62 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



in the form of sense-impressions come flowing in from 

 that " outside world," and these we analyse, classify, store 

 up, and reason about. But of the nature of " things-in- 

 themselves," of what may exist at the other end of our 

 system of telephone wires, we know nothing at all. 



But the reader, perhaps, remarks, " I not only see an 

 object, but I can touch it. I can trace the nerve from the 

 tip of my finger to the brain. I am not like the telephone 

 clerk, I can follow my network of wires to their terminals 

 and find what is at the other end of them." Can you, 

 reader ? Think for a moment whether your ego has for 

 one moment got away from his brain -exchange. The 

 sense-impression that you call touch was just as much as 

 sight felt only at the brain end of a sensory nerve. What 

 has told you also of the nerve from the tip of your finger 

 to your brain ? Why, sense-impressions also, messages 

 conveyed along optic or tactile sensory nerves. In truth, 

 all you have been doing is to employ one subscriber to 

 your telephone exchange to tell you about the wire that 

 goes to a second, but you are just as far as ever from 

 tracing out for yourself the telephone wires to the individual 

 subscriber and ascertaining what his nature is in and for 

 himself The immediate sense-impression is just as far 

 removed from what you term the " outside world " as the 

 store of impresses. If our telephone clerk had recorded 

 by aid of a phonograph certain of the messages from the 

 outside world on past occasions, then if any telephonic 

 message on its receipt set several phonographs repeating 

 past messages, we have an image analogous to what goes 

 on in the brain. Both telephone and phonograph are 

 equally removed from what the clerk might call the " real 

 outside world," but they enable him through their sounds 

 to construct a universe ; he projects those sounds, which 

 are really inside his office, outside his office, and speaks of 

 them as the external universe. This outside world is 

 constructed by him from the contents of the inside sounds, 

 which differ as widely from thlngs-in-themselves as lan- 

 guage, the symbol, must always differ from the thing it 

 symbolises. For our telephone clerk sounds would be 



