my consciousness" I sum up the phenomena of the subjective order. But it is absurd to allow the use of this name to mislead me into ignoring the objective order.

Per

Am I, then, to say: I can be conscious of what is not in my consciousness? The expression is undoubtedly an unhappy one. haps I can best answer the question by saying: If, by the expression "my consciousness" I mean no more than my halo, and if for me to be conscious of this and that means no more than to have this and that in my halo, then I can certainly never be conscious of anything that is not in my consciousness. But if I thus limit the meaning of the verb "to be conscious," what word shall I employ to indicate the recognition of the external world, of the objective order? It has quite as good a right to recognition as the subjective, and recognize it I must, if I will retain possession even of the subjective. Is it not better to recognize that the word "consciousness" may be used in a broader and in a narrower sense? May I not say that, in one sense, I am conscious of nothing that is not a part of my consciousness, but that, in another, I am conscious of external things as well, and, indeed, as immediately?

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE DISTRIBUTION OF MINDS

In many instances it seems so natural to assume the existence of other minds, and the general nature of such minds seems so clearly indicated, that reflection makes no pause to consider the process of inference, and no doubts or questionings are brought to the birth. Between my neighbor's body and my own, and between his actions and my own, there is a close analogy. As I converse with him the thoughts in his mind rise up before me through no conscious effort of my own. I am filled with admiration of his eloquence, impressed with the lucidity and systematic arrangement of his ideas, inspired by the loftiness of his sentiments. That he has a mind, and that it is a mind of a high order, it does not occur to me to doubt.

But when I am led by the psychologist to reflect upon the subject of minds and their contents, and upon the difficulties which attend the determination of the exact contents of minds, I am brought to admit that some questions may reasonably be asked even in such a case. May I assume from the warmth of my neighbor's expressions that he is really conscious of such a suffusion of feeling as I would be conscious of were I speaking thus? Do his words always mean to him just what they mean to

I must know my neighbor rather intimately before I can be even moderately sure that I am not assuming in him a likeness to myself that is not justified by fact. That, in general, men may mean one thing and be understood to mean another, no man can deny - least of all the student of philosophy who has watched the sympathetic commentator inflating his chosen author with a wind of doctrine not his own. If my neighbor and I are closely alike, and if I know my neighbor intimately, it seems easy for me to understand him. But no two men are exactly alike, and there is always room for some misconception.

And the greater the difference, the greater the danger of mis

conception. It is rather difficult for a man to comprehend the workings of the mind of a woman; it is not easy for an adult to realize how bare of content may be the mind of a child; try as he will, the finished product of an elaborate civilization must enter very imperfectly into the pains and pleasures, the interests and ideals, the hopes and fears, of the Australian savage. He who would distribute "halos" to all sorts and conditions of men should often, in justice to himself, stand prepared to discard the uncompromising and clearly outlined gold plate of a Fra Angelico, and content himself with the modest and faintly indicated touches of light that adorn the canvases of a Titian.

If there is this uncertainty in the inference to other minds, when we are dealing with our fellows, what are we to expect when we come to give an account of minds of a lower order? No one doubts that there are such minds. The philosophic theory that darkened the eyes of the Cartesian, leading him to deny the existence of consciousness in any creature below man, no longer obscures for us the significance of an analogy too striking to escape the notice of any man not under the influence of strong prepossession. A creaking door and a yelping dog are evidently not to be brought under the same category. Some sort of a mind we must allow the dog, but what sort? The animal psychology at present growing up occupies a legitimate field of human inquiry, but those most familiar with its results are more conscious than other men of the pitfalls which cover the ground, and are much more distrustful of the anecdotes illustrative of the intelligence of the brute creation which pass current among the unscientific.

Yet, although we are upon uncertain ground when we attempt to describe the psychic life of such animals as the ape, the dog, the cat, or the horse, it does not seem absurd for us to try, at least, to give some indication of its nature. These creatures do not resemble man closely, but they do resemble him unmistakably in some particulars. With each remove, however, our difficulties thicken. The horrified tourist who wanders into a Cuban market and sees a businesslike Chinaman unpack a row of live turtles as though they were so many valises, and poke about among their entrails to exhibit the fat there embedded, cannot help asking himself whether the turtles object seriously to martyrdom. To all outward appearance, they are less discomposed than the onlooker. It is a brave man who will undertake to paint the

emotions of such a being, or to tell us what the world means to an ant, a fly, a cuttlefish, or an earthworm. Yet, that all these enjoy a psychic life of some sort, we feel impelled to admit. We grant them minds by the same analogy, although in a weakened form, by which we grant minds to other men. And if we may grant minds to these, can we deny something of the kind to the amoba, that little jellylike speck which stands, it is true, very far removed from the brutes with which we began our descent, and yet is to be found in the same series with them?

Nor is it by any means self-evident that we may not go farther than this. The analogy between plant life and animal life has so impressed many thoughtful men that they have felt impelled to conclude that the distribution of minds or of something like minds cannot be limited to the animal kingdom. The poetic fancy of a Fechner1 can scarcely be regarded as a sober guide to truth; but the analogies which impressed Fechner have given rise to questionings in minds much less impressionable. Who can draw a definite line through nature, and say, on the one side of this we have unmistakable evidence of the revelation of minds, and on the other such evidence is wholly absent? Shall we draw the line below the plant? There is the crystal, which inhabits a debatable land, as it were, between the living and the dead. And who can prove a total absence of consciousness even in the realm of amorphous matter?

It will be observed that, when we begin with man and descend gradually along the scale of beings, we seem, in the upper part of the series, to be in doubt, not whether or not there are minds, but rather what sort of minds are revealed. Toward the bottom of the series we ask ourselves in much perplexity whether anything like mind is revealed at all.

It is natural that this should be so. There is but one argument for other minds, and that is the argument from analogy discussed in the preceding chapter. Where the analogy is a close one, our conclusion is unhesitating; as it grows more remote, we waver, and dwell in uncertainty. As we have seen, even in the case of man our knowledge of the relation of mind and body is far from satisfactory, and yet this knowledge is to serve as a basis for all our inferences.

It is said that drowning men will clutch at straws, and it is 1 "Nanna, oder über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen."