446 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ft. in. 



within the limits of our terrestrial experience. It must 

 always be borne in mind that we go with Berkeley to the 

 full extent of asserting that the term " matter " means, not 

 the occult reality, but the group of phenomena which are 

 kuown as resistance, extension, colour, etc.^ If now we 

 proceed to the outermost verge of admissible speculation, 

 and inquire for a moment what may perhaps be the nature 

 of that Inscrutable Existence of which the universe of phe- 

 nomena is the multiform manifestation, we shall find that its 

 intimate essence may conceivably be identifiable with the 

 intimate essence of what we know as Mind. In order to 

 show how this can be, I shall cite from Mr. Spencer a 

 somewhat lengthy passage, to which the attention of critics 

 has hitherto been too little directed. 



" Mind, as known to the possessor of it, is a circumscribed 

 aggregate of activities ; and the cohesion of these activities, 

 one with another, throughout the aggregate, compels the 

 postulation of a something of which they are the activities. 

 But the same experiences which make him aware of this 

 coherent aggregate of mental activities, simultaneously make 

 him aware of activities that are not included in it — outlying 

 activities which become known by their effects on this 

 aggregate, but which are experimentally proved to be not 

 coherent with it, and to be coherent with one another.^ As, 



■y the definition of them, these external activities cannot be 

 l^rought within the aggregate of activities distinguished as 

 those of Mind, they must for ever remain to him nothing 

 more than the unknown correlatives of their effects on this 

 aggregate ; and can be thought of only in terms furnished 

 by this aggregate. Hence, if he regards his conceptions of 

 these activities lying beyond Mind, as constituting know- 

 ledge of them, he is deluding himself: he is but representing 



these activities in terms of Mind, and can never do other- 



1 See above, voL i. p. 88. 



' See, in this connection, First Principles, pp. 143 — 15S. 



