94 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



which we are accustomed in the acquaintances of our 

 waking hours. And yet, when we are awake, we do not 

 believe that the phantasm was, like the appearances of 

 people in waking life, representative of a private world 

 to which we have no direct access. If we are to believe 

 this of the people we meet when we are awake, it must 

 be on some ground short of demonstration, since it is 

 obviously possible that what we call waking life may be 

 only an unusually persistent and recurrent nightmare. 

 It may be that our imagination brings forth all that other 

 people seem to say to us, all that we read in books, all 

 the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly journals that 

 distract our thoughts, all the advertisements of soap and 

 all the speeches of politicians. This may be true, since 

 it cannot be shown to be false, yet no one can really 

 believe it. Is there any logical ground for regarding this 

 possibility as improbable ? Or is there nothing beyond 

 habit and prejudice ? 



The minds of other people are among our data, in the 

 very wide sense in which we used the word at first. 

 That is to say, when we first begin to reflect, we find 

 ourselves already believing in them, not because of any 

 argument, but because the belief is natural to us. It is, 

 however, a psychologically derivative belief, since it results 

 from observation of people's bodies ; and along with other 

 such beliefs, it does not belong to the hardest of hard 

 data, but becomes, under the influence of philosophic 

 reflection, just sufficiently questionable to make us desire 

 some argument connecting it with the facts of sense. 



The obvious argument is, of course, derived from 

 analogy. Other people's bodies behave as ours do when 

 we have certain thoughts and feelings ; hence, by analogy, 

 it is natural to suppose that such behaviour is connected 

 with thoughts and feelings like our own. Someone says, 



