488 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



by no means easy to combat such notions. For when I 

 say " I see you/' and that there is not the least doubt 

 about it, the obvious reply is, that what I am really con- 

 scious of is an affection of my own retina. And if I urge 

 that my sight can be checked by touching you, the retort 

 would be that I am equally transgressing the limits of fact; 

 for what I am really conscious of is, not that you are 

 there, but that the nerves of my hand have undergone a 

 change. All we hear, and see, and touch, and taste, and 

 smell, are, it would be urged, mere variations of our own 

 condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a hair's 

 breadth, we cannot go. That anything answering to our 

 impressions exists outside of ourselves is not a fact, but 

 an inference) to which all validity would be denied by an 

 idealist like Berkeley, or by a skeptic like Hume. Mr. 

 Spencer takes another line. With him, as with the 

 uneducated man, there is no doubt or question as to the 

 existence of an external world. But he differs 'from the 

 uneducated, who think that the world really is what con- 

 sciousness represents it to be. Our states of consciousness 

 are mere symbols of an outside entity which produces them 

 and determines the order of their succession, but the real 

 nature of which we can never know.* In fact, the whole 

 process of evolution is the manifestation of a Power 

 absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in 

 our day as in the days of Job can man by searching find 

 this Power out. Considered fundamentally, then, it is by 

 the operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth is 

 evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded, from 

 their prepotent elements in the immeasurable past. 



* In a paper, at once popular and profound, entitled " Recent 

 Progress in the Theory of Vision," contained in the volume of lec- 

 tures by Helmholtz, published by Longmans, this symbolism of our 

 states of consciousness is also dwelt upon. The impressions of sense 

 are the mere signs of external things. In this paper Helmholtz con- 

 tends strongly against the view that the consciousness of space is 

 inborn; and he evidently doubts the power of the chick to pick up 

 grains of corn without preliminary lessons. On this point, he says, 

 further experiments are needed. Such experiments have been since 

 made by Mr..Spalding, aided, I believe, in some of his observations 

 by the accomplished and deeply lamented Lady Amberly; and they 

 seem to prove conclusively that the chick does not need a single 

 moment's tuition to enable it to stand, run, govern the muscles of its 

 eyes, and peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending against the 

 notion of pre-established harmony;' and I am not aware of his views 

 as to the organization of experiences of race or breed. 



