DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or 

 series, the admirable connection whereof sufficiently testifies the 

 wisdom and benevolence of its Author. Now the set rules or 

 established methods wherein the Mind we depend on excites in 

 us the ideas of sense, are called the laws of nature-, and these we 

 learn by experience, which teaches us that such and such ideas 

 are attended with such and such other ideas, in the ordinary 

 course of things." 1 Mill, discussing the same subject, writes: 

 "Now, of what nature is this fixed order among our sensations? 

 It is a constancy of antecedence and sequence. But the constant 

 antecedence and sequence do not generally exist between one 

 actual sensation and another. Very few such sequences are 

 presented to us by experience. In almost all the constant se- 

 quences which occur in Nature, the antecedence and sequence 

 do not obtain between sensations, but between the groups we 

 have been speaking about, of which a very small portion is 

 actual sensation, the greater part being permanent possibilities 

 of sensation, evidenced to us by a small and variable number 

 of sensations actually present." 2 



The solution which Mill has to offer to this important problem, 

 so underestimated by Berkeley his psychological theory of the 

 nature of objectivity is anticipated in the passage just quoted. 

 This theory is, in brief, that external things are not to be identified 

 as a class of complex ideas; but that they are groups of possible, 

 as opposed to actual, sensations. Just what Mill meant by the 

 famous phrase, "permanent possibilities of sensation," it is 

 essential to be at some pains to discover. In the case of direct 

 perception, the actual sensations form but a small part of the 

 object as experienced. As Mill says: "What we see is a very 

 minute fragment of what we think we see." In addition to the 

 sensations actually present to consciousness, there are associated 

 a whole group of other possible sensations, some of which a more 

 careful attention would serve to make actual, others of which 

 would enter the field of consciousness by a slight shift of bodily 



l Principles of Human Knowledge, 30. 



^Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 6th ed., Ch. XI, p. 230. 



