8 Life and Matter [chap. i. 



far beyond our apprehension or conception. 

 And within the broad area thus suggested 

 may be grouped such utterly different 

 universe-conceptions as that of Herbert 

 Spencer and that of Spinoza. 



2. According to another system the 

 fundamental reality is psychical, is conscious- 

 ness, let us say, or mind ; and the material 

 world has only the reality appropriate to a 

 consistent set of ideas. Here we find again 

 several varieties, ranging from Bishop 

 Berkeley and presumably Hegel, on the 

 one hand, to William James who, in so 

 far as he is a monist at all, may I suppose 

 be called an empirical idealist and solip- 

 sists such as Mach and Karl Pearson, on 

 the other. 



3. A third system, or group of systems, 

 has been in vogue among some physicists of 

 an earlier day, and among some biologists 

 now ; viz., that mind, thought, conscious- 

 ness are all by-products, phantasmagoria, 

 epiphenomena, developments and decorations, 

 as it were, of the one fundamental all- 



