ESSAYS 477 



considered that the mental experiences correspond to the external world ; and the 

 question arises as to how we can be sure that the whole range of objective facts 

 may thus be covered, or that there may be no influence from without which may 

 not disconcert the whole system of Psychology obtained on the subjective stand- 

 point. These considerations are delicate, but, if only on account of a sense of 

 vagueness left in my mind as to what was here involved, I felt constrained to hold 

 back for years the publication of my system. Finally the question resolved into 

 this : Starting from the Idealistic standpoint and continuing in consistency with 

 this principle, is it possible to arrive at a complete sense of objectivity such as is 

 assumed by the ordinary man who has never thought of these problems at all ? 

 I say, Yes, and I prove that there is no other way of arriving at the sense of 

 objectivity. 



The Idealists of the Berkeley School do not claim this result, and the Common 

 Sense School of Reid has held this crux before the Berkeleyans as a sort of 

 reductio ad absurdum of their principles ; but, bound to neither of these sects, 

 I find that the Berkeleyans have failed, not by reason of their devotion to 

 Idealism, but on account of their lapses into a crude form of Materialism implied 

 in a tacit recognition of the doctrines of localisation. Given complete illumination 

 and rigorous consistency to the true doctrine of Idealism, and depriving Common 

 Sense of its resource of putting forth as good argument its incapacity for analysis, 

 then a reconciliation becomes possible between these schools apparently so 

 opposed. 



I had early begun an analysis of Externality, tracing out minutely the suc- 

 cessive steps of the development of the notion of objectivity, importing into the 

 question nothing but sensations and their relations, beginning with the simplest, 

 and proceeding to highly developed complexes. One day in Paris, meditating 

 intently on this subject, I saw in a flash of illumination the link that had been 

 missing, and which now completed the union between Idealism and Common 

 Sense. The Berkeleyans themselves had regarded their own processes from an 

 objective point of view, and it was only by a paradox that they could maintain the 

 position of the external world being resolved into ideas in the head, or brain, of 

 the subject. 



But the true Idealist has nothing to do with this assumption. Where are the 

 ideas ? Precisely where the object is, as conceived in a complex series composed 

 of ideas. Take an external tree, for example, the idea of that tree is where the 

 tree is, as we conceive it amid the complexes of our ideas ; and the notion of 

 externality of the tree is reached by the processes, and entirely satisfied by them, 

 involved on the one hand in the successive receptions of the ideas referring to a 

 physical self, and on the other hand in the successive receptions of the sensations, 

 with their relatives intervening, between that notion of self and of the tree. The 

 ideas referring to a physical self are, of course, subject to the same kind of 

 analysis as those referring to the tree. 



If it be said that the ordinary uneducated man has the notion of objectivity 

 immediately, and without analysis, I say that the ordinary uneducated man never 

 uses the term "objectivity," nor thinks in such terms ; and that processes, of which 

 the counterparts are expressible in forms of analysis, are being carried on and 

 repeated in his experiences continuously throughout his conscious life. The 

 ordinary man acts automatically without the necessity, in this regard, of analysis, 

 just as he walks without knowing anything of the components of the mechanism 

 which enables him to do so, and the study of which enables the anatomist to 

 explain the manner of his walking. If, however, the ordinary man were asked 



