第146章 Chapter VI(10)

His 'pigtail 'according to the famous apologue --still 'hangs behind him.'In other words,he is mistaking a psychological for a metaphysical explanation;an account of how it is that we come to perceive space,assuming space to exist,with an explanation of what space is;and a resolution of the perception into a set of sensations associated in time.Here,again,he is under the great disadvantage of supposing the space-perception to have been made within the limits of a lifetime.If it were possible to look into the mind of an infant we could,he thinks,see how the idea was formed.(71)A modern psychologist can at least help himself by looking indefinitely further back and tracing the whole history of the organism to the earlier forms of life;and the space-perception ceases to imply a preternatural or a priori capacity.Something more is surely wanted,though I do not venture to say precisely what.Mill's doctrine that my belief in a external world is a belief in 'a permanent possibility of sensation'may be accepted in some sense.When,for example,Ibelieve in the existence of Calcutta,I mean that I believe that if I were transported to the banks of the Hoogly,I should have the sensations from which Calcutta is inferrible.(72)In other words,in making a statement about the external world,Iconstruct a hypothetical and universal consciousness.When Iexchange the geocentric for the heliocentric view,I am imagining what I should see if I were upon the sun instead of the earth.

Instead of regarding my own series of sensations as the base from which to measure,I regard them as deducible from the series which would be presented to a different and,of course,incomparably more extended consciousness.I can thus fill up the gaps in my own experience and get a regular series instead of one full of breaches and interruptions.That I do this somehow or other is Mill's view,and I should admit with him that I do no more.But,then,the question remains whether Mill can account for my doing even this.It supposes,at least,a power of forming what Clifford called 'ejects,'as distinguished from 'objects.'Imust be able to think not of things outside consciousness but of my own consciousness under other conditions,and of other centres of consciousness than mine.But this ability is not explicable from sensations,as ultimate atoms,combined in various ways by 'association';for that process,it would seem,might take place without in any way suggesting an external world or a different consciousness.Here Mill,like his father,is trying to explain thoughts by dealing with sensations as things and refusing to admit any action of the mind in order to keep to the unsophisticated facts.He will not allow the mind to have even an organising power,even though it be a power which cannot be separately revealed or give rise to independent truths,but appears simply as implied in its products.The mind is the cluster of atomic sensations.It must not tamper with the facts in any way,on penalty of causing illusion.I can only associate simple atoms,and the world remains a chaos of independent and incoherent fragments.They stick together somehow,but the division into the external and the internal world still remains an unsolved problem.The 'attribute'will not distinguish itself from the 'sensation.'We are still unable,that is,to explain the metaphysical puzzle left unsolved in the Logic.

Another question arises:If the world is still an incoherent heap of 'attributes'or 'sensations,'what are we to say of the mind?With his usual candour Mill applies his principles to the problem.We get,as he admits,to a real difficulty.The mind,in the phrase adopted from his father,is a 'thread of consciousness.'It is a series of feelings with the curious peculiarity that besides 'present sensations'it has 'memories and expectations.'What are these?he asks.They involve beliefs in something 'beyond themselves.'If we call the mind 'a series of feelings,'we have to add that it is a series which is 'aware of itself as past and future.'Is it,then,something different from the feelings,or must we accept the paradox that something 'which in hypothesis is a series of feelings can be aware of itself as a series?'Here is the final 'inexplicability'which must arrive,as he admits with Hamilton,when we get to an ultimate fact.The 'wisest thing we can do is to accept the inexplicable fact without any theory of how it takes place.'(73)That what we call personal identity is 'inexplicable'will hardly be denied.Yet Mill's position seems to make the paradox something nearly approaching to a contradiction.If the mental processes are to be described as feelings,separable but simply forming clusters more or less complicated and linked to each other,we seem to get rid not only of a something which organises experience,but of organisation itself.It becomes difficult to understand not merely what the mind or soul can be,but what are the mental processes to which the conception corresponds.This,however,leads to a different set of questions and one of far greater interest.

IV.THEORIES OF THE ABSOLUTE