232 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



and it may forever fail. External nature we see mediately through the senses. 

 Sensations are immediate possessions. Only the immediate is real. The mediate 

 is composed of a series of transmutable symbols. A common symbol may change 

 into two or more utterly uncontrastable one, as when we feel a moving tuning fork 

 and hear a sound. One and the same external condition gave me through differ- 

 ent channels two sensations as unlike as a sensation of a spiral motion, (to bor- 

 row Tyndall's illustration), is unlike the sensation love. It is just[as hard to be- 

 lieve that the sensation vibration and the sensation sound are the same as to be- 

 lieve that the sensation motion and the sensation love are the same. In the first 

 case we have some show of proof, in the second none has been had. 



In psychology as in physics two contending schools are struggling for the 

 mastery. Monists claim that chemical changes or rhythms of some sort in brain 

 substance constitute sensation and thought. Dualists declare that mind itself is 

 totally aloof from matter and merely connected to it'^much as a player is to a 

 piano. Both await the proofs of future investigation and speculation. If Dual- 

 ism is true there is no hope of our ever being able to acquire any knowledge of 

 what lies beyond the vanishing point of matter. If Monism is true we may never 

 be any better off, but it gives a solitary ray of hope that its disciples will use all 

 effort to brighten as ages roll past. According to the latter doctrine every sensa 

 tion produces or is produced by some mode of motion. A better way of stating 

 it is, that our immediate and real perception is the sensation, and the mediate, 

 and consequently symbolic, way of perceiving it, is as a mode of motion. It is 

 supposed from what we already know of objective things that if I could look into 

 my neighbor's brain when he is thinking, a definite.set of movements would ap- 

 pear, ultra-microscopic perhaps, yet movements. Every time he thinks the same 

 thought, the same movements occur. 



Now these movements reach me through ether, optic instruments, nerve- 

 threads and gray matter. Each change alters it. When it reaches me through 

 these mediums it is transmuted just as the vibrations of a tuning-fork are transmuted 

 into sound. As sound in no way resembles a vibrating fork, so vibrating brain 

 matter in no way resembles thought. That which totally altered vibrations and 

 changed them into a musical note, totally altered thought and changed it into the 

 symbol of moving matter. The thought with its constituent sensation was the 

 real mode and substance, the motion with the matter it shook was the illusion. 

 The first must be the real. Thought and sensation are immediate. All subjec- 

 tive sensation is immediate. Objective sensation is always mediately derived 

 and necessarily changed by the transmitting medium or mediums. All we 

 know of nature external to ourselves must necessarily be merely symbolic 

 on this account, until we discover some method of interpreting our symbols iiito 

 terms of the real. Only with the vibrations of brain stuff have we suc- 

 ceeded in making this interpretation. The thought is first visible perhaps 

 as the black characters on a page of paper. These being read aloud, 

 are transmuted into a different set of symbols known as air waves or vibra- 

 tions, these are finally transmuted into sounds of words and sentences. 



