ESSAY-REVIEWS 607 



far from securing that elevation of individual value that 

 Dr. Merz desires, seems to involve us in a still more abject 

 slavery. We are, in our own little way, conquerors — con- 

 querors who slowly wrest many secrets from nature and gain 

 some advantage of comfort and wider possibilities of living 

 in our struggle with the world that encircles us. Phenomenal- 

 ism cannot alter these experiences, it cannot alter our depen- 

 dence on physical factors, however it may choose to interpret 

 the matter ; and Dr. Merz can scarcely be said to be happily 

 inspired in suggesting that such small conquests as we can 

 make have to be effected over a world that we have ourselves 

 created . 



Phenomenalism, then, is of no use to Dr. Merz. It makes 

 him no less the creature of circumstances, if anything it 

 makes him more so — for it assigns him servitude to his own 

 mind. This, however, is not the whole conclusion of the 

 matter. Metaphysical principles do not stand or fall with 

 their success or failure in promoting human dignity. At the 

 same time phenomenalism actually does fail both to avert 

 man's dethronement from the centre of the universe and to 

 satisfy the demands of reason. Curiously enough, Dr. Merz 

 lays special stress on the very point that most effectively dis- 

 poses of phenomenalism. The persons that surround us 

 induce us, so runs his argument, to believe in another world 

 surrounding them and ourselves. Now, by arresting its anti- 

 realistic argument at persons phenomenalism lands itself in 

 contradiction. It is quite vain to combine a phenomenalistic 

 view of the physical universe with a realistic view of persons. 



If the physical world is an excerpt from consciousness, its 

 flora and fauna are an excerpt too. The sauce for the gander 

 is the sauce for the goose. The argument that proves the 

 shepherd's staff to be purely a modification of, or an operation 

 in, consciousness proves exactly the same thing of the shepherd 

 and his flock. Once Dr. Merz denies that external physical 

 realities exist, he becomes, in logic if not in fact, a solipsist — 

 believing that everything is an occurrence, and only an occur- 

 rence, in his own mind. All other men, including brother 

 phenomenalists, have bodies, and these, on his own showing, 

 are simply notions of his own. Their minds, as far as he is 

 concerned, are attached to these bodies, for he only knows 

 them through the latter. If his friends had no bodies he 



