Cabanis and Berkeley (I speak of them simply as types of schools) are both asses, the only difference being that one is a black donkey and the other a white one.

This universe is, I conceive, like to a great game being played out, and we poor mortals are allowed to take a hand.  By great good fortune the wiser among us have made out some few of the rules of the game, as at present played.  We call them “Laws of Nature,” and honour them because we find that if we obey them we win something for our pains.  The cards are our theories and hypotheses, the tricks our experimental verifications.  But what sane man would endeavour to solve this problem:  given the rules of a game and the winnings, to find whether the cards are made of pasteboard or goldleaf?  Yet the problem of the metaphysicians is to my mind no saner.

If you tell me that an Ape differs from a Man because the latter has a soul and the ape has not, I can only say it may be so; but I should uncommonly like to know how either that the ape has not one or that the man has.

And until you satisfy me as to the soundness of your method of investigation, I must adhere to what seems to my mind a simpler form of notation—­i.e. to suppose that all phenomena have the same substratum (if they have any), and that soul and body, or mental and physical phenomena, are merely diverse manifestations of that hypothetical substratum.  In this way, it seems to me, I obey the rule which works so well in practice, of always making the simplest possible suppositions.

On the other hand, if you are of a different opinion, and find it more convenient to call the x which underlies (hypothetically) mental phenomena, Soul, and the x which underlies (hypothetically) physical phenomena, Body, well and good.  The two-fluid theory and the one-fluid theory of electricity both accounted for the phenomena up to a certain extent, and both were probably wrong.  So it may be with the theories that there is only one x in nature or two x’s or three x’s.

For, if you will think upon it, there are only four possible ontological hypotheses now that Polytheism is dead.

1.  There is no x = Atheism on Berkeleyan principles.

2.  There is only one x = Materialism or Pantheism, according as you turn it heads or tails.

3.  There are two x’s:  Spirit and Matter = Speculators incertae sedis.

4.  There are three x’s:  God, Souls, Matter = Orthodox Theologians.

To say that I adopt any one of those hypotheses, as a representation of fact, would to my mind be absurd; but Number 2 is the one I can work with best.  To return to my metaphor, it chimes in better with the rules of the game of nature than any other of the four possibilities, to my mind.

But who knows when the great Banker may sweep away table and cards and all, and set us learning a new game?  What will become of all my poor counters then?  It may turn out that I am quite wrong, and that there are no x’s or 20 x’s.