16 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. L 



cannot transcend the organically-imposed limits of our own 

 intelligence. We do not know matter, but we know a group 

 of coexistent states of consciousness which we call the 

 perceptions of resistance, extension and colour, sound or 

 odour. We do not know motion, but we know the group 

 of sequent states of consciousness produced by minute alter- 

 ations in the muscles of the eyes, or perhaps of the tactual 

 organs, in the act of attending to the moving object. Nor 

 do we know force, but we know continual modifications of 

 our consciousness which we are compelled to regard as the 

 manifestations of force. Nor do we even know consciousness 

 absolutely and in itself: we know only states of conscious- 

 ness in their relations of coexistence and sequence, likeness 

 and unlikeness. 



Although this is one of the best-established conclusions of 

 modern psychology, it is still a conclusion which requires 

 considerable effort to understand in all its implications ; and 

 for this reason, as well as on account of its supreme impor- 

 tance, it will be desirable briefly to illustrate it from yet 

 another point of view. We shall be assisted in comprehend- 

 ing the general truth by a set of considerations which show 

 that, although our internal feelings or states of consciousness 

 are constantly produced by external agents, yet we have no 

 warrant whatever for assuming that the external agent in 

 any way resembles the internal feeling. For instance, 

 although the feelings of redness and resistance are caused 

 by agencies without us, we have no warrant for assuming 

 that the external cause of redness resembles *ia feeling of 

 redness, or that the external cause of resistance resembles 

 the feeling of resistance. In other words, we know redness 

 and resistance only as phenomena, only as modifications of 

 consciousness ; and although we are compelled to refer these 

 phenomena to causes which exist externally and which would 

 still exist if there were no minds to be affected by them, we 

 ire nevertheless unable to assert that these external causes — 



