96 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



The hypothesis that other people have minds must, I 

 think, be allowed to be not susceptible of any very strong 

 support from the analogical argument. At the same time, 

 it is a hypothesis which systematises a vast body of facts 

 and never leads to any consequences which there is 

 reason to think false. There is therefore nothing to be 

 said against its truth, and good reason to use it as a 

 working hypothesis. When once it is admitted, it en- 

 ables us to extend our knowledge of the sensible world 

 by testimony, and thus leads to the system of private 

 worlds which we assumed in our hypothetical construc- 

 tion. In actual fact, whatever we may try to think as 

 philosophers, we cannot help believing in the minds of 

 other people, so that the question whether our belief is 

 justified has a merely speculative interest. And if it is 

 justified, then there is no further difficulty of principle 

 in that vast extension of our knowledge, beyond our own 

 private data, which we find in science and common sense. 



This somewhat meagre conclusion must not be regarded 

 as the whole outcome of our long discussion. The 

 problem of the connection of sense with objective reality 

 has commonly been dealt with from a standpoint which 

 did not carry initial doubt so far as we have carried it ; 

 most writers, consciously or unconsciously, have assumed 

 that the testimony of others is to be admitted, and there- 

 fore (at least by implication) that others have minds. 

 Their difficulties have arisen after this admission, from 

 the differences in the appearance which one physical 

 object presents to two people at the same time, or to one 

 person at two times between which it cannot be supposed 

 to have changed. Such difficulties have made people 

 doubtful how far objective reality could be known by 

 sense at all, and have made them suppose that there were 

 positive arguments against the view that it can be so 



