THE MECHANICAL SYSTEM AND ITS LIMITS 387 



This is not the place to treat the question whether 

 the processes of consciousness bring the external world 

 before us as it really is, or whether this real corporeal 

 world, the "thing in itself," is not something quite 

 different from what we imagine ; whether it does not 

 merely set our conscious processes in motion without 

 revealing itself. Or whether in the end conscious 

 processes can only be evoked by other conscious 

 processes ; whether there is no external world corre- 

 sponding to them, and its causes and effects only exist in 

 our thoughts. These questions would lead us into 

 endless controversies. We have only raised the point 

 to see whether Mechanism can be reconciled with 

 psychological science, or whether it dissolves in it. 



That is not the case at all events. The material 

 world is a process of consciousness, it is true, but so are 

 the psychic phenomena. We may make it clear in the 

 following way. 



The material world can only be conceived as a content 

 of consciousness. Consciousness is, as it were, the 

 subject and bodies are the objects; that is to say, the 

 bodies are the objects to be known and consciousness is 

 the perceiver. But my consciousness perceives not 

 only the bodies apart from my own body, but also this 

 itself ; it may even become an object of knowledge itself. 

 But that is not the whole function of the knowing 

 subject. My whole psychic life with all its processes may 

 become the object of the cognitive faculty of conscious- 

 ness, otherwise there could be no psychology, which 

 needs objects to investigate. Thus we see that 



