84 General Notes. 
Doctor Montgomery’s last article in Number 21 of The Open 
Court, states at once the strength and weakness of idealism. Its 
principal weakness is that it is unable to stand alone without a good 
strong realistic prop somewhere behind. Thus the Doctor says (p. 
587): “The tri-dimensional, hard, colored, sounding, scented, 
heated matter—fancied by Professor Cope and others to subsist out- 
side consciousness, and believed by them to be directed and organized 
by such consciousness—is, indeed, through and through, a fictitious 
entity, consisting of nothing but a set of our own percepts illusively 
projected into non-mental existence.” This looks like pure idealism, 
but he lets in a “non-mental existence.” Now what is this? On 
page 589 (bottom) he says: “Now the realistic assumption which 
the philosophy of organization here makes, is indeed, the simplest 
possible, and is in full agreement with given facts. It supposes that 
there subsist in nature non-mental existents possessing the power of 
specifically affecting our individual sensibility, and of manifesting 
their special characteristics by means of the different conscious states 
they arouse in us.” This is a little more definite, and the Doctor 
even calls it by its right name, a “realistic assumption.” This is 
quite to my liking, but I cannot perceive how such “ non-mental 
existent” can have less than three dimensions and still exist. And 
in order to prove to me that mind or consciousness has no control 
over this tri-dimensional “non-mental existent,” Dr. Montgomery 
must go into further particulars. He must prove to me than an 
animal does not eat or drink because it feels hungry or thirsty ; does 
not seek shelter on account of weather or temperature; exp í 
nothing in its voice of pain, desire or pleasure; that the horse does 
not run because he is whipped, or the bird build because it feels the 
necessity of laying, etc., ete. 
I must here protest against the misinterpretation of an expression 
contained in one of my earlier articles, which was not sufficiently 
guarded, it is true, to preclude such misconstruction. It is possible 
to say correctly that “ mind is a property of matter, as color an 
odor are properties of the rose,” without meaning to say that the 
two properties are such in the same manner, as is inferred by my 
critic (p. 589). My article in Number 19 of The Open Court is 
sufficiently clear as to what I understand by mind as a- property of 
matter, so that it is unnecessary to go into a fuller explanation. 
Suffice it to say that the conscious and the unconscious properties 
matter cannot be confounded by any rational thinker, and that such 
confusion is entirely foreign to my thoughts. More than one-thi 
of Dr. Montgomery’s article Number 5 is thus irrelevant, In the 
other two-thirds I fail, as yet, to find a definite theory which shall 
explain the apparent facts of designed movements of animals, dif- 
ferently from that which is held both by physiological science an 
by popular belief. That is, that the design in them is the direct 
result of a limited control which conscious states have, or did onc 
have, over the energy and the matter concerned in producing them- 
—E. D. Cope, in No. 23 of The Open Court. 
