FnaxkLAND.—On the Doctrine of Mind-Stuff. 209 
belongs. This feeling or thought is not an object of physical research. It 
belongs to the world of noumena, or *'things-in-themselves," with which 
physical science has no concern, or with which it is only concerned in so 
far as the hypothesis of the existence of such a world is required to account 
for that world of phenomena, the laws of which it is the business of physi- 
cal science to investigate. Thus we see that in regard to at any rate one 
part of it, it is not true to say that the noumenal world is veiled from us. 
We know it by introspection ; and we know it as feeling or thought. We 
are ourselves—our minds, I mean, not our bodies—strands in the web of 
the noumenal world ; and therefore, although no part of that world can ever 
be investigated by physical science, we see that a portion of it forms the 
subject-matter of subjective psychology, and is consequently not altogether 
unknown to us. Of course it is only one’s own consciousness which one 
knows with any great precision. I do not know whether the sensation 
which my neighbour calls green is qualitatively quite the same as that 
which I myself call green. The phenomena of colour-blindness demonstrate 
conclusively that in some cases it is not. Still, I have, in a general way, 
an acquaintance with the consciousness of my fellow-creatures and of the 
higher animals. They constitute the portion of the noumenal world which 
we obviously know something about—something which physical science 
could never tell us. 
And now, what are we to say about the rest of the noumenal world— 
the remaining strands of the web? There is a remaining portion, for we 
have agreed that there are noumena or realities underlying the phenomena 
of inorganic and of non-cerebral organic nature. What are these realities 
like? Now, the doctrine of Mind-Stuff asserts that these realities are made 
up of the same stuff or elements as the human mind, only that the elements 
are combined together in a less complicated way. The universe, according 
to this view, is a stupendous web of mind-stuff, the elementary strands of 
which are ever weaving themselves into new patterns from eternity to 
eternity. The most complex of the compound strands are the minds 
of intelligent beings, and from these there is every degree of complexity 
down to the elementary strands themselves, which correspond to the 
motions of inorganic matter. Whether the elements of the noumenal 
world are described as being themselves feelings, or only as the elementary 
constituents of feelings, appears to me to be merely a question of language. 
If we adopt the former phraseology, the doctrine may fitly be called that 
of Omnisentiency. This was the name given to it by a former fellow-student, 
Mr. William Boulting, now a member of the-medical profession in Eng 
and myself, when we arrived at it, independently but almost simultaneously, 
in the year 1870. Although it appears that we have been anticipated by 
20 
