OX THE XATURE OF THIXG8-IX-THEMSELYES. 



423 



ception of you in my consciousness carries with 

 it a belief in the existence of you outside of my 

 consciousness, a belief which can never be ex- 

 pressed in terms of the future sequence of my 

 feelings. How this inference is justified, how 

 consciousness can testify to the existence of any- 

 thing outside of itself, I do not pretend to say ; 

 I need not untie a knot which the world has cut 

 for me long ago. It may very well be that I my- 

 self am the only existence, but it is simply ri- 

 diculous to suppose that anybody else is. The 

 position of absolute idealism may, therefore, be 

 left out of count, although each individual may 

 be unable to justify his dissent from it. 



III. FORMATION OF THE SOCIAL OBJECT. 



The belief, however, in the existence of other 

 men's consciousness, in the existence of ejects, 

 dominates every thought and every action of our 

 lives. In the first place, it profoundly modifies 

 the object. This room, the table, the chairs, 

 your bodies, are all objects in my consciousness ; 

 as simple objects they are parts of me. But 

 I, somehow, infer the existence of similar objects 

 in your consciousness, and these are not objects 

 to me, nor can they ever be made so; they are 

 ejects. This being so, I bind up with each object 

 as it exists in my mind the thought of similar ob- 

 jects existing in other men's minds ; and, I thus 

 form the complex conception, "this table, as an 

 object in the minds of men " — or, as Mr. Shad- 

 worth Hodgson puts it, an object of consciousness 

 in general. This conception symbolizes an indefi- 

 nite number of ejects, together with one object 

 which the conception of each eject more or less 

 resembles. Its character is therefore mainly ejec- 

 tive in respect of what it symbolizes, but mainly 

 objective in respect of its nature. I shall call 

 this complex conception the social object ; it is a 

 symbol of one thing (the individual object, it may 

 be called for distinction's sake) which is in my 

 consciousness, and of an indefinite number of 

 other things which are ejects and out of my con- 

 sciousness. Now, it is probable that the indi- 

 vidual object, as such, never exists in the mind 

 of man. For there is every reason to believe 

 that we were gregarious animals before we be- 

 came men properly so called. And a belief in 

 the eject — some sort of recognition of a kindred 

 consciousness in one's fellow-beings — is clearly a 

 condition of gregarious action among animals so 

 highly developed as to be called conscious at all. 

 Language, even in its first beginnings, is impos- 

 sible without that belief; and any sound which, 

 becoming a sign to my neighbor, becomes there- 



by a mark to myself, must by the nature of the 

 case be a mark of the social object, and not of 

 the individual object. But if not only this con- 

 ception of the particular social object, but all 

 those that have been built up out of it, have 

 been formed at the same time with, and under 

 the influence of, language, it seems to follow that 

 the belief in the existence of other men's minds 

 like our own, but not part of us, must be insep- 

 arably associated with every process whereby 

 discrete impressions are built together into an 

 object. I do not, of course, mean that it presents 

 itself in consciousness as distinct ; but I mean 

 that as an object is formed in my mind, a fixed 

 habit causes it to be formed as social object, and 

 insensibly embodies in it a reference to the minds 

 of other men. And this sub-conscious reference 

 to supposed ejects is what constitutes the im- 

 pression of externality in the object, whereby it is 

 described as not-me. At any rate, the formation 

 of the social object supplies an account of this 

 impression of outness, without requiring me to 

 assume any ejects or things outside my conscious- 

 ness except the minds of other men. Conse- 

 quently, it cannot be argued from the impres- 

 sion of outness that there is anything outside 

 of my consciousness except the minds of other 

 men. I shall argue presently that we have 

 grounds for believing in non-personal ejects, but 

 these grounds are not in any way dependent on 

 the impression of outness, and they are not in- 

 cluded in the ordinary or common-sense view of 

 things. It seems to me that the prevailing be- 

 lief of uninstructed people is merely a belief in 

 the social object, and not in a non-personal eject, 

 somehow corresponding to it ; and that the ques- 

 tion " Whether the latter exists or not ? " is one 

 which cannot be put to them so as to convey 

 any meaning without considerable preliminary 

 training. On this point I agree entirely with 

 Berkeley, and not with Mr. Spencer. 



IV. — DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MIND AND BODY. 



I do not pause to show how belief in the 

 eject underlies the whole of natural ethic, whose 

 first great commandment, evolved in the light of 

 day by healthy processes wherever men have 

 lived together, is, "Put yourself in his place." 

 It is more to my present purpose to point out 

 what is the true difference between body and 

 mind. Your body is an object in my conscious- 

 ness ; your mind is not, and never can be. Be- 

 ing and object, your body follows the laws of 

 physical science, which deals with the objective 

 order of my feelings. That its chemistry is or- 



