316 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



merely symbolize, but resemble} tulips and oranges and 

 fossil molluscs. If not, let him propound his new theory 

 of consciousness. ; 



Let it not be supposed that I am denying the existence, 

 and the richly diversified existence, of the external world. 

 We are fully justified, I think, in believing that, correspond- 

 ing to the diversity of mental symbolism, there is a rich 

 diversity of external existence. But its nature I hold that 

 we can never know. The objects that we see are the joint 

 products of two factors the external existence and the 

 percipient mind. We cannot eliminate the latter factor 

 so as to see what the external factor is like without it. 

 Those who, like Professor Mivart,* say that we can 

 eliminate the percipient factor, and that the external world 

 without it is just the same as it is with it, are content to 

 reduce the human mind, in the matter of perception, to 

 the level of a piece of looking-glass. 



There are some people who seek to get behind 

 phenomena by an appeal to evolution. It will not do 

 nowadays, they say, to make the human mind a starting- 

 point in these considerations ; for the human mind is the 

 product of evolution, and throughout that evolution has 

 been step by step moulded to the external world. The 

 external world has, therefore, the prior existence, and to it 

 our perceptions have to conform. All this is quite true ; 

 but it is beside the point. Mind has, throughout the 

 process of evolution, been moulded to the external world ; 

 our perceptions do conform to outside existences. But 

 they conform, not in exact resemblance, but in mental 

 symbolism. They do not copy, but they correspond to, 

 external existences. It is just because, throughout the 

 long ages of evolution, mind has lived and worked in this 



* " Let the perception be considered to be made up of x + y ; x being 

 the ego, or self, and y the object. The mind has the power of supplying its 

 own x, and so we get (through the imagination of the mind and the object) 

 x +y - x, or y pure and simple " (Mivart, " On Truth," p. 135). Mr. Mivart 

 devotes a whole section of this work to the defence of ordinary common-sense 

 realism. The above assertion seems to contain the essence of his teaching in 

 the matter. 



