474 Animal Life and Intelligence . 



phenomena are states of consciousness, and cannot, for 

 the percipient, be anything else. 



"It comes to this, then," an idealist will interpose: 

 ** states of consciousness are metakinetic ; phenomena are 

 states of consciousness ; therefore phenomena are meta- 

 kinetic. Your kinesis vanishes, and you are one with us, 

 a pure idealist." 



Before showing wherein I am not a pure idealist, let me 

 state wliy I am not. For the pure idealist, phenomena 

 being states of consciousness, and nothing more, the world 

 around resolves itself into an individual dream. Were I to 

 hold this view, this pen which I hold, this table at which I 

 write, the spreading trees outside my window, my little sons 

 whose merry voices I can hear in the garden, my very body 

 and limbs, all are merely states of my own consciousness. 

 This I am not prepared to accept. Do what I will, I cannot 

 believe that such an interpretation of the facts is true. 



For this reason I make my first assumption that there 

 is a noumenal system of things in themselves, of which all 

 phenomena, whether kinetic or metakinetic, are manifesta- 

 tions. I differ from the pure idealist in that I believe that 

 phenomena, besides being states of consciousness, have 

 another, namely, a kinetic, aspect. What are for me states 

 of consciousness are for you neural processes in my brain. 

 These are, again, for you states of consciousness ; but still 

 for some one else they are kinetic processes. And an 

 ordinary extraneous object, like this table, is the phenomenal 

 aspect to me of a noumenal existence ; and since that 

 noumenal existence appears to you also in like phenomenal 

 guise, the table is an object for you as well as for me, and 

 not only for us, but for all sentient beings similarly con- 

 stituted. The world we live in is a world of phenomena ; 

 and it has a phenomenal reality every whit as valid as the 

 noumenal reality which underlies it. And that phenomenal 

 reality has two aspects — an inner aspect as metakinesis, 

 and an outer aspect as kinesis. 



I must not here further develop the manner in which 

 the hypothesis of monism presents itself to my mind. I 



