beyond the walls of sense-impression it can logically infer nothing" (p. 130). And again: "Of the world outside sense-impression science can only logically infer chaos, or the absence of the conditions of knowledge; no human concept, order, reason, or consciousness can be logically projected into it" (p. 135).

This last sentence contains a fresh point, to which we shall recur later. At present we are concerned with Mr. Pearson's assurance that it is illogical and illegitimate to infer from our own sense-impressions the existence of objective realities producing them from outside, and here, we regret to say, the old Adam, or old Philistine, in us is perverse enough to see what appears to be a certain inconsistency in Mr. Pearson. Why, it asks, did Mr. Pearson write this very clever and exhilarating book? The world whose existence he says it is illegitimate to infer is composed to all appearance of an immense variety of things; and among those things, forming part of this imaginary and phantom world, are certainly the people for whose benefit he writes. That is to say, he writes for certain phenomena

whose actual and objective existence it is illogical for him to believe in-for creations of his brain, in fact, or various groups of sense-impressions existing only in the consciousness of Mr. Pearson himself; for by his own showing he would sin most grievously against his own logic if he supposed them to have any actual and objective existence. And it may be lucky for him if he is correct; for it is possible that among Mr. Pearson's acquaintances there are some who would distinctly resent being called a potential sense-impression of Mr. Pearson's consciousness. They would feel that they have as good a right to call Mr. Pearson a sense-impression as he has to call them one, or Daniel O'Connell to call the old apple-woman a parallelogram. To us, who of course are wiser, Mr. Pearson's book cannot under any circumstances be a cause of irritation. According to his own argument, it is itself nothing but a sense-impression in our subjective consciousness, without any objective reality behind it; and no one in his senses would ever lose his temper with a sense-impression, unproduced by anything we have any logical

right to affirm as existing in a sphere where pure science recognizes chaos et preterea nihil.

We now come to an amplification of the points touched upon above, in the quotation from p. 135. Mr. Pearson is speaking of the materialistic heresies of Hooker and the Stoics, and this is what he says:

"As materialists they project these sense-impressions into a real outside world, unconditioned by and independent of man's perceptive faculty."

Of course this is highly improper on the part of Hooker and the Stoics, but it is nothing to what follows.

"Then they infer Reason behind the concatenation of phenomena. Now, Reason is known to us only in association with Consciousness, and we find Consciousness only with the accompaniments of a certain type of nervous organism. Thus, to infer Reason in what has been previously postulated as outside and independent of this type of nervous organism is unjustifiable; it may be dogma, but it is not logic (p. 108).

“But how, it may be asked, has the conception that Reason exists behind phenomena become so widespread? . . . So soon as man begins to form conceptions from his sense-impressions, to combine, to isolate, and to generalize, then he begins to project his own

Reason into phenomena; . . . he unconsciously severs himself from the products of his own Reason and projects them into phenomena, only to re-find them again and wonder what Reason put them there.

"The Reason we find in natural phenomena is surely put there by the only Reason of which we have any experience, namely, the human Reason. The logic man finds in the Universe is but the reflection of his own reasoning faculty" (pp. 109, 110).

But the Universe (the existence of which it is illogical to infer from our sense-impressions) clearly includes the nervous systems of human beings like ourselves, and these nervous systems with their attendant Consciousness we are, therefore, as rigorously forbidden to believe in as in any other part of the apparently objective Universe. Let us, then, apply this great discovery to some familiar experience of our daily life. Instead of a philosopher contemplating the general scheme of things, let us take an art-critic standing in front of a great picture, and forming his judgment upon it. He admires the chiaroscuro, and acknowledges the painter to be a colourist of considerable merit; he sees exactly what the painter was driving at; he

recognizes the effort and the ideal underlying the performance; he condemns the want of unity or the defective massing, and detects a fault of proportion or perspective as the case may be. In a few minutes he has made up his mind as to the capacities of the artist (whom he has never seen), and conveys his impressions to say Mr. Pearson. And then Mr. Pearson replies, "My dear Sir, you are criticizing the wrong man. It is totally illogical, in the first place, to infer the existence of either picture or picture-painter; while, in the second place, as to the merits and defects you talk about, you have simply projected them upon the phenomenon you call a picture out of your own consciousness. Is the picture fine? It is you who deserve the credit. Is it a worthless daub? It is you, and you alone, who have made it so, and you must bear the blame."

The logical issue of Mr. Pearson's arguments, therefore, is clearly that (1) I who write (or you who read) am the creator of my own Universe; that (2) it is illegitimate to infer that that Universe has any independent or actual exist