130 SCIENCE AND MOEALS. m 



In the first place, as I have already hinted, it 

 seems to me pretty plain that there is a third 

 thing in the universe, to wit, consciousness, which, 

 in the hardness of my heart or head, I cannot see 

 to be matter, or force, or any conceivable modifica- 

 tion of either, however intimately the manifesta- 

 tions of the phenomena of consciousness may be 

 connected with the phenomena known as matter 

 and force. In the second place, the arguments 

 used by Descartes and Berkeley to show that our 

 certain knowledge does not extend beyond our 

 states of consciousness, appear to me to be as irre- 

 fragable now as they did when I first became ac- 

 quainted with them some half-century ago. All 

 the materialistic writers I know of who have tried 

 to bite that file have simply broken their teeth. 

 But, if this is true, our one certainty is the ex- 

 istence of the mental world, and that of Kraft und 

 Stoff falls into the rank of, at best, a highly prob- 

 able hypothesis. 



Thirdly, when I was a mere boy, with a per- 

 verse tendency to think when I ought to have 

 been playing, my mind was greatly exercised by 

 this formidable problem, What would become of 

 things if they lost their qualities? As the quali- 

 ties had no objective existence, and the thing 

 without qualities was nothing, the solid world 

 seemed whittled away — to my great horror. As I 

 grew older, and learned to use the terms matter 

 and force, the boyish problem was revived, mutato 



