THE CIRCLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 329 



the scale of life, for example most insects, intuitively regard the 

 objects revealed to them by their senses as real existences. On 

 the other hand, it is likely that the human mind begins as a chaos 

 of feelings, some of which, by a process of gradual and unconscious 

 inference, are ultimately referred to external bodies as properties 

 or qualities of them. In other words, the insect has an intuitive 

 belief in the existence of the universe which his mind constructs, 

 while the human being slowly builds up a similar belief. 1 The 

 latter then divides his feelings into classes, one of which is regarded 

 as a collection of mental happenings, and the other as a collection 

 of external objects. Thus the pain caused by a cut from a knife 

 is regarded as a feeling, whereas the colour, extension and weight 

 'of the knife' are supposed to be properties of a material object. 

 Ultimately the human being finds it extremely difficult to think and 

 speak of his ' physical ' universe as other than a collection of external 

 objects. Both thought and language become moulded on that belief. 

 Thus I, while insisting that material objects are unknown to us, have 

 just used words which imply an unquestioning faith that insects, 

 human beings, and knives are realities external to me. I have also 

 used the words ' we ' and ' us,' and have written this book on the as- 

 sumption that other people will read. But other people, other minds, 

 are just as much unknown to me, just as much outside the circle of my 

 consciousness as sheets of paper. Indeed, other minds are, if any- 

 thing, more outside the circle of my consciousness than material 

 bodies; for I can only arrive at the notion of these other minds by 

 observing that bodies move in such a way (talk, gesticulate, etc.) 

 that they seem to be, like my own body, under mental v control. 



557. And now I wish to fix the reader's attention on a matter 

 which is of very great importance, but which is never accorded due 

 weight. He must bear with me if I use such words as ' reader,' 

 'nurse,' 'wall,' and the like, and so constantly express myself in 

 common-sense terms. Language affords no other way of indicat- 

 ing my meaning. If I had always been an idealist, if from the 

 beginning I had ever regarded my feelings merely as feelings, if I had 

 never draped them about supposed external objects as properties of the 

 latter, if 1 had never put a materialist construction on them, I should 

 now be living in a chaos of unmeaning feelings. We do not know 

 to what extent a newly born infant has an intuitive belief in an 



1 Of course, I do not mean that the human infant at first regards all his feelings 

 merely as feelings and afterwards changes his opinion. Like the insect he does 

 not think about it. I mean merely that he learns to do that which the insect does 

 intuitively. 



