Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/227

 ON THE NATURE OF THE NOTION OF EXTERNALITY. 211 up to the realisation in sense-perception of any material object or event, and (6) the conditions which led to that event taking place, or that object being as it is this dis- tinction is equally good in the case of each individual. And it is the physical world as such that supplies just that commonly objective standard of reference which makes human intercourse and language possible. We must especially note that just as my knowledge of the psychical states of others does not make them my psychical states, inasmuch as I know them as the states of others ; so our knowledge of an event which at the time of its happening is not perceived (perhaps not even known to be happening) does not make it an event of consciousness, inasmuch as it is known as an event which did not happen in con- sciousness. In any case, to say that the representation of a thing is the thing itself, would at the very least be the same as saying that representation is presentation, that thought is sense-perception, that memories and expectations are present sensations. And even so we should not arrive at an orderly arrangement of mental phenomena : see p. 205. Consciousness of routine is very far from being the same thing as a routine of consciousness. In short, physical events are just those which cannot be treated as psychical events, i.e. as existing solely as members of some actual psychical series. Thus the physical world is the external world to each and all of us ; and we are justified in con- sidering " the physical world" and " the external world " as interchangeable expressions. That we do distinguish in such wise between the stream of consciousness and the external world, is simply a matter of psychological fact ; whatever the utility of the distinction may be, and whatever its metaphysical significance. (But I think we are now justified in going further than this and asserting 1 that the notion of externality is the most essential of all notions for the purpose of introducing order into what would otherwise be a mere sensuous phantasmagoria.) Thus in science we do not describe a routine of experience,, but we (psychologically speaking) make a routine of things in general through the mediation of the notion of externality. Herein, it is to be observed, is involved the falsity of the causal theories both of Hume, as commonly understood, and of Kant though that of Kant contains a very important 1 That the foregoing considerations do fully justify this assertion will be more completely shown in part ii., which may be regarded as an answer to a possible objection against the assertion in question.