Ricumonp.—Reply to Mr. Frankland’s paper on “ Mind-Stuf" — 919 
consequent. Our knowledge is limited to the fact that the phenomena 
always follow one another in the same order. The phenomenal philosophy 
disclaims cognition of producing causes. Its so-called causes are merely 
invariable antecedents destitute of originating power. It is needless to 
enforce this doctrine upon minds trained in the philosophy of Hume, the 
two Mills, Auguste Comte, Bain, and Herbert Spencer. A philosophy 
which limits knowledge to phenomena, cannot consistently admit any 
other opinion. But I am not employing their doctrine as a mere argumen- 
tum ad hominem. In the field of Physics, it is, I believe, an absolute truth. 
In the case we have to consider, one of the two co-ordinated series of 
events is physical, and the other mental; one is within, the other beyond, 
the sphere of conseiousness. Does this make it easier to supply a connec- 
tion between them? It may be argued that the sense of spontaneity, or 
mental initiative, in the case of a train = thought voluntarily entered upon, 
entitles us to regard the ‘‘noumena” as underlying the “ phenomena.” 
That important inferences may be founded upon this sense of a mental 
initiative I certainly hold, but not the inference which Mr. Frankland 
suggests to us. His term “underlying” is somewhat equivocal. I do not 
think it can be understood in any way which will justify his doctrine of 
‘“‘Mind-Stuff.” If, by the use of the term “underlying,” it is meant to 
affirm that we are conscious that the mental processes cause the material— 
cause i.e, in the sense of producing them—I reply that we have no such - 
consciousness. The cerebral phenomena are outside the field of conscious- 
ness; the mental outside the field of bodily vision. How shall we connect 
experiences which belong to different spheres and are made known by 
faculties of different order? We can do no more than note down the 
suecession in time of each series, and mark their correspondence. Our 
experience, just as in the case of two parallel series of physical events, 
does not entitle us to affirm more than the invariable concomitance of the 
corresponding terms in the two series. ‘The fact that the mental phe- 
nomena occur within the sphere of consciousness is no help to us. We 
cannot annex to them, stillless identify with them, the series of physical 
manifestations. The changes in the nervous matter are wholly involuntary, 
have only recently been ascertained to exist, and remain to this hour un- 
known to and unsuspected by the mass of mankind. Psychology ignores 
them; and could we, as suggested, by some mechanical expedient be 
witnesses of their occurrence in our own frames, we should look upon them 
as something extraneous to ourselves. Their association with our mental 
constitution would make no difference in this respect. 
A similar question has been much debated in a case in which there is 
greater reason for believing that we are conscious of Mind in action upon 
