examination of its psychological nature and genesis. In a chapter on "The Dynamics of Consciousness," we reached the conclusion that we accept, and must accept, those beliefs of which the component ideas cannot be torn asunder. In other words, we saw that a trial of strength which shows certain connexions in consciousness to be indissoluble, leaves those connexions out-standing as beliefs which we cannot choose but hold. Hence it became manifest that since, with the states of consciousness constituting perception of an object, there indissolubly coheres a consciousness standing for an existence beyond consciousness, there is, for the indestructible belief thus formed, the highest warrant possible. Such being the

psychological nature of the realistic belief, we proceeded, in pursuance of the same method, to trace its psychological genesis. We went on to examine the origins of those indissolubly-coherent aggregates of states of consciousness constituting our conceptions of subject and object. Through three chapters we traced the evolution and separation of states of consciousness into the two great aggregates, primarily distinguished as vivid and faint, and secondarily distinguished in various other ways; each of which is absolutely coherent within itself, and each of which, as yielding us the experience of a nexus that remains permanent while the states change, exhibits itself as an independent existence-a self and a not-self.

§ 475j. That the Realism emerging from this examination of the way in which our states of consciousness hang together, is congruous with the Realism postulated throughout the preceding divisions of this work scarcely needs saying.

But besides the general harmony, too conspicuous to need indicating, special harmonies which are less conspicuous may be pointed out. The leading truths taught concerning the structure and functions of the nervous system,

and concerning the nature and development of intelligence, receive crowning illustrations in the formation of this indestructible consciousness in which Realism abides. The general theory that mental evolution, in common with the vital evolution of which it forms part, is a progressing adjustment of inner relations to outer relations-a widening and improving correspondence between internal changes and external co-existences and sequences-while it necessarily posits subject and object, also implies that, deeper than all special correspondences between related phenomena in the object and connected mental states in the subject, will be that consciousness of these two antithetic wholes of existence, between parts of which the correspondence in every case occurs experience of their co-existence, being a concomitant of each particular experience, will necessarily be the fundamental experience. Further, from the order of progress of mental faculties, beginning with related sensation and motion, passing to simple perception, then to complex perception, then to concrete reasoning, and finally to abstract reasoning; it must follow that the higher faculties, arising by complications of the lower, and to the last depending upon them, can never rightly yield other than congruous results-can never, when performing their functions normally, give dicta fundamentally at variance. with those of the primary faculties they are evolved from. Similarly with the general law of intelligence. We found that establishment of a correspondence between inner and outer relations, implies that "the strength of the tendency which the antecedent of any psychical change has to call up its consequent, is proportionate to the persistence of the union between the external things they symbolize." Now if, to objective relations of all degrees of persistence, there must, to fulfil the law of intelligence, arise subjective relations of all degrees of cohesion; then, since the general relation of subject and object is given along with each correspondence between a particular

objective relation and a particular subjective relation, it follows that this general relation between subject and object, more persistent in experience than any particular relation, must have, answering to it, a more coherent relation in consciousness than any other. In a parallel way,

this is an outcome of the law of association as inductively established, or as deductively explained by the formation of nervous connexions proportionate in their definiteness and permeability to the numbers and strengths of the discharges they carry. For if the converse between organism and environment unceasingly discloses some power beyond consciousness, which in every perception and act operates upon the power within consciousness, or is operated upon by it; then the co-existence of subject and object must, by the law of association, either as empirically established or rationally interpreted, produce an answering connexion in consciousness stronger than any other.

So is it, too, with certain other elements of the arguments by which Realism was justified. Examination of the dynamics of consciousness proved that in thinking, continual trials are made of the relative cohesions between states of consciousness; with the result that the most coherentlyconnected states remain outstanding as beliefs. This result we saw may be interpreted in physiological terms as the issue of a conflict of tendencies among nervous discharges to take various lines; of which tendencies the strongest finally prevails: such strongest being that which takes the most permeable route, and such most permeable route being one that has been made most permeable by the most numerous experiences. Hence the irreversibleness of our belief in a reality beyond consciousness as well as a reality. in consciousness. In like agreement with this principle of nervous evolution, elaborated in the " Physical Synthesis," was that subjectively-established test of belief which we found to be the Universal Postulate. For a proposition of which the negation is inconceivable-a

proposition formed of states of consciousness indissolubly connected in a certain order-answers physiologically to a reflex action occurring between the two correlative nerveagencies: an action such that, the one being excited, excitement of the other follows irresistibly. And since, in conformity with the general theory set forth, those organized connexions of which reflex actions are the functions, have been organized by recurring discharges practically infinite in number; the implication is that such reflex intellectual actions as those which the inconceivability of the negation supposes, answer to the most multitudinous experiences, and are therefore most certain.

So that these agreements, like the preceding agreements, imply the conclusion that the consciousness of subject and object is organically fixed. The belief in an external world is the outcome of reflex intellectual actions established, like all those others which entail forms of thought, during that moulding of the organism to the environment which has been going on through countless millions of years.

CHAPTER VI.

FINAL COMPARISON.

475k. That feeling is a large, if not the larger, factor in determining belief, is shown by the fact that, in controversies concerning even matters the most remote from human interests, men will commit themselves to impossibilities of thought, rather than surrender hypotheses on behalf of which their amour propre has been enlisted. They will ask assent to each successive proposition in an argument, on the ground that the contrary cannot be imagined; at the same time that the conclusion they would establish by such argument, is one of which the affirmation is more conspicuously unimaginable.

A striking example of this has of late been furnished by certain mathematicians, in their theories about nonEuclidean spaces. By a chain of reasoning, the existence, or at any rate the possibility, of a fourth dimension in space is held to be proved. Each link in this chain of reasoning consists of premises and inference; the last of which is said to be necessitated by the first. If inquiry is made why, the premises being given, this inference must be admitted; the reply is that, given the premises, the contrary inference is inconceivable. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the entire argument, notwithstanding its inconceivability, is offered for acceptance as a legitimate conclusion. A fourth dimension in space can be conceived neither as existing nor