Page:Works of Thomas Hill Green, Volume 1.djvu/575

 succession of sensations, and it is in no way to the purpose of my argument to deny or ignore this. But if 'an observation of the segregation of the two aggregates is with any plausibility to explain the growth of a conviction that the object is independent of the subject, the vivid aggregate must be understood as something else than the succession of sensations. It must be understood, consistently with Mr. Spencer's illustrations, as an aggregate of perceived objects. My point was to show that it cannot be so understood without the implication of states, as entering into and qualifying it, which, according to his division of the totality of consciousness, fall to the faint aggregate; and that this implication is fatal to that interpretation of our experience, as composed of mutually exclusive aggregates of states, on which Mr. Spencer founds his justification of Realism—his justification of the doctrine that the object is external to, and independent of, the subject. There may be much to say against this argument, but Mr. Hodgson has not said it.

I have now traversed, one by one, the specific charges of misconception and misinterpretation which Mr. Hodgson brings against my first article, so far as they relate to the main thesis of that article and to passages which I quote from the 'Principles of Psychology.' There are two other misapprehensions of a more general nature, which he alleges against me at the outset of his article, but which cannot be here examined without exceeding my limits of time and space. I do not admit myself to be guilty of either, but, as I am not accused in reference to them of unfair dealing with Mr. Spencer's statements, their consideration may be deferred to a more convenient season. Nor am I concerned to inquire how far the doctrines which I venture to state on my own account in my second article coincide, as Mr. Hodgson says they do, with those adopted by Mr. Spencer in other parts of his 'Psychology.' So far as this coincidence exists, it would have enabled me to illustrate more fully the inconsistency between Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the independence and externality of the object and other theories which he holds. But to trace this inconsistency soon became a weary task, and as my project was to examine the intrinsic value of his doctrine on tins particular point, I thought it better, having quoted him sufficiently to show what the