Matter and Mind 219 



found scattered through very many of his ordinary 

 scientific writings, but are specially set forth in a 

 volume on Hiwie, which he wrote for Mr, John 

 Motley's series, English Men of Letters, and in essays 

 on Berkeley and on Descartes, all of which are repub- 

 lished in the Collected Essays. He contrived to pre- 

 serve, in the most abstrusely philosophical of these 

 writings, a simplicity and clarity which, although they 

 have not commended him to professional metaphysi- 

 cians, make his attitude to the problems of meta- 

 physics extremely intelligible. The greatest barrier 

 and cause of confusion to the novice in metaphysics 

 is that the writings of most of the great authorities are 

 overburdened by their great knowledge of the historj' 

 of philosophy. Huxley, in a characteristic piece of 

 " parting advice " in the preface to his work on Hume 

 attacked this confusion between the history of a subject 

 and the subject itself 



"If it is your desire," he wrote, "to discourse fluently and 

 learnedly about philosophical questions, begin with the lon- 

 ians and work steadily through to the latest new speculative 

 treatise. If you have a good memory and a fair knowledge of 

 Greek, Latin, French, and German, three or four years spent 

 in this way should enable you to attain your object. If, on the 

 contrary, you are animated by the much rarer desire for real 

 knowledge ; if you want to get a clear conception of the deep- 

 est problems set before the intellect of man, there is no need, 

 so far as I can see, for you to go beyond the limits of the Eng- 

 lish tongue. Indeed, if you are pressed for time, three English 

 authors will suffice, namely, Berkeley, Hume, and Hobbes." 



The first and perhaps the greatest problem in meta- 

 physics can be put very shortly. What is the reality 

 behind the apparent universe of matter and mind we 

 see around us ? Or, rather, what do we know of that 

 reality ? To the uninitiated in philosophical thinking 



