Feankland. — 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 acquamtance 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 stiff 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 sti*ands 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 feehngs, 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 Uvmisentieiicy. This was the name given to it by a former fellow-student, 

 Mr. William Boulting, now a member of the medical profession in England, 

 and myself, when we arrived at it, independently but almost simultaneously, 

 in the year 1870. Although it appears that we have been anticipated by 



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