ii MIND AND MECHANISM 17 



speaking of my mind as implicated in my purposive 

 behaviour, I am only recording facts of my experience just 

 as certainly as if "I were noting the movements of the 

 barometer. On the other hand, it is only my own in- 

 dividual mind that is thus given to a direct experience, 

 and if all reference to mind other than that based on 

 direct experience were ruled out, each of us would have to 

 be a Solipsist. 1 I find, however, that many other 

 objects, constituted externally much like myself, also 

 behave in ways broadly corresponding to my own 

 and I attribute to them also minds and states or acts of 

 Mind accordingly. The inference is quite logical, and 

 within limits is being repeatedly corroborated by the 

 whole of my intercourse with my species. Within limits, 

 because I may err by too great simplification, taking others 

 as more like me than they really are, or again by failing to 

 recognise a common element which is really at work. 

 These are the ordinary fallacies to which all generalisation 

 is liable and from which it is saved only by a rigorous 

 inductive logic. The application of such logic to the 

 details of our subject will be examined presently. Mean- 

 while on the main point we must maintain that the attri- 

 bution of Mind to others on the basis of behaviour 

 is a perfectly consequent logical inference. Here is a 

 situation A upon which I react consciously in a definite 

 manner, B, the result being certain overt behaviour C. 

 Here is another being in a corresponding situation A', 

 which displays corresponding behaviour C'. To infer 

 a corresponding link B' is a valid logical procedure, and 

 its validity is corroborated by the ever-repeated test of 

 daily intercourse with our fellows. 



3. This being the logical basis of our attribution of one 

 class of correlations to Mind, it is open to two criticisms, 

 which have been hinted at but must be more fully stated^/ 

 before we can proceed. First, Mind may not be the L/ 

 operative cause of correlation. Internal consciousness 

 does not prove that it is so in me. Therefore no observa- 



1 It may be said that other beings communicate their minds to me by 

 language, but in the last resort the use of words is an element of 

 behaviour of which only the external result is an immediate object of my 

 experience. 



