602 



SCIENCE. 



IVor,. II., No. .S9. 



" there is no rule to distiuguish between true 

 and false but the common judgment of man- 

 kind," that (p. 42) "the truth of one age is 

 the fable of the next," and that " the common 

 mind of the race in me" — "common sense, 

 which is more sensible than any individual in 

 all eases (save in the exceptional case of a 

 pre-eminently gifted person of genius)" — is 

 the warrant to which we appeal for the truth 

 of all our beliefs. This would look verj' much 

 as if, in case one is not a pre-eminentl}' gifted 

 person of genius, one must be unable to know 

 whether either he himself or the external world 

 exists, unless he first discover that ' the com- 

 mon judgment of mankind ' agrees with him 

 that both do exist. This is a curious reversal 

 of the familiar fashion of reasoning ; since the 

 ' mankind ' to whom one is to appeal, surely 

 belongs to the external world, to whose ex- 

 istence its ' common judgment ' is to testify. 

 Yet we must be doing Dr. Maudslej' wrong. 

 One must not take everj' statement so exacth'. 

 His real theorj' is expressed on p. 45. Here 

 it is : " Every thing which we know is a syn- 

 thesis of object and subject. . . . Neither mat- 

 ter in itself nor mind in itself are words that 

 have anj- meaning. . . . The hj-pothesis of an 

 external world is a good working hj'pothesis 

 within all human experience : , but to ask 

 whether the external world exists apart from 

 all human experience is about as sensible a 

 question as to ask whether the shadow belongs 

 to the sun or to the man's body ; for what an 

 extraordinarilj' perverse and futile ingenuity 

 it is to attempt to think any thing outside 

 human consciousness. . . . To say there is an 

 absolute [the italics are ours] , and to call it 

 the unknoivable, is it a lohit more philosophical 

 than it would be for a bluebottle-flv to call its 

 extra-relational the unbuzzable? " P. 46 goes 

 on to saj', "A separation of subject and ob- 

 ject cannot ever be the starting-point of a phi- 

 losophy that is not a self-foolerj'." P. 47 adds, 

 that what Berkeley called an idea " is a syntiie- 

 sis, the ego and non-ego necessarj- correlate." 

 All this is perfectly clear by itself, much clearer 

 than the text in which it is embedded ; and 

 the sense of it is, of course, pure phenomenism, 

 such as Schopenhauer expressed in his ' Itein 

 objekt ohne subjekt.' Matter is for conscious- 

 ness, and consciousness is of objects. Spen- 

 cer's unknowable is nonsense, — a product of 

 perverse ingenuity-, worthy of bluebottle-flies. 

 One must not attempt to think of any thing 

 outside of human consciousness ; and so we 

 have a doctrine. 



No, not at all. Dr. Maudsley does not mean 

 this. P. 51 is not far from p. 47 ; and 3"et, on 



p. 51, the author assures us that " the external 

 world as it is in itself maj- not be in the least 

 like what we conceive it through our modes of 

 perception and forms of thought." On pp. 

 52 and 53, Dr. IMaudslej- outdoes this contra- 

 diction b}- bringing the two contradictories 

 face to face on the same open page, and aflirm- 

 ing them both at once with childlike simplicity. 

 " I don't want to think the thing in itself. . . . 

 If it is out of me, it does not exist for me, can- 

 not possibly' be more than a nonsensical word 

 in au}' expression of me ; and for me to think 

 it out of me, as it is in itself, would be annihi- 

 lation of myself." But all this, says Dr. 

 Maudsley, teaches him that there is a great 

 deal outside of his perception, ' a real world 

 external to me,' of which, however, he can 

 sa}^ nothing. So Spencer's rejected unknow- 

 able returns : the mind is necessarily' obliged to 

 think what it cannot possibl}' think, to believe 

 in what it perceives to be nonsense, and to 

 assert in one sentence that ' self and the world 

 cannot be thought apart,' and, in the next sen- 

 tence, that the real external world is so far be- 

 3'ond self that self is wholly unable to make 

 any assertion, save that it exists. 



Now, this is not a collection of statements 

 found in various authors, and brought together 

 by Dr. Maudslej- for the sake of illustrating 

 the ' barrenness ' of the subject. On the con- 

 trar}', these are his own views. He himself 

 chooses to write a chapter on this topic. He 

 is bringing home to the philosophers something 

 that they need to know. He is dealing with 

 ' ' doctrines arrived at by the positive methods 

 of observation and induction." If not, what 

 does the preface mean? and what has the in- 

 nocent reader done, that he should be trifled 

 with in this intolerable way? But if in realitj' 

 Dr. Maudsley is expounding doctrines arrived 

 at by the methods of observation and induc- 

 tion, these doctrines ought not to change nature 

 with every new paragraph. These statements 

 are deliberate and repeated, thej' are made with 

 much show of earnestness ; and 3'el the}' are a 

 series of contradictions, and leave the reader 

 feeling as if some one had been trying to make 

 a fool of him. As for this doctrine, that it is 

 " perverse and futile to think of any thing out- 

 side of human consciousness" (p. 45), how 

 does Dr. ]\Iaudsley venture thus soleranl}- to 

 propound it and enlarge upon it, when else- 

 where, and not far off, he repeatedh' insists 

 upon the view that human consciousness is in- 

 explicable, save on the basis of an unconscious 

 mental life, which can never be exhaustively 

 known at all ? Is the relation of author and 

 reader one that involves no responsibilities? 



