The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects/The Distinction between Mind and its Objects

by Bernard Bosanquet

The Distinction Between Mind and Its Objects.

What I desire to consider with you to-night may fairly be described as a new situation in the philosophical world. And I may begin by saying that it is satisfactory that there should be a new situation. It is a testimony to the inexhaustibleness of reality, and, what is really the same thing, to the fecundity of the human mind. And in the next place, I shall attempt to shew that the nature of the new appearance constitutes a real advance. There is, indeed, always, I believe, a double interpretation possible in face of new attitudes of mind. The novelty may be satisfactory in itself, or it may be satisfactory because of its suggestions. I shall touch upon such a problem of interpretation this evening.

But the first and principal matter to which I wish to call your attention is that we have before us in twentieth century philosophy something which, whether unsatisfactory or not, is definitely new. Of course I do not mean that it is wholly without precedent. You can find much that has led up to it; but I do not think it has before been propounded and defended consciously and on its merits.

What is it, then, that I am speaking of? and how is it connected with the subject of this lecture?

What I am speaking of is twentieth century Realism; and the point of novelty about it,—on the whole, though not in every case, and throughout—is its contrast of principle with Materialism. Or, speaking in terms of our subject, the novelty is this; that the realism in question, though it gives much less to Mind than Idealism, gives much more to Reality than Materialism. Whether the position will prove untenable is a question to be discussed. But that the position, if tenable, would go far to rearrange the whole battlefield of, say, Idealism and Materialism, is, I think, indisputable.

We all know pretty well what is meant by Materialism. Its popular aspect is summed up in a phrase of James Hinton, which I quote from memory, and shall recur to below. "What a world is that which science pronounces real; dark, cold, and shaking like a jelly." Of course there is a sheer confusion in the statement; but perhaps it embodies popular materialism none the worse for that. The idea is, in general, that such characters as shape and motion are self-existent properties of things, while colour and sound for instance are effects produced in our minds through our sense-organs, and bear no resemblance to anything in the real external objects. Now I do not say that this theory need necessarily give us a narrow view of the world; but it very naturally did so, and I believe always will do so. The reason is, that it makes us think all the things we live with and care about most, faces, voices, music, light, taste, smell—all these things are, if not illusions, yet in a sort of way on a lower level of truth and reality than things like atoms and gravitation. You can explain this result away; but man will always honour the self-existent, and you cannot really destroy the worship of matter as long as you hold this doctrine.

In terms of our subject, this theory treats some objects of mind, the sensation of colour, and so on—as mental in nature, or, roughly speaking, as products or bits of mind; while other objects of mind, like perceived shapes or resistance, it treats as self-existent realities. And when this is believed, the products or bits of mind will always be disparaged by comparison with what we suppose to exist in its own right. And then, on such a doctrine, what are you going to do with such realities as universals—general facts? They don't seem to fit well into space; while, as bits of mind, they seem impotent.

Then, of course, comes the return match—what is known as subjective idealism. Someone points out that, as objects of mind, space, and motion, and so forth, are just on the same level with sound and colour; if, therefore, the latter set are to be called products of mind, or bits of mind, so ought the others to be. Then you may conclude to subjective idealism, in which all objects of mind without distinction are absorbed into mind, become either minds or bits of mind, or products or states of mind.

We are told that beneath any such view as this there is the mistake of confusing acts of mind with its objects—seeing with colour; and that may be true. All the same, such a view gives you one enormous gain for general culture and general philosophy. It puts the common qualities we love—what practically make up the world we live in—colour, sound, and the rest—on the same level of reality and claim to existence as the shape and motion of atoms or the facts of gravitation. The humanising effect of this belief, and the reality it enables you to assign to beauty, for instance, is an unspeakable gain for life and for philosophy. And, I believe, although the fallacy above-mentioned is operative—yet I believe there is a sound underlying motive in subjective idealism, a recognition of the necessity that the most interesting things should have at least as much reality as anything else, and that mind should not be cut off from its objects, which constitute nature and the world. We shall return to this point.

But now, in contrast with the two familiar positions which I have briefly mentioned as Materialism and Subjective Idealism, we find ourselves confronted with twentieth century Realism. It is a novelty in two principal characteristics: one a characteristic of its advocates, the other of its doctrine. The point as regards the theorists themselves is that no one can say their views are due to ignorance or incapacity. Many former realists, and especially materialists, have displayed a quite uncritical attitude; partly owing to their historical position, partly to other limitations. But the realists of to-day, most certainly at any rate the realist about whom I am going to speak, are learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. What Professor Alexander—for he is to be our guide—does not know about metaphysics, logic, and psychology is, I take it, not worth knowing.^[1] One may modestly differ from such a man; but to treat his views as due to philosophical inexperience, is simply not to be done. And then secondly, about the doctrines themselves. Although a realism, and even a physical realism, they contrast sharply with what is meant by Materialism. If they are meant to be called materialist, which I do not know that they are, it is the conception of matter that has widened, and not the nature of reality that has been cut down to fit an abstract matter. The theory aims at totality, at a fair and complete recognition of the world as we know and love it. It does justice to the sensations of sense, and to the secondary qualities. And at least the doctrine which I am to discuss to-night has no faith in a prerogative reality of spatial properties.

For this reason, because it is so new, and in its aim is so complete, and because it issues from so high a philosophical source, and because that source must here be of paramount interest, I propose to take the liberty of restating before you, as simply as I can, the doctrine of physical realism, which has become familiar to the English world in the last few years as promulgated from the University of Manchester.

For this doctrine comes, so to speak, on the top of the two doctrines we have already alluded to. Say that Materialism logically wins the first game—I am not speaking in historical order—I think that Subjective Idealism must so far be held to have won the return match. But the temper which demands a self-existent non-mental reality may be held to open the game again with twentieth century Realism, a very different thing from Materialism; and whether an existing or a future philosophy, whatever it may be called, can once more win the return match against the realistic side, or—dropping the metaphor—absorb its tenets into a completer view—is just what remains to be seen. I proceed to describe in its broad characteristic features a realist doctrine of the twentieth century, which is promulgated from this University. We have briefly referred to a conception in which, so to speak, the universe is mental—is mind or states of mind—through and through, and we now turn to this realism because it is prima facie the completest conceivable counter stroke to any such affirmation, and because, through its very completeness, it suggests a meeting of extremes which the commoner doctrines, resting on a more half-hearted demarcation of the psychical and physical provinces, inevitably exclude. Yet other twentieth century realisms, though less—may I say it?—less paradoxically thorough-going, may be seen, in the light of that which is here discussed, to corroborate its fundamental lessons.

As I understand the thesis, in order to grasp the distinction between mind and its objects, we must start from the simple case of any two bodies being together in space, like a table and the floor. This is the fundamental relation at the root of knowledge and perception as of all the order of the world. And, in fact, unconscious objects, so far as in this relation, I think the theory would say, do in principle know each other, though as they possess no conscious selves their knowledge is at a vanishing point. But among these existents which are so together, there are some which are minds, that is, bodies which have acquired the capacity of consciousness. When these are together with other existent things, within the range of reaction through the senses, the conscious thing is aware of being together with the other thing, in the various degrees of sensation, perception, and thought or knowledge. This is nothing more than the amplification or development through consciousness of the fundamental fact which consists in two existents being together in space. My mind is here, in my body; the table is there. My mind is mental; the table, its object, is external or physical, even down to its colour as I have sensation of it. This is the essential experience of cognition and sense-perception; and this is all there is about it.

What is here the line between my mind and its object? How much belongs to my mind and how much to the table?

To grasp the realist's answer we must insist on a distinction which all twentieth century thinkers acknowledge, though not all admit the same degree of distinctness between its terms. I speak, of course, of the distinction between the act and the object—between the act of seeing and the colour which I see; between the act of perceiving and the present thing which I perceive; between the act of thinking and the thing, it may be, absent, of which I think. Opinions differ as to the assignment of these objects, especially such an object or content as seems directly present in sensation, to the mind on the one hand, or to the external or physical reality on the other. But the realist whom we are following makes no compromise. Acts, and acts only, belong to mind. Objects, all objects, including what are called contents, are external, and with few exceptions, physical. Blue, for instance, is a physical existent. It is an aspect of physical reality, and is there in space, over against our mind. No doubt, if we had no suitable retina and optic nerve, we should be unable to see it. But that, so to speak, would be merely our loss. It would no more affect the existence of blue than my missing the train affects the existence of the train.

Mind, then, it follows, is cut down to the narrowest limit. It is nothing but a system of efforts in various directions, efforts which carry with them feelings of relative success and ill-success which amount to pleasure and pain. Consciousness is nothing but effort with its felt direction to our object, and the affections which attend such effort and direction. The object is always non-mental. The direction and effort are such as you feel in any desire or voluntary progression—you realise what it is like if you are stopped short of the object. Breaking off in a sentence gives a good case of this feeling.

Knowledge, then, and thought, so far as it is what we think of, are non-mental, or physical. They are simply the existent things, or parts of them, so far as we apprehend them; never, of course, completely apprehended, but so far as our powers go, apprehended as they really are. Colour, sound, taste are not mental facts. They are physical realities to each of which there is a corresponding mental act, to see, to hear, and so forth. But act and object, even act and the nearer object which some would call content, are not to be identified. Your mind does not in any way make nature. It does not make the object of sense or perception, or construct the object of thought. You are here; the object is there. It stirs your mind in a certain way; and your mind reacts and apprehends, and finds the object as it is, according to the degree in which your powers of apprehension are developed. If you are colourblind, that is your affair. There is then a defect in your organ of apprehension; but that does not interfere with the physical reality, which we know from better equipped observers. This doctrine of the; open door, as I may call it, or of the window with degrees of transparence, through which reality comes to you as it is, though with varying completeness, is very powerful in twentieth century realism, and is at times connected, strangely enough, with some extreme doctrines of other worlds.

It follows—and this is largely the point of the doctrine—that the physical reality which is the object of mind is the thing, or part of the thing, which you suppose yourself to apprehend. I mean, it is in no sense part of your own body or mind. Your organs let it in, but they do not, in principle, modify it, except in degree. [The question of error can, I think, be dealt with from this position, in agreement with the best thinkers, at least if we read "real" for "physical." Error is always about a reality.] Your mind, then, is not, as Spinoza called it, the idea of your body, and of other things only through that. You open your eyes, and are aware of a tree before you. This is a fact just like that of a table being on the floor. Only in this case one of the existents is a mind. The other is, just as the mind is aware of it, an external physical reality.

And, as I understand the argument, the tree itself is made up of objects corresponding to your mental acts; of what you "sense," of what you perceive, of what you think—that is, of flashes or fulgurations of its qualities, of qualities themselves, something more permanent than the flashes, and of a universal nature or real law governing the combination and action of its qualities. We have of course to resist being led away by the sound of this doctrine, to impute to the realist an extreme idealism. When you read^[2] that a physical thing, a material substance, 'is made up of sensa, percepta, and thoughts' you have hard work to remember that for the author all these are the objects of the mental acts, not the acts themselves, and are therefore physical realities, and in no way bits of mind.

Hence arise two further peculiarities, one, if not both, of which characterise most twentieth century realism, and save it in a great measure from the defects of the older eclectic or demarcating realisms, in a word, dualistic realisms, which necessarily leaned toward materialism. I do not say that the new Realism is not itself in a sense dualistic.

First, the doctrine of the open door, as I have made bold to call it, destroys the superstition that spatial properties are distinguished by being self-existent, while sensations of the special senses, and these only, are dependent upon mind. Its attitude is indeed the reverse of that to which this destruction is usually ascribed. It does not say that primary qualities, like secondary, are mind-dependent; but that secondary, like primary, are mind-independent. But for the immediate purpose of destroying the distinction either of the thorough-going views will serve. It is only the eclectic view that is bound to beget superstition. Thus a complete physical realism, even if it claims to be materialism, is largely free from the vice inherent in the older doctrine of that name, that it discredits as unreal the most precious elements of the world. For our modern realist, whether right or wrong, the world is genuinely as it seems to be—bright, warm, responsive; not as even James Hinton said that science shows it to be—"dark, cold, and shaking like a jelly." An extraordinary confusion, to presuppose the operation of the sense-organs in observing the consequences of their own supposed absence! The terrible and sinister prejudice of materialism which here finds expression is, as we said, emphatically and necessarily repudiated by the doctrine before us. We are warned of this in definite language. "To such a conception," as that now promulgated, Professor Alexander observes, "we oppose our habitual notion of material things as being somehow arrangements or motions of whatever constituents we regard as ultimate. But it cannot be too often repeated, for those who are likely to forget the lesson, that extension and motion or material substance are in themselves on the same immediate footing as colours and smells; that they, too, are made up of sensa and percepta and thoughts, and exhibit the same problem of presenting these features in their combination."^[3]

I must observe, however, at this point, that while materialistic prejudice is thus thoroughly repudiated as regards the secondary qualities of things, I cannot see how the tertiary qualities, say, for example, those which we call æsthetic, can have justice done them on this principle. Can they escape being regarded as distinctively psychical and so far of inferior reality, so long as even feeling is reserved as something belonging to mind? This remark anticipates our later argument, to the effect that thorough and solid as this new realism attempts to be, it proves that in the end there is no realism that can be completely solid and thorough; that is to say, that can sweep all characters of things, which are on the same level of objectivity, into the mass of non-mental reality. A thing may be charming quite as really and truly as it is red; but its charm according to realism, and even according to the realism before us, must be a mind-dependent attribute (for to be charmed is a mental act), while its redness is physical and mind-independent.

However, on the whole the tendency of realism to-day is away from eclecticism and towards a complete acceptance of external things, in all their concrete richness of existence, as reality independent of mind. And so far we are dealing with a new attitude, with a physical realism which has in the main stripped off the character of materialism.

And secondly—and here I think all twentieth century realism goes together—universals are admitted to be real, though by no means mental. Our particular realist even calls them physical facts. Any way, they are held to exist or subsist independently of mind or knowledge. The nature of a thing, in respect of which it is an object of our thought, the general law of action and construction which dominates it, is spoken of as a universal and as corresponding to our concept. A material object, we are told by other modern realists, consists, apart from mind or knowledge, in a connection of universals.^[4] A physical realism of this kind takes us I imagine into a new country, which Reid perhaps visited, but did not explore or subdue. Call us idealists or what you will, we who follow the watchword "Das Wahre ist das Ganze" might prima facie find in it much of what we demand; and what no eclecticism of the materialist type can by any possibility afford us. If (per impossibile, as I still must hold) all that is precious and substantial could truly be fused and focussed in an admitted real, I at least should not be greatly troubled at being ordered to call it physical. Call these things physical or what you will, if they are the most real of realities, then nominalism has gone by the board, and the realism of the modernist is joining hands with the realism of the schoolman. There appears to be indeed a twentieth century realism which cuts down physical reality to the imperceptibles of science—something scarcely belonging even to the world of primary qualities; but this is a half-theory of the Lockeian type, though it pushes abstraction one stage further than his. Our realist's doctrine of the physical world gives us a far fuller picture of the reality which is in principle the same for all and accessible to all. And moreover, as I said, all the modern realists, I think, agree in recognising the reality—whether as existence or as subsistence—of universals.

The interest of the theory we have been contemplating has lain for me in noting what I take to be the inevitable results of reducing the place of the mind in the actual world to its narrowest conceivable limits. This result is, as I view it, that on the one hand the great body, or the corpse as I should call it, of so-called physical reality, has been cut off and set over against the living nature of mind—which is reduced, as we saw, to a scheme of directions of effort addressed to objects outside them. But on the other hand, just because this is done so thoroughly, it by inherent necessity shows signs of life, and begins to exhibit within itself a vitality, primarily logical, but, for this reason, ultimately and in essence involving continuity with a psychical system.

(i.) First, a word as to the analogy of the two spatial things, on which the whole position is founded. One cannot be too careful at the beginning; and I shall make an observation which may be held trivial and hypercritical, but which, I am inclined to think, will lead us in the end to quite a different attitude towards the whole relation of mind and its objects.

The remark is merely this; that mind is never confronted by one object only. The facts are not described by saying that we start with a pair of objects facing each other, of which one may be a body having a mind. The relation is not that of a mind on one side and a tree on the other. If there is a mind on one side there is at least a complex of objects on the other.

But for my own experience even this does not seem true. "On one side," and "on another side" are incorrect expressions. Speaking of fact as I find it, I should compare my consciousness to an atmosphere, not to a thing at all. Its nature is to include. The nature of its objects is to be included. When I came into this hall, out of the smaller room in which we met, the circumference of my mind seemed to expand. The limits of my consciousness became, at any rate, not narrower than the walls of this chamber. From the beginning, then, the analogy of two objects confronting one another seems to me inapplicable. I never seem to think in the form, "my mind is here, and the tree is there." Mind takes itself ab initio as a world, not as an object in a world. I think "the tree is there, in the panorama," and the panorama is essential to my mind, though my mind has more before it, e.g., thoughts of other places, and of incidents at other times. I am describing facts. I am not making any argument that the existence of the objects is in my mind or is mind-dependent. I am merely stating what I am directly aware of. In describing my awareness there is always an "and" or a "before"—or "behind" or "beside"—some conjunction or preposition. It is never just one object aware of one other.

The kind of observation this suggests to me is that ab initio one kind of thing is a whole, and another is a fragment. A mind is a whole, that is in its nature and intent; an object is a fragment. This fact forebodes a difficulty in assessing the reality of objects apart from mind, and so in drawing a line between them. For what is real must surely be a whole, whatever else may be its character. We shall see reason to return to this point.

(ii.) In the theory before us, sense-presentations count as non-mental or even as physical.

The distinction between act and object, or, as some take it, between act, content, and object, is here the governing consideration. It has been held to remove the principal reason for thinking that sense-presentations are something mental. I believe the word mental to be misleading, as I shall explain later on. But I desire to suggest that though it may be well to distinguish clearly between seeing and the object seen, yet it is not a mere failure to make this distinction which causes some of us to believe that the object seen has a character continuous with our mental life. Merely referring to the controversy between Manchester and St. Andrews, which I incline to think has established this point so far as sense-presentation is concerned, I endeavour to describe a more general argument which strongly appeals to me.

When I am told that I must not confuse an idea as a mental act with an idea as a content of sense or an object of thought, I think I understand what is meant. When I am told that the content of sense or object of thought may therefore be something quite non-mental or even physical, I am, to speak plainly, inclined to feel myself the victim of sophistry. It seems obvious at first sight that a blue is as psychical as a pain or an inferential transition. And though you may argue at length that it is nothing but an external object, I feel all the time that I am being defrauded. You have put the vital character of a certain experience into what you call an act, and I admit that it is specially observable in connection with a certain function. But now you tell me that the main thing in the object, what I value in it and what I want it for, is removed and abolished by the distinction, and the experience as such is left for dead.

Now it is a good point on my side to say that objects of the kind in question cease to be, with the minds which entertain them or even with the cessation of those minds' attention. And it seems obvious to me that this is so. But the doctrine of the open door denies the fact; and in any case, this fact would only be an external proof and not an analysis of the essence, and prima facie would not apply to the objects of thought.

I will try to state an argument going deeper into the merits, as I see it, and will support my statement by two applications of it.

The assertion that an object or content has or has not a mental character, ought, it seems to me, if it has any value, to be supported by positive analysis, and not merely by extraneous proof. Whether a certain object is continuous with the nature of mind is no question of mere origin or concomitant variation; it is a question of what sort of thing the object is, and what sort of thing mind is, and whether or no the one is connected with the other by inherent character.

Now if I try to escape the sort of negative sorites or gradual withdrawal of characters by which the so-called "mental" character of presentations seem to me to be fraudulently attacked, what comes to me as something not to be reasoned away is in a word the life of mind; or, if we prefer the old technical language, its explicit unity. Well, it may be said, but a bar of iron has unity, and you will not say that this is a character inherently connecting it with your consciousness. No, I should not say that is so, directly and with reference to my single consciousness. But then in the case of the bar of iron I can say—or if I cannot, a physicist can—what else is meant by this unity, in what relations it lies, and on what characters it depends. And it is, we then see, not an explicit unity; not one which states itself. But now come to a content of sense. What I see when I look at a blue thing has unity, and life. Its parts that is, though varied, confirm, support and determine one another by explicit "compresence." It pulsates with feeling, a common tone, which involves the presence of a whole all at once, reinforcing and modifying every part by the simultaneous effects of all. What does a unity of this kind consist in? Identity of ethereal wave-lengths? Not at all. That may be presupposed, but it will not do the work by itself. Blue is a peculiar "effect"; effect, I mean, in the artistic sense of the word; and wave-lengths, received say on a photographic plate, are not the peculiar effect which we call blue, even if as a physical cause they were to produce it qua physical effect. How do the elements of the effect hold together? What makes the blue reinforce or modify the blue? There is no push or pull between them. They work on each other through their identity and difference; or, to avoid disputes, here irrelevant, through their likeness and unlikeness. What sort of medium does such a unity involve? Surely, that of consciousness and no other. Blue, then, while it retains the characters of blue, must have in it the life of mind. I do not call it "mental," for I am not sure what that means. But I will call it logical. This argument, I am convinced, might be much better stated, but it at least makes an attempt to express a central consideration which I have uneasily felt to be entirely omitted throughout all the recent realistic controversies. I will press it further by two applications. First, we saw that the realist of to-day asserts the reality—even the physical reality—of universals. The modern treatment of Plato's Ideas, in this connection, is extraordinarily interesting, but not perhaps as new as it might appear. Now a universal is a working connection within particulars. Again we might use the phrase which to me appears so apt, and say it is the life of the particulars. It is, indeed, at bottom, of the nature of a conation. Now the objects of sensitive and perceptive acts are charged with such working connections, which are expressly and precisely connections of content and of nothing else in the world. No possible handling of contents ab extra by a mind made up of pure conations and directions will get out of them the determinate and peculiar result which their inherent nisus to the whole brings out, as, for instance, in any case of relative suggestion. I find myself indeed comparing our twentieth century realism with the erroneous side of Kant's synthetic unity.

No mind can make a world synthetic if that world is not synthetic in itself. But again; no world can be synthetic in itself, that is, can possess universals as a part of its own nature, if its elements have not, pervading them, the living nexus and endeavour towards a whole which indicates participation in the nature of minds. I cannot understand any attempt to explain a universal which does not recognise that it absolutely consists in the effort of a content to complete itself as a system. You may say that it would not do this of itself, but only by the mind working in it. And I am disposed to agree. But then you have abandoned the doctrine that the universal is a physical reality, so far as that means a reality that working as a universal can exist independently of mind. Either you throw the work of mind on the shoulders of a physical reality, and thereby transform the latter fundamentally, or you connect it with the nature of mind as living in the contents, and then you have abandoned the doctrine of petrified or extra-mental universals. To recognise the universal as real, while killing and stuffing it, is to admit a claim which you refuse to satisfy. The reality of the universal is a sufficient proof that the objects of mind may be alive with its vitality.

The second point is that of the tertiary qualities, to which we referred above. It is a feather in the cap of recent realism to have given the secondary qualities their due. But here its achievement must end. It is impossible on the same principle to do justice to the tertiary qualities, say, beauty or delightfulness. If you reserve anything for a mind stripped of objective contents, you must, as realism admits, reserve pleasure and pain. But if so, all qualities involving pleasure and pain are mind-dependent, and no physical realism can recognise them as real. And yet, in truth, they are the most actual, most profoundly inherent, most objectively characteristic qualities of all. And whether pain and pleasure are sense-contents or not, I think it has been proved impossible to separate them in treatment from sense-contents either as elements of feeling or as objects of emotion. You must either assign sense-contents to the mind, or æsthetic contents to physical reality.

(iii.) We have been pursuing throughout the idea of continuity in kind between mind and its objects. It has appeared to us that as long as a severance prevails, a just estimate of reality-values is impossible. On the one side we have a caput mortuum; on the other an empty synthetic function.

The twentieth-century realism which has been our guide has carried out this idea of continuity up to the penultimate step. Great as seemed to be its advance beyond eclectic or materialistic realisms, it still seemed to us to fail in discarding the last trace of eclecticism. And therefore we asked ourselves if it was not, for some reason of principle, unable to complete its portrayal of a reality at once solid and vital. And the reason which suggested itself was, that it neglected to enquire into the conditions of self-existence.

For here, I am convinced, and not in the fallacies which have often been noted as the basis of subjective idealism, lies the fundamental ground for placing mind in the centre of reality. And, even in the case of subjective idealism, I am sure that the genuine logical motive is the same in principle. It is not the failure to distinguish between an act and an object of mind. It is not any simple prejudice that mind can apprehend only what is a part of itself. But it is the insight—an insight substantially just—that a universe severed from the life of mind can never fulfil the conditions of self-existence. We saw that to overlook the character of mind which bears on this point, when stating the simplest facts of perception, is to be misled ab initio. Mind is always a world; its objects are always fragments.

This nature, the nature of being a world or whole, is what I take to be the condition of self-existence. It is an old argument for monadism or panpsychism that nothing can strictly be treated as being at all, which does not possess a self. Our doctrine extracts the logical principle of this argument, as distinct from a certain sentimental bias in favour of a spiritual society. Consider, for instance, Plato's Ideas, which our realist has taken as typical of the most real and most important of all physical facts. Consider, if this is really their place, the task they have to fulfil, as Plato indeed continually represents it—the function of conciliation of all contraries, the resolution of all problems, the completion of all fragmentariness, the systematisation of all abstractions into a more than organic concreteness.

Indispensable conditions of the fulfilment of such a function are unquestionably, at the very least, retention to let no element drop out, compresence to maintain explicit unity, continuity to make every part permeate every other, and concrete or focussed being to transcend space and time. And all this means mind. There can be no concrete whole but a whole centering in mind, and no self-existent whole but a concrete whole. I do not appeal to the idea of "self," at least in its current sense. Opinions differ, for example, as to whether society has a self; and therefore it is clear that the notion of self is too indefinite to use in establishing the notion which verbally appeals to it—the notion of self-existence or of a self-maintaining whole of experience.

How then do we compare the reality thus conceived with the world of the physical realist? We may illustrate by an old description of matter as mens momentanea, that is, I suppose, as what reality would be if the conditions of its full and explicit concreteness were removed, and its retention and continuity cut down to a vanishing point. We have most of us actual experience of some such stages as we pass under the influence of an anæsthetic, when continuity in space and time, concrete system, retentiveness, are gradually wiped out, and we feel ourselves stage by stage reduced from mind to its vanishing point in body. The nature of the self-existent whole is then being by degrees extinguished in us. Suppose, per impossibile, that the universe could be anæsthetised; then, in the same way, the conditions of its concrete reality and self-existence would be gone.

But, it may be objected, its abstract reality, as a mass of insentient matter, would persist and exist none the less unaffected by the extinction of consciousness.

First, however, we have to consider whether we know that an abstract reality can persist by itself. Those who take the imperceptibles of science as the absolute type of what is real might here have something to say. But the physical realism which has been our guide, together with our own attitude to it, lead us to a different position. The reality of universals, as also that of secondary, and, in our view, of tertiary qualities, could not be separated from that of the most concrete self-existence, i.e., from the nature of mind or experience. An anæsthetised universe, according to this doctrine, would be dissolved and leave not a rack behind. For the primaries, as we have seen, stand on the same ground with the secondaries and tertiaries. Now this conclusion is in no way drawn from confusing the acts of minds with their objects. It is not drawn from things being mind-dependent, as colour may be on the act of sight, though certainly we cannot hold them complete unless all their conditions are present. It is drawn rather, one might say, from their being mind-component; that is, possessing a logical nature or implicit unity, which finds completion only in the focus of mind, which, in turn, it conditions. The real universal, which we considered above, and our analysis of the life of blueness, are cases in point.

Next, what is our conclusion with regard to Mentalism? Mentalism is a false form of Idealism proffered as its support, with the result that the same refutation is held to involve them both. The question as stated in terms of Mentalism seems to be wholly beside the point of mind's relation to its objects. The objects of finite mind—mind other than finite could hardly have an object—are, according to the view to which our argument has led us, neither minds nor products of mind, nor states of mind, nor in any sense except as parts in contrast with wholes, are they secondary and less actual adjuncts or adjectives of minds. They are necessary to minds, as minds are to them, and are discriminated by a concurrent process within the same totality. They are external, and though relative to mind are not mental or psychical in se. They are parts of wholes or of a whole, which can only be ultimately self-existent through the full-grown nature of mind. But then, as the nature of mind is above all things to be a whole, when we say that objects are parts, we actually say that so far they are not mental. The more anything is a fragment or an abstraction, the less it is or belongs to a mind. This leads to a paradox which seems to me all important in dealing with mentalism. Take the case of the physicist's matter. It is, for our view, phenomenal, or even epiphenomenal (I owe this latter excellent paradox, I believe, to Professor Stout). It is an object gained by ideal construction and inference, which is of course one aspect of a discovery of the real fact, selected within the universe as accounting for some part of its behaviour. Now just because thus selected, constructed and discriminated by thought, it is itself—say the imperceptible of science—as far removed as possible from anything that could be held to be mental. It has no secondary qualities; and next to none that are primary. I suppose there is no reason to doubt that it represents some actual behaviour within the system of nature; but it is obviously removed as far as possible from the conditions of totality or self-existence, that is, of mind. If you take physical nature as our physical realist took it, and not as the imperceptibles of science, that approaches more nearly to mind, because it is more nearly concrete. But to say that the imperceptibles of science are real, because they represent a behaviour within the universe, and are capable of being inferred by thought and of being an object of mind, is one thing; to say that they partake of a mental nature and have a claim to substantive self-existence per se would be quite another thing.

You can consider a portion of the behaviour of a system on its own merits, with reference to its special function, without committing yourself to the belief that it could be real apart from the whole system, or that it adequately displays, within itself, the quality of the system. Objects of finite mind, in short, and finite minds themselves, are bound, after our discussion of physical realism, to strike us as details of reality essentially continuous with each other and reciprocally indispensable. But yet any object picked out and isolated within the whole is eo ipso not-mental, for you have taken it apart from the life of the whole, and have, by abstraction, killed and stuffed it for examination.

To put a point upon our conclusion as regards the line between mind and its objects, I might suppose myself challenged in terms of the doctrine of knowledge advocated by the realist. What are we to say of knowledge? Is it mental, or physical, or neither? Have you, in the case of knowledge, here the mind, made up of empty acts and inclinations, and there over against it the real thing, say, a physical object as perceived or remembered? Or have you, within and as part of the mind, some content or mental furniture, which, belonging to the mind, yet is part of and informs you about the real physical spatial object (to take this single case) which you are sure is there and plays its part independently of what you think about it?

Omitting the special case of sense-contents on which I follow on the whole the St. Andrews' contention (while convinced that on the test question of error we can all be substantially agreed), I answer that as a matter of principle it really makes no difference from which end you approach the facts. If you say: knowledge is empty mind plus physical objects, and therefore is physical; then you must subjoin, and our physical realist does most fully and carefully subjoin, that it is physical objects so far only as my organism can receive them, so far as my memory and mental system can revive and interpret them, so far as my personal incapacity does not take them at cross purposes and mix one with another. If you prefer to say, knowledge is the system of reality as reconstructed and stored up within my mind, and is part of my mind, and is a mental system; then you must say in addition that the name of knowledge belongs to this mental system so far only as it presents to us the world and its components as they completely and necessarily are. In either case it is impossible to omit the "so far only," and if you retain it you are not a single hair's breadth nearer to reality in the former statement than the latter, nor to mentalism in the latter than in the former. What special use or gain is there in saying that knowledge is physical, when you have to subjoin an elaborate explanation admitting into this physical reality all the ignorance, errors and illusions that the feeblest or most fantastic of minds could be guilty of? Or what gain for mentalism is there in treating knowledge as a part of your mind, when you must say in the same breath that it is only knowledge in virtue of the reality that appears in it? The double nature of knowledge, as the continuity of mind and reality, is the ultimate truth to insist on. The distinction between reality as it is and as we apprehend it is after all ineradicable, and either statement fully and equally insists on it.

Finally, then, you gain nothing in principle by the tenet of the open door—that is, that things walk into your mind and organism just as they are outside it—and you lose nothing by its opposite, that is, that your organism, which you cannot separate from its mind, is one of the conditions which things require for the manifestation of their complete being. The former seems to me a gratuitous hypothesis, recommended only by a fallacy which confuses "independent of" with "in abstraction from." Continuity of the real world with mind seems to me the inevitable goal and climax of twentieth century physical realism, as opposed to eclectic materialism. If the object is to be real in its fulness, as it is the merit of that doctrine to affirm, it must be maintained in connection with its complete conditions. To try and hypostasise it apart from organisms with their minds is in my judgment an evasion of the task laid upon us by the arduousness of reality. Reality, I urge, is always on ahead, where the fuller conditions are focussed. Abstraction is abandonment of the quest.

1. Since writing this passage, I have seen "The New Realism" of the six authors. I could not altogether, from the point of view of my own studies, apply this judgment to them. They strike me as better informed outside philosophy than in it.
2. Ar. Proc., 1909-10, p. 32.
3. Ar. Proc., 1909-10, p. 32.
4. Prichard, Kant's "Theory of Knowledge," p. 243.