of wires, so ours is conditioned by our nervous system, by our organs of sense.  Their peculiarities determine what is the nature of the outside world which we construct.  It is the similarity in the organs of sense and in the perceptive faculty of all normal human beings which makes the outside world the same, or practically the same, for them all.  To return to the old analogy, it is as if two telephone exchanges had very nearly identical groups of subscribers.  In this case a wire between the two exchanges would soon convince the imprisoned clerks that they had something in common and peculiar to themselves.  That conviction corresponds in our comparison to the recognition of other consciousness.”

I suggest that this extract be read over carefully, not once but several times, and that the reader try to make quite clear to himself the position of the clerk in the telephone exchange, i.e. the position of the mind in the body, as depicted by Professor Pearson, before recourse is had to the criticisms of any one else.  One cannot find anywhere better material for critical philosophical reflection.

As has been seen, our author accepts without question, the psychological doctrine that the mind is shut up within the circle of the messages that are conducted to it along the sensory nerves, and that it cannot directly perceive anything truly external.  He carries his doctrine out to the bitter end in the conclusion that, since we have never had experience of anything beyond sense-impressions, and have no ground for an inference to anything beyond, we must recognize that the only external world of which we know anything is an external world built up out of sense-impressions.  It is, thus, in the mind, and is not external at all; it is only “projected outwards,” thought of as though it were beyond us.  Shall we leave the inconsistent position of the plain man and of the psychologist and take our refuge in this world of projected mental constructs?

Before the reader makes up his mind to do this, I beg him to consider the following:—­

(1) If the only external world of which we have a right to speak at all is a construct in the mind or ego, we may certainly affirm that the world is in the ego, but does it sound sensible to say that the ego is somewhere in the world?

(2) If all external things are really inside the mind, and are only “projected” outwards, of course our own bodies, sense-organs, nerves, and brains, are really inside and are merely projected outwards.  Now, do the sense-impressions of which everything is to be constructed “come flowing in” along these nerves that are really inside?

(3) Can we say, when a nerve lies entirely within the mind or ego, that this same mind or ego is nearer to one end of the nerve than it is to the other?  How shall we picture to ourselves “the conscious ego of each one of us seated at the brain terminals of the sensory nerves”?  How can the ego place the whole of itself at the end of a nerve which it has constructed within itself?  And why is it more difficult for it to get to one end of a nerve like this than it is to get to the other?