relation of objects or exhausted systems naturally holds good throughout the compass of existence. For the same reason one system may reflect more accurately than another the state of other systems, and, therefore, a thermometer and a barometer respectively tell much more of changes of heat and atmospheric pressure than a pebble can. So likewise the sea is more affected by wind than the land, while the surface of the sea is more influenced than the depths immediately below. Reasoning along this line we may imagine an object which shall be most delicately sensitive to every change in its environment, registering with wonderful completeness what goes on in its vicinity or at a distance, and adjusting itself to those circumstances. As regards impressibility, there would be but a difference of degree between this one body and all others, and in this position is that human body or object in the rural scene, which is observable whatever other visual changes take place. If I experiment with that body, called usually "my" body, I observe that it is so constructed that little happens in its neighbourhood which does not affect it or to which it does not react. In this sense I can know more about the pebble by studying the body than about the body by studying the pebble.

There is one considerable difference, however, between all other exhausted systems and that body. While pebble after pebble may vanish, the body as a visual system normally remains, and is, therefore, the most interesting system. We have, then, to regard it as a constant portion of every imaginable environment as far as that is thought of as immediately given. Nevertheless it is but one exhausted system among many, being chiefly characterised by its permanence and its complexity. As the body is only a visual thing among other visual things, our expectations are confirmed. Through many media or channels influences come to it which produce modifications. These modifications, apart from inference, tell us nothing of other things, and are barely observable changes. If we follow what is connected with the initial changes, we are led to other bodies and things which are themselves more or less responsive to similar influences. Hence apart from previous knowledge of the rural scene, the permanent body, when examined, would yield no information except changes within itself-no more, in fact, than is yielded by the examination of the pebble. The point to notice, however, is that the internal bodily changes, as in the pebble, bear some definite relation to the external ones. In this sense, therefore, we can regard the body as an index of what happens in its environment, and as expressing certain relationships in terms of itself.

I have advisedly spoken of the body as visual; but theoretically such language is indifferent. The sense of smell might be so highly developed that our sense of sight could hardly equal it, or, to go still further, we might imagine the relative stages of development of the two senses to be the opposite of what they are now. In those circumstances the body might mean to us a smell system which we should speak of as we speak of the visual body under existing conditions. We might in such a case interpret the world by our olfactory observations. And so it is with every

sense. It is an accident theoretically that the centre of existence is regarded from a visual standpoint and not from any and every one of the other sense standpoints. The seen body, therefore, only reflects outside changes in terms of its own life. It knows nothing of smell, taste, pains or other feelings. Only if we imagined five sense bodies, reflecting the five senses, could we have outer systems interpreted in five terms, for as far as we smelt we should not see, and so on.

Yet how does it come that concurrently with smell changes there exist sight changes? Our answer must be the one I have previously ventured to put forward. The senses are but different developments of one sense, and hence, theoretically at least, the changes in one sense direction can be to a certain extent observed in the direction of another sense. For this reason the seen body hints at the vast expanse, colour, form, sound and scent of the rural scene. It is certainly not that scene; but if we have studied the body's nervous changes alongside of other changes, then the one may become an interpreter of the other.

The bodily organism is appreciably affected only by what can be of service to it; and we can imagine, therefore, an organism which shall have reached the same stage of evolution as regards touch, sight, smell, sound and taste. As on the touch plane all that happens with regard to sensation is reduced to atoms or vortex rings of a like character, so every kind of primary and secondary system may be thought of as evolved out of a simple and vague feeling or element.

that its visual expression is casual From this follows the unity of existsmells, our tastes, our doubts, our They do not refer to the seen body,

We have learnt that one thing in every scene-a human body—is familiar to us, and we have also noted and not fundamentally determined. ence. Our pains, our contacts, our volitions, form a connected whole. nor are they produced by it, any more than the seen body refers to them and is produced by them. The seen body, being, as it happens, most minutely observable, the other less fortunate systems are interpreted in terms of seen bodily systems, as well as referred to the seen body. All we find, then, in observation is a number of items, the most prominent and persistent of which is a certain system which we call the "self." In this sense, therefore, every object is a Subject as far as all other Subjects are concerned.

194.-LIFE.

Here is a pebble and here a human being. The former is said to be dead, while the latter is regarded as being alive, one distinction being, it is contended, that the latter hears and sees, while the former does not. This plausible distinction we are now able, I hope, to abolish. The pebble and the human being, as seen, neither smell nor see. The pebble, being primitive in its constitution, is almost wholly irresponsive, changes in its environment having but an inconsiderable effect and then chiefly on its surface. With the human being it is different. So complex and so unified is his evolved structure that he delicately and quickly responds to

outer changes, even to the length of moving about freely. Here then is one difference-a difference of degree. Visually speaking a thing is alive when it grows and moves like a human being, and dead when it sulks like a pebble. It will be said, however, that the one feels, while the other lacks feeling. If by this it is intended to assert that there is an unanalysable Subject which sees and feels, then we dismiss the question as unintelligible, for it would be necessary to presuppose an infinitude of selves. If what is meant is that the seen body sees, while the seen pebble does not see, we again are bound to dismiss the question, after our analysis in the last section. What we observe is as follows. There are visual, olfactory and aural systems in the world, and all are fundamentally one as far as character is concerned. A germ is fertilised, and a complex centre of activity develops, of which the developing cell is one expression. According to the complexity of this development, so there will be innumerable sense terms in which the new being expresses itself and the world; yet nothing different in kind has been added, on the side of resistance feeling, to the germ or the chemical elements of which it is composed. We have uniform development along many lines, as along the lines of the seen body. We have still something given, neither more nor less, provided we do not postulate the seen body as a centre of sense things. So likewise with the pebble. It is, theoretically speaking, a visual, olfactory or gustatory system, ie., a thing affecting other things in various ways. Its homogeneity, its want of unity between the distant parts, is but an indication that complexity of sense as well as of movement is absent; for the active olfactory apparatus as seen or smelt, for instance, is but a hint to him who knows that a corresponding system exists. The seen body does not develop smell; but the ground sense or ground material develops in both directions. If, then, we constructed a human being by some chemical process, we should really be constructing a feeling being, for sight is but one modification of primary touch; we should be building better than we knew, owing to our ignorance of the nature of the prime sense. Thus the evolution of life and thought in the individual, and in its first beginnings, presupposes no catastrophe, no break, no superaddition and no two substances, the pebble being merely less highly developed than the man. Chaos and discord must arise when we select one sensation complex, the one that happens to be the most prominent one, and make all other sensation complexes depend on and result from it. If we consider these complexes as developments from one form, then we have no need to explain how, for instance, touch can produce smell, nor are we confronted with the problem of a double world where one world is in attendance upon another.

In the tenth chapter of his lectures on Naturalism and Agnosticism, Professor Ward suggests that just as machines are mind-made, so organisms are inert bodies which are guided and controlled by minds. Life, accordingly, is not some specific vital energy or vital force; life refers rather to a psychical something, endowed with feeling and will. In agreement with this view he contends that the factors in evolution are principally two : self-conservation and hedonic or subjective selection. With Professor Ward's negative contention, with his proof drawn from ignorance-that life has not as yet been explained

by the physicist-I have nothing to do. I only wish to draw attention to his psychology. According to him, organic functioning is mind-functioning; and the departure of life in plants and in animals implies, therefore, the absence of mind and vice versa. Hence it must follow that since brute matter is inert, the innumerable organic functions that are but slowly being revealed by the physiologist, are performed by minds-by ourselves, in the case of human beings. So, too, we must assume that the growth of nails and hair after so-called death, really proves the continuous presence of mind, of the principles of self-conservation and subjective selection, of feeling and will, of spirit, of spontaneity, of effort, of experience and of internal determination! If organisms should really prove to be machines guided and driven by minds, Dr. Ward will not only triumph over the physicists, but he will have established a new psychology in addition.

195.-DEATH.

Life, we have concluded, is not something superadded to brute matter; it is but a development. Consequently any de-development is to that extent death. This can now be easily traced, since the seen body may be justly used as a common measure in the interpretation of existence. When the eyes or important organs connected with them are destroyed, vision, except of a secondary order, ceases for us. When disease attacks certain portions of the nervous system, the memory is impaired or destroyed. For similar reasons, sensibility, smell, taste and pain may depart. If the changes are of a profound nature, the notion of self becomes erratic, or perhaps the complex ego becomes a simple vegetative soul. Vivacity, stupor, sleep, death, are, accordingly, but so many steps in a career. For this reason,

just as the complete cessation of some brain process means a loss of visual memory; so a complete cessation of general organic processes means death, or, what is the same thing, change from a highly complex state to a relatively simple one. There seems no alternative to such an interpretation. If in life, smells and volitions had appeared apart from a centre interpretable in given terms, the bodily collapse might have had no other disastrous results. As it is, the bodily collapse is only one aspect of a general dissolution, our smell and volitional constitutions being but modifications of the same fundamental fact. Death, then, is the end of life, as the ashes of a fire are the degraded form of the consumed log of wood. Life comes and goes, like a bubble or a rainbow.

Bishop Butler, in his Analogy, 1736, argued that since some dying men are unaffected as regards their reason, therefore physical death does not prove that reason dies with the body. The fact is that in some cases the brain remains unaffected till nearly the last moment of life, while when it becomes affected, as in many cerebral diseases and in death, the reason is seriously interfered with or ceases altogether.

196.-IMMORTALITY.

It might be urged that, as regards life, only a simplification takes place, and that hence we not only continue to exist, but that we have existed from eternity. This is a feasible view. A misunderstanding, however, must be guarded against, for that which is permanent in this case is in incessant change and develops into individualities only under very special

conditions which are bounded by birth and death. Immortality, in any other sense, for the psychologist, becomes an unintelligible doctrine. We have found lurking behind the series of systems no mysterious Subject which may laugh at the revolutionary bodily changes, or delight in them as a release from bondage. When, for instance, owing to some nervous shock a man is stunned, there seems little to rejoice over; is it likely, then, that when we shatter the brain, the man will be any the less stunned? Unreasoning beings will say Yes to this, as to many other statements equally devoid of foundation. As psychologists, however, we have only to note uniformities, and we must, therefore, assert that life, like form, is liable to evolve and devolve, and that the current notions of immortality, so far as they are based on a false apprehension of the psychological facts, must join the limbo of notions that more exact research has proved to be unfounded.

197.-SCIENCE.

The view which has been put forward in this chapter demands no profound reconstruction of scientific notions. Already science is factitive and descriptive. It does not say that matter and motion are necessarily of a certain nature; it only takes observation for its guide, and its assertions go no farther. Physical science, therefore, is not affected by our conclusions, as its form and its methods are unexceptionable. Taking for its subject the most stable and calculable elements of reality, as found in seen and felt exhausted systems, it attempts to obtain the most comprehensive descriptions, and it is only temporarily, we may be sure, that it ignores the less stable elements. Inclined as science was at one time to assume that the true substance lay in this or that detail, owing to superficial observation and owing to the suggestions of the philosophers, its present mood excludes theoretical assumptions. In the final issue, science must embrace the totality of things-systems of sights, smells, volitions, etc.-in one descriptive survey, and the narrow order which it has hitherto allowed for is likely to be extended to systems in general. This, however, will be accomplished by research and not by speculation. Already we have tried to meet the physicists by describing the comprehensive uniformity which prevails in the mental realm.

The modern notion of science and its tendencies can be gleaned from such a book as Mach's Vorlesungen, 1896. There, on p. 229, he writes: "While we are at the beginning of our task, it is as yet too early to determine how we shall look upon the world when we are face to face with the closed circle of physical and psychological data, of which we now see only the two separate facets. The men are sure to be found who will acknowledge the reasonableness, and possess the courage, to enter the straight paths leading to the heights whence the total stream of facts can be surveyed, and who will not meander on tortuous byways, guided by chance conjectures."*

There is some danger that science, by its hostile attitude towards the crude notions of our forefathers, should tacitly admit what it explicitly seeks to refute. For example,

See also Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1891.