in THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 95 



with, fact than, the popular notion that the mind 

 is a metaphysical entity seated in the head, but as 

 independent of the brain as a telegraph operator 

 is of his instrument. 



It is hardly necessary to point out that the 

 doctrine just laid down is what is commonly 

 called materialism. In fact, I am not sure that 

 the adjective " crass," which appears to have a 

 special charm for rhetorical sciolists, would not 

 be applied to it. But it is, nevertheless, true 

 that the doctrine contains nothing inconsistent 

 with the purest idealism. For, as Hume remarks 

 (as indeed Descartes had observed long before): 



"'Tis not our body we perceive when we regard our 

 limbs and members, but certain impressions which enter by 

 the senses ; so that the ascribing a real and corporeal exist- 

 ence to these impressions, or to their objects, is an act of 

 the mind as difficult to explain as that [the external exist- 

 ence of objects] which we examine at present." (I. p. 249.) 



Therefore, if we analyse the proposition that all 

 mental phenomena are the effects or products of 

 material phenomena, all that it means amounts to 

 this: that whenever those states of consciousness 



/ 



which we call sensation, or emotion, or thought, 

 J come into existence, complete investigation will 

 / show good reason for the belief that they are 

 preceded by those other phenomena of conscious- 

 ness to which we give the names of matter and 

 [motion. All material changes appear, in the long 

 "" run, to be modes of motion; but our knowledge of 



