Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/664

644 of consciousness. These phases of consciousness at best only point toward truth. They are not truth itself. They vary with the varying nerve cells of each individual creature on whom phases of consciousness are impressed, and again with the changes in the cells themselves. The tricks of the senses are well known in psychology, as is also the failure of the senses as to material outside their usual range. Life is at best "in a dimly lighted room," and all the objects about us are in their essence quite different from what they seem. This essence is unknown and unknowable. We are well aware that we have no power to recognize all phases of reality. The electric condition of an object may be as real as its color or its temperature, and yet none of our senses respond to it. Our eyes give but an octave of the vibrations we call light, and our ears are dull to all but a narrow range in pitch of sound.

Likewise is reason to be discredited. The commonest things become unknown or impossible when viewed "in the critical light of philosophy." Balfour shows that the simple affirmation, "the sun gives light," loses all its meaning and possibility when taken out of the category of human experience and discussed in terms of philosophy. In like manner can any simple fact be thrown into the category of myths and dreams. A man can be led by the methods of metaphysics to doubt the existence of himself or of any object about him. For instance, take the discussion of "John's John" and of "Thomas's John," as given by Dr. Holmes. Is the real John the John as he appears to John himself? Or is he real only in the form in which Thomas regards him, or as he looks to Richard and Henry, whose interest in him is progressively less? All we know of the external universe is through the impressions made directly or indirectly on our nervous systems and through recorded impressions made on the systems of others; and a part of this external universe we ourselves are. All that we know of ourselves is that which is external to ourselves. Thus with all this, each man forms in his mind a universe of his own. "My mind to me a kingdom is," and this kingdom in all its parts is somewhat different from any other mental kingdom. It is continually changing. It was made but once, and will never be duplicated. When my vital processes cease, this kingdom will vanish "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leaving not a wreck behind." Our mind is the "stuff that dreams are made of"—and our bodies—what are they? Physically each man is an alliance of animals, each one of a single cell, each cell with its processes of life, growth, death, and reproduction, each one with its own "cell-soul" which presides over these processes. In the alliance of these cells, forming tissues and organs, we have the phenomena of mutual help and mutual