THE FACTS OF SCIENCE 51 



^ 6. — Attitude of Science towards Ejects 



Indeed in some respects other- consciousness appears 

 less beyond our reach than many inferred existences. 

 Some physicists infer the existence of atoms, although 

 they have had no experience of any individual atom, 

 because the hypothesis of their existence enables them 

 to briefly resume a number of sense -impressions. We 

 infer the existence of other-consciousness for a precisely 

 similar reason ; but in this case we have the advantage 

 of knowing at least one individual consciousness, namely, 

 our own. We see in ourselves how it links sense-impres- 

 sion and deferred exertion. While the atom, like other- 

 consciousness, might possibly some day attain to objective 

 reality, there are certain conceptions dealt with by science 

 for which, as we shall see in the sequel, this is impossible. 

 For example, our geometrical ideas of curves and surfaces 

 are of this character. None the less, although they might 

 with greater logic be termed ejects than, perhaps, other- 

 consciousness, there are few who would deny that they 

 have their ultimate origin in sense-impressions, from which 

 they have been extracted or isolated by the process of 

 mental generalisation, to which we have previously referred 

 (p. 46). A still more marked class of conceptions, which 

 we are incapable of verifying directly by any form of 

 immediate sense -impression, is that of historical facts. 

 We believe that King John really signed Magna Charta, 

 and that there was a period when snow-fields and glaciers 

 covered the greater part of England, yet these conceptions 

 can never have come to our consciousness as direct sense- 

 impressions, nor can they be verified in like manner. 

 They are conclusions we have reached by a long chain 

 of inferences, starting in direct sense -impressions and 

 ending in that which, unlike atom and other-consciousness, 

 can by no possibility be verified directly by immediate 

 sense-impression. When, therefore, we state that all the 

 contents of our mind are ultimately based on sense- 

 impressions, we must be careful to recognise that the 

 mind has by classification and isolation proceeded to 



