seems unwilling to be fixed on either horn, and would fain mount up into some height of abstraction, where the distinction may disappear. But the facts do not lie in any great height of abstraction, but in the low level of our every-day consciousness, and can be expressed only by giving sensation its proper place, and time its proper place, both being equally primordial facts.

ARTICLE III. Mr. Mill's Theory of Body. (pp. 112-158.)

I now come to a more perplexing subject, in which I admit there is room for difference of opinion, though no room for that of Mr. Mill; that is, the idea and the conviction which we have in regard to Body. As the conclusion of his subtile disquisitions, he had defined Matter as the Permanent Possibility of Sensation. In the added Appendix, he declares clearly that there is no proof that we perceive it by our senses, or that the notion and belief of it come to us by an original law of our nature; and that "all we are conscious of, may be accounted for without supposing that we perceive Matter by our senses, and that the notion and belief may have come to us by the laws of our constitution, without being a revelation of any objective reality."

He admits (p. 245) that his opponents have referred his theory to the right test, in aiming to show that "its attempt to account for the belief in matter implies or requires that the belief should always exist as a condition of its own production. The objection is true, if conclusive." But he adds, "They are not very particular about the proof of its truth; they one and all think their case made out, if I employ in any part of the exposition the language of common life." I deny for myself that I have tried to make out my case by such an argument. I have indeed expressed a wish that he would "employ language consistent with his theory, and we should then be in a position to judge whether he is building it up fairly." I believe that any plausibility possessed by it is derived from his expressing it in common language, which

enables him to introduce, surreptitiously and unconsciously, the ideas wrapt up in it. When he and Mr. Bain speak of a sweep of the arm," and a movement of the eye," it is difficult for others, perhaps even for themselves, to think of the arm and the eye as mere momentary sensations, as unextended, and as not moving in space. I was convinced that if the theory were only expressed in language not implying extension in the original sensation, its insufficiency would at once be seen. He has now, in a long appendix, labored to construct his theory in language consistent with it, and the baldness of it at once appears.

My objection proceeded on a far deeper principle than the language employed by Mr. Mill. I appealed to consciousness, not as Hamilton would have done, to settle the whole question at once, but to testify to a matter of fact, which Mr. Mill would admit to fall immediately under its cognizance. Consciousness declares that we have now an idea of something extended; extended on three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth; and, I may add, of extended objects moving in space. It is admitted, then, that we have this idea, and I defy Mr. Mill to revolve this idea into any element allowed by him, - in fact, into any element not involving extension. He tells us that the whole variety of the facts of nature, as we know it, is given in the mere existence of our sensations, and in the laws or order of their succession. But from which of these does he get extension? Surely not from mere sensation, which, as not being extended, cannot

give what it does not possess. As certainly not from laws

or order in successive sensations, which, as they do not possess it individually, cannot have it in their cumulation, any more than an addition of zeros could give us a positive number. We have one more primordial fact, not only not accounted for by his theory, but utterly inconsistent with it.

We must examine his account of matter a little more narrowly. It is a possibility of sensations. Whence this dark background of possibilities which he cannot get rid of, which he cannot get behind, to which, indeed, he cannot get

ap? To account for the phenomena, he says, they come in groups, and by rigid laws of causation. Whence these coexisting groups and unvariable successions? Do they come in obedience to mental laws, say, to the laws of association? These laws are represented by him as being contiguity and resemblance. Do these create the groups and successions? I scarcely think that Mr. Mill will assert that they do. I remember when travelling in the midst of a group of sensations called the Alps, thinking only of my wretchedly wet condition, I was suddenly startled by a group and succession of sensations such as I had never experienced before, and which I referred to an avalanche falling a mile off. Whence this effect? It was not produced by any volition of mine. Surely, Mr. Mill will not argue that it was produced by contiguity or resemblance, or any of the known laws of association. Whence, then? If he says something within me, then I say we have here a set of laws of a very curious and complex character, unnoticed by the theorist. But it can be shown that the facts cannot be explained by laws within me. The law of cause and effect is, that the same co-existing agencies are followed by the same consequences. But I might be under the same group of sensations as I was when the avalanche fell, without the sounds which I heard following. Does not this require us to posit something out of the series of sensations to account for the phenomena in the series; and this something obeying laws independent altogether of our sensations and associations. If we once posit such an external, extra serial agency, we cannot withdraw it when it becomes inconvenient; we must go on with it, we must inquire into all that is involved in it by the laws of induction. This was the argument that convinced Brown, who, however, called in to guarantee it an intuitive conviction of cause and effect, that there must be an external world. Whether the argument is convincing, on the supposition that the belief in causation is not intuitive, I will not take it upon myself to say. I am not sure that the infant mind could arrive, in the midst of such complications, at a knowledge of

the law of cause and effect. Finding many sensations not following from any law in the mind, it could not, I believe, reach a law of invariable succession. But then, it is said, it would refer them to something out of the mind. But with an experience only of something in the mind, how could it argue any thing out of the mind, of which outness it has as vet no idea in the sensations or order of sensations? Would it not, in fact, be shut up in the shell of the Ego, and find in that Ego most of its sensations without a cause? Or rather, would not an infant mind, endowed with only the powers allowed by Mr. Mill, speedily become extinguished? But if it could live, and discover the law of cause and effect, as Mr. Mill thinks, that law seems to require us to believe in an external something, obeying laws of co-existence and succession independent of the series of sensations, and we should have to take this with all its logical consequences. This gives us Matter not as a possibility of sensations, but an external something obeying laws of co-existence and succession, and the cause of sensations in us.

The theory would, after all, be utterly inadequate, for it would not account for the most prominent thing in our conception of matter; namely, that it is extended, which we could never argue, or apprehend, or even imagine, if we knew it merely as the cause of unextended sensations. I therefore reject it entirely. But the consequences I have sketched in last paragraph follow, if we adopt the theory. Under this view, I was entitled to point out an oversight in Mr. Mill's account of the properties of matter, which he represents as being resistance, extension, and figure; thus omitting, I said, those powers mentioned by Locke, by which one body operates upon another. "Thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid." When I said so, I had entered a good way, notwithstanding his insinuation to the contrary, into the cloud of Mr. Mill's mode of thought, farther, perhaps, than I was welcome. He now, in replying to me (p. 248), is obliged to talk of one group of possibilities of sensations, "destroying or modifying another such

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group; and this certainly not by laws of sensation or association, but by laws acting independently of any discoverable cause in the series which constitutes mind. We have now got, by logical consequence, from Mr. Mill's theory, a considerably complicated view of Matter, as a group of causes obeying laws of co-existence and unconditional succession, and one group influencing another, or destroying it, and all independent of any volitions of mine, or laws in my mind. The idea is, after all, inadequate, as it does not include extension; but it is certainly utterly inconsistent with his theory, that the notion and belief of Matter" may have come unto us by the laws of our constitution, without being a revelation of any objective reality."

This is confirmed by the language he uses in answering Mr. O. Hanlon. He admits "that there is a sphere beyond my consciousness;" and "the laws which obtain in my consciousness also obtain in the sphere beyond it." This, of course, refers to our conviction as to there being other minds as well as our own (p. 253). I am not sure that his argument for the existence of such minds is conclusive.

"I am aware, by experience, of a group of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, which I call my body, and which my experience shows to be an universal condition of every part of my thread of consciousness. I am also aware of a great number of other groups, resembling the one that I call my body, but which have no connection, such as that has, with the remainder of my thread of consciousness. This disposes me to draw an inductive inference, that those other groups are connected with other threads of consciousness, as mine is with my own. If the evidence stopped here, the inference would be but an hypothesis, reaching only to the inferior degree of inductive evidence called Analogy. The evidence, however, does not stop here; for, having made the supposition that real feelings, though not experienced by myself, lie behind these phenomena of my own consciousness, which, from the resemblance to my body, I call other human bodies, I find that my subsequent consciousness presents those very sensations, of speech heard, of movements and other outward demeanor seen, and so forth, which, being the effects or consequents of actual feelings in my own case,