June 6, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



871 



their general doctrine. Each repudiates the 

 solutions of the others; each, therefore, from 

 the point of view of the others, has no logical 

 right to be a new realist, since he fails (in 

 their eyes) to meet satisfactorily an objection 

 which admittedly must be met before the new 

 realism can be regarded as tenable. So long 

 as these spokesmen of a common cause, after 

 prolonged conference and discussion inter se, 

 axe unable to convuice one another, no one of 

 them will feel it surprising that he fails to 

 convince his readers. Nor is this the worst of 

 the situation. In an appendix definite refuta- 

 tions are offered of all three solutions; Mon- 

 tague refutes Holt and Pitkin, and Pitkin 

 refutes Montague. This does infinite credit 

 to their candor and philosophical good faith; 

 but it leaves their doctrine in a parlous state. 

 For both appear to me to be perfectly good 

 refutations; so that at the end of the volume 

 the formal outcome of the triple effort to 

 solve the problem of error and meet the op- 

 ponent's argument from hallucinations is 

 literally nil. 3 — 1 — 1 — 1 = 0. 



Thus far, then, I do not think it can be 

 said that these vigorous innovators have dem- 

 onstrated that consciousness does not exist 

 save as an irrelevant relation between objects 

 always and absolutely uncolored by its pres- 

 ence; or that the convenient supposition that 

 some things in consciousness exist solely 

 therein, as " subjective appearances," must be 

 abandoned. But failing a proof of this, the 

 new realism, as a whole, is lacking in logical 

 substructure. 



In the interest of a discussion of this main 

 issue, I have been obliged to omit mention 

 hitherto of two carefully reasoned papers 

 which are less closely related to that issue : 

 that of Marvin on " The Emancipation of 

 Metaphysics from Epistemology " and that of 

 Spaulding, " A Defense of Analysis." These 

 both reward the reading irrespective of one's 

 interest, or lack of it, in the new realism. 

 Spaulding's paper contains an effective analy- 

 sis of some of the confusions of Bergson and 

 ■other anti-intellectualists. 



Professor Fullerton's book also is a defense 

 of " the new realism," but apparently not of 



the same new realism. We shall soon be ob- 

 liged to distinguish the various claimants of 

 the name by numerals. Just how Fullerton's 

 view is logically related to that of the authors 

 already discussed, it is a matter of some difli- 

 culty to determine. He sometimes seems 

 plainly to reject the relational conception of 

 consciousness and the resultant epistemolog- 

 ical monism. " The world," we are told, " is 

 phenomenon ; it is in a sense a function of the 

 creature perceiving the world. Each gazes 

 upon his own world." There is " a whole 

 series of phenomenal worlds differing more or 

 less from one another. Only one of these is 

 ours and is known by us directly " (pp. 106- 

 107). There are apparently some things 

 which " should be regarded as existing only 

 in the mind" (p. 129), which are "internal 

 and subjective" (p. 131). Yet we are also 

 told that we are " as directly conscious of ex- 

 ternal things as we are of anything what- 

 ever," and that " we may with a clear con- 

 science accept as external the things we actu- 

 ally perceive, with just the qualities and rela- 

 tions which we perceive them to have " (p. 

 149). Thus even the secondary qualities are 

 " external " and in no sense subjective (Ch. 

 X.). We do not pereeire images of objects, 

 but the objects themselves. Even so qualified 

 a form of the representational theory of per- 

 ception as Strong's " substitutionalism " is 

 rejected (p. 158). Thus, so far as normal 

 perception is concerned, Fullerton seems first 

 to deny and then to adopt the theory of the 

 immediacy or " immanence " of the real ob- 

 ject in perception. The final criterion, how- 

 ever, of any writer's attitude towards the view 

 that consciousness is an external relation lies 

 in his explanation of the facts of error and 

 hallucination. Is the hallucinatory object a 

 function of the perceptual process or is it, too, 

 " external " and independent thereof ? Does 

 the long-extinct star " really exist " at the 

 moment when I belatedly perceive it? If not, 

 does not the star actually perceived subsist at 

 the moment in dependence upon the conscious- 

 ness of that moment? Unfortunately, Fuller- 

 ton, while he raises these questions, does not 

 meet them in a way which unequivocally de- 



