THE MIND-8TUFF THEORY. 161 



by a multiplicity of distinct * ideas ' associated into a unity. 

 There is, they say, an idea of a, and also an idea of h. 

 Therefore, they say, there is an idea oi a-\-h, or of a and h 

 together. Which is like saying that the mathematical 

 square of a plus that of b is equal to the square oi a-\-h, 

 a palpable untruth. Idea of a -f- idea of h is not identical 

 with idea of (a -)- h). It is one, they are two ; in it, what 

 knows a also knows 6; in them, what knows a is expressly 

 posited as not knowing h ; etc. In short, the two separate 

 ideas can never by any logic be made to figure as one and 

 the same thing as the ' associated ' idea. 



This is what the spiritualists keep saying ; and since we 

 do, as a matter of fact, have the ' compounded ' idea, and do 

 know a and h together, they adopt a farther hypothesis to 

 explain that fact. The separate ideas exist, they say, but 

 affeot a third entity, the soul. This has the ' compounded ' 

 idea, if you please so to call it ; and the compounded idea 

 is an altogether new psychic fact to which the separate ideas 

 stand in the relation, not of constituents, but of occasions 

 of production. 



This argument of the spiritualists against the association- 

 ists has never been answered by the latter. It holds good 

 against any talk about self-compounding amongst feelings, 

 against any ' blending,' or ' complication,' or * mental 

 chemistry,' or 'psychic synthesis,' which supposes a re- 

 sultant consciousness to float off from the constituents joer se, 

 in the absence of a supernumerary principle of conscious- 

 ness which they may affect. The mind-stuff theory, in 

 short, is unintelligible. Atoms of feeling cannot compose 

 higher feelings, any more than atoms of matter can compose 

 physical things ! The ' things,' for a clear-headed ato- 

 mistic evolutionist, are not. Nothing is but the everlasting 

 atoms. When grouped in a certain way, loe name them 

 this ' thing ' or that ; but the thing we name has no exist- 

 ence out of our mind. So of the states of mind which are 

 supposed to be compound because they know many differ- 

 ent things together. Since indubitably such states do exist, 

 fchey must exist as single new facts, effects, possibly, as 

 the spiritualists say, on the Soul (we will not decide that 



