COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



upon our consciousness. Thus, while admit- 

 ting that redness is only the name of a state of 

 consciousness produced in us by an unknown 

 external agent, Reid insisted that, on the other 

 hand, in our consciousness of weight or resist- 

 ance we know the external agent itself, and not 

 merely a state of consciousness. Plausible as 

 this opinion appeared, not only to the super- 

 ficial Reid, but to that much abler though 

 rather fragmentary thinker. Sir William Hamil- 

 ton,^ it is nevertheless irreconcilable with some 

 very obvious psychological facts. To cite one 

 or two examples from Mr. Spencer's " Princi- 

 ples of Psychology : " " The same weight pro- 

 duces one kind of feeling when it rests on a 

 passive portion of the body, and another kind 

 of feeling when supported at the end of the 

 outstretched arm.'* In which of these cases, 

 then, do we know the real objective weight ? 

 We cannot know it in both, since in that case 

 the substance of the two cognitions would be the 

 same. Again, if one hand is laid palm down- 

 wards upon the table, and " a knuckle of the 

 other hand is thrust down with some force on 

 the back of it, there results a sensation of pain 

 in the back of the hand, a sensation of pressure 

 in the knuckle, and a sensation of muscular 



^ Even the great Locke had not freed himself from this 

 error. See the Essay on Human Understandingy Book II. 

 chap. viii. 



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