SCIENCE AND NATURE 25 



are intimately connected with certain purely internal 

 feelings. Thus, if I bring my hand too near a hot body, 

 I can see that it is snatched suddenly away ; and I know 

 that this sudden motion is accompanied by the purely 

 internal feeling of pain and also by certain muscular 

 feelings which are associated with movement of my 

 body. Now I perceive through my senses other parts 

 of the external world which appear very similar to my 

 body, and these objects undergo associated changes 

 very similar to those which take place in my body. 

 Thus I may see another object, very like my hand, 

 approach the same hot body ; and if I see that, I shall 

 see it snatched away again, exactly as I see my hand 

 snatched away. But this time I shall not experience 

 any feeling of heat or any feeling of muscular motion. 



To explain these observations I imagine that, just as 

 there is intimately associated with my body a mind, 

 namely, my own mind, so there is intimately associated 

 with each of these other objects, so similar in appearance 

 and in behaviour, another mind ; I call these other 

 objects " other persons' bodies," and the minds which I 

 imagine to be associated with them I call " other persons' 

 minds " or simply " other persons/' I believe there 

 are other people because I see other bodies reacting in 

 the same way as my body ; and, if any reaction of 

 my body is accompanied by some event in my mind, I 

 suppose that the reactions of these other bodies are 

 accompanied by similar events in the minds of the other 

 people. 



I do not propose to inquire whether this line of argu- 

 ment is justified (if anything so elementary and so funda- 

 mental to all thought can be called argument) or whether 

 it avoids the difficulty to which attention has been called. 

 The reader must inquire for himself whether he can put 

 the evidence for the existence of other people in a form 

 which is wholly convincing and is also such that it is 



