Herrick, Body- Mind Controversy. 425 



even to the most naive form of common sense. Later we somehow 

 discover to our chagrin that this extra-meutal something is also mental. 



There will be pretty general agreement that, "if we come to ad- 

 mit things-in-themselves, we shall have to conceive them as non-ma- 

 terial." But why in the same connection add that "If things-in-them- 

 selves exist, their exisence cannot be immediately known, but only in- 

 ferred. The broadest of distinctions separates such extra-mental re- 

 alities, which in the nature of the case can never be immediately given, 

 the hypothesis of which is consequently unverifiable, from the empirical 

 objects, such as matter and motion, j:houghts and feelings, which wc 

 know by itnmediate experience'' (italics mine). This is most reasonably 

 explained as a simple lapse but such lapses occur throughout. Surely 

 Professor Strong does not mean that an object is given in experience. 

 Or, if he does, he cannot mean the metaphysical postulate of matter 

 already admitted to be illegitimate, is known by immediate experience. 

 If we know matter and motion by direct experience, that is the end of 

 it. Is there no difference between knowledge and experience ? 

 Dynamic realism insists that we know external objects in the 

 same indirect or secondary way that we know self. Genetic psychology 

 traces the origin of both from an earlier "protoplasmic" condition of 

 consciousness. The objective and subjective are both given in ex- 

 perience and the act of judgment (or intuition) recognizing an exter- 

 nal object is as valid a process as that which recognizes the individual 

 self. Experience gives us neither ; all simple realities imply both but 

 the partition is made in thought and gives us knowledge equally of 

 the two elements. This individualizing peculiarity of human mind is 

 implicate of limitation. 



Professor Strong, however, defines reality as "something which 

 exists of itself and in its own right and not merely as a modification of 

 something else." But would this not make the "Absolute" the only 

 reality? for obviously only It can exist "of itself." But this necessary 

 result is not j)erceived by the author and to some extent will go far to 

 invalidate the chapter on consciousness, etc. 



The distinction made between soul and self is interesting and sug- 

 gestive. Soul is a metaphysical entity back of self much as some en- 

 tity exists behind matter. Mind and soul are two different conceptions, 

 the former corresponding to the soul of empirical psychology. "Con- 

 sciousness is empirically a thing so mutable and transitory that we can- 

 not conceive it except as supported by some more durable underlying be- 

 ing, and our choice lies between making it dependent on the brain and 

 on the soul," and "since the brain, as material, cannot treasure up what 



