14 LESSONS FEOM NATUEE. [CHAP. I. 



dogmas, and substituted for them an exposition of simple 

 truth ; but, in fact, he presents us with dogmas of his own 

 fully as mysterious as any he conceives he has destroyed. The 

 old system, baseless or not, threw light upon the facts of 

 psychology, of which it afforded an intelligible explanation. 

 Professor Huxley s dogmas are not only, to say the least, 

 as open to attack, but, if admitted, fail to be of any service 

 in interpreting or making intelligible to us the phenomena 

 presented to us by our own intellectual activity. 



Mr. John Stuart Mill admits* the existence of the mind 

 in the form of a &quot; thread of consciousness,&quot; &quot; aware of itself 

 as past and future,&quot; and possessing a conviction of the simul 

 taneous existence of other &quot; threads of consciousness &quot; and 

 of numerous &quot; permanent possibilities of sensation.&quot; 



Professor Huxley seems to agree with the last-named 

 writer as to the certainty of the existence of a series of states 

 of consciousness. 



It seems, however, that the proposition which Professor 

 Huxley affirms is to the full as assailable as the position 

 which the Professor attacks. He appears to think he has 

 entrenched himself behind bulwarks impregnable against 

 the assaults of others still more sceptical than he is 

 himself. His ultimate citadel is not, however, a bit more 

 tenable by its defenders than the fortresses which they 

 profess to have reduced. If we may legitimately call in 

 question the existence of &quot;self&quot; and &quot;not-self &quot;to say 

 nothing of mind, matter, and a real external world then the 

 very same weapons which are believed to have been success- 

 fully employed to demolish the necessary objective validity 

 of those conceptions, may be employed with not less force to 

 shatter this last refuge of philosophical dogmatism.&quot; For 

 what is the meaning of the proposition, the truth of which 

 all these writers agree in regarding as unquestionable ? a 

 series of states of consciousness exists.&quot; 



Before examining this proposition as a whole, let us 



Mill upon Hamilton, p. 212. 



