This makes our knowledge of objects beyond the body mediate and not immediate. Why are objects beyond the body regarded as mediately known? No reason is suggested except that they are not themselves in contact with the mind, but only in contact with that which is in contact with the mind. It is then presumable that any parts of the bodily organism which never themselves meet the mind (if there are any such) are not known immediately, but only through the parts which do meet the mind. That is, they are known mediately, too. That there are, or at least may be, such parts, is directly inferrible from the statement that we do not know "how far into the body" mind and body come together.
(3) It is stated that the body is an object "primarily" known. It is regarded by the author as probable that, along with the objects immediately affecting it, it is the only object "originally" known. He thinks that man knows "intuitively" nothing beyond his own organism and objects directly affecting it.
But what is meant by the words "primarily," "originally," "intuitively"? If things not in direct contact with mind are not known immediately but through something else, and if the point or surface at which mind and body meet is at some uncertain distance from the surface of the body, surely the only material thing immediately known is that portion of the body in contact with mind, and not the whole body with the objects directly affecting it. Knowledge of these mediate objects must be due to a process of inference from what is directly experienced. Things known "primarily," "originally" and "intuitively" are then known mediately and inferentially—even in some cases so imperfectly known that it is not known what and where they are, whether in or beyond the body.
(4) The doctrine that we are conscious in sense-perception of a mere sensation or impression in the mind is answered by the statement that this is not consistent with the revelation of consciousness, which announces plainly that what we know is something extra-mental. Kant's phenomenalism is met by the claim that consciousness declares that we know the thing.
A thing known mediately, however, cannot be more certainly known than the thing known immediately, and from which its existence is inferred. The immediate revelation of consciousness cannot do more than give as a knowledge of the point or surface at which mind and body meet. It is only here that mind can directly know body "as having its essential properties of extension and resisting energy." But so far from consciousness testifying to the extension and resistance of this part of the body, it does not, as Dr. McCosh admits, testify to this part of the body at all. If it reveal nothing as to what it knows immediately, what can its statement as to what it knows mediately be worth? And if consciousness testifies that it knows immediately what Dr. McCosh has maintained to be mediately known, he must hold that its revelation is false and delusive. It certainly seems to me that my consciousness reveals the ink-stand before me as it does not reveal the part of my body with which the mind has "come together," since it does not even reveal whether this part be a point or a surface. If my knowledge of the ink-stand must rest upon my knowledge of this, and can have no greater certainty, my faith in the ink-stand must go. A tower cannot be more firm than its foundation.
So much for the consistency of the extracts themselves. I now turn to a criticism on a different basis. The difficulties connected with this inconsistent doctrine naturally arise out of the standpoint occupied by the author. He accepts as final, and as justifiable in metaphysics, the convenient psychological assumption that the group of sensations gained from an object is a something distinct from the object itself; that the object may be external to the organism, but that the mind, with its sensations, is, or may be treated as if it were, somewhere within the organism; that the sensations are gained from real things, but are not themselves real things, so that a world of sensations—things being abstracted—must be an unreal and phantom world.
Now, the man who has thus distinguished between things and sensations, if he regard the sensations as our only immediate representatives of the things, will find it difficult, without making an evidently gratuitous assumption somewhere, to prove his right to reach things at all. Dr. McCosh sees this difficulty, and so he assumes that consciousness reveals both sensations and things. He allows us "perceptions mingled with sensations."[71] Where are these mingled perceptions and sensations? In the mind. Where is the mind? In the body. In what body? The body perceived. Is this body perceived itself in the mind and mingled with sensations? No. It is then distinct from the mental percept—the perception of it is somewhere in it, but is not it. How do we know, then, that there is a body? We infer it from the percept; consciousness (the percept) "reveals" it. On what principle is it inferred? The question is a just one if the knowledge be not immediate. Our author does not even see that there is a question. The fact is that this doctrine seems to avoid the difficulties of a representative perception only while it is allowed to remain loose and vague. If things are not to be known representatively, they must either be themselves in consciousness—and then they are not extra-mental—or they must be directly known in some other way than as in consciousness, and then consciousness does not reveal them and cannot be appealed to. An appeal to consciousness, unless the thing itself is in consciousness, is fatal.
But this discrimination between sensations and the thing causing the sensations, and the assumption that consciousness testifies to the two classes of things, does not seem to be borne out by the facts. Consciousness does not testify to the two classes. The common man thinks that he knows directly the things that he sees and feels, and the distinction between these things and his ideas of the things, or his sensations gathered from the things, arises only upon reflection and after a comparison of his experiences with those of other men. He sees the ink-stand in front of another man's body. He discovers that the other man sees the ink-stand—that is, has an experience like his own. He finds, after investigation, that this other man does not have the experience until after some influence has been conducted by the nerves to the brain. He accordingly concludes that the mind of this other man, and all that it immediately knows, is situated somewhere in the brain. He thus distinguishes between the ink-stand and the representative of the ink-stand in the mind of the other man. This is precisely what Dr. McCosh has done, though he has preferred to use the word perception instead of sensation or impression. Having gone as far as this, the man in question reflects, if he be consistent, that his own case must be essentially similar to that of the man he is considering, and concludes that he, too, sees only (immediately, at least) some representative of the ink-stand, and not the thing itself. Dr. McCosh does not conclude this, because he is not consistent. But an ink-stand, a tree, a house, in the brain, cannot be very much like a real ink-stand, tree or house. Then one does not see things as they are, but is condemned to a phantom world. Having gone thus far, our common man is appalled at his own conclusions, as well he may be.
He may, however, be readily reassured, if one will point out to him the error in his argument. The whole argument began by assuming that he has evidence that some object is in front of his body and in front of the body of another man; that he has a body and so has the other man. If this knowledge be immediate, of course it may furnish the basis of an argument; but if it be not immediate, one has no right to begin with it, but should go back to what is immediate. Let us assume that it is immediate. What I am then conscious of is my own body, the other man's body and the object in relation to them. Upon this basis I argue to some representative of the object I immediately see, and I connect it with the man's brain. Does the man now see two objects or only one? If only one, which one? The one I refer to his brain, or the one I see? Does the one he sees seem to him to be in his brain? Probably he has not the least notion that it is connected with that organ. Am I, then, in his case? Do I also see only a copy of the object in my brain? And may this not be true, although I have no immediate knowledge of my brain and its relation to that object? But—and this is the important point—if all this be true, how about the position with which I started? My argument is based upon two real bodies and a real object. I see that I was wholly in error in supposing that I saw these and could reason from them. Then the reasoning is not good. Then the conclusion is not reliable, and it is not proved that I see immediately only an image in, or in some sort of contact with, my brain. The fallacious character of the argument is plain enough; where is the flaw? It lies in this:
I assume that I see the two bodies and the object immediately. Consciousness seems to reveal them. After granting the man opposite me a representative of that object I apply the same reasoning to myself, forgetting that I assumed at the outset that I see the real object. I can certainly not put the object I see in my brain, for the brain in any way I can be conceived to know it belongs to precisely the same class of things as this object, and they are beside each other in consciousness. The representative the other man has is a representative of the object in my consciousness, and not—at least, I have no evidence that it is—a representative of a something else of which my object is also a representative. And if the object of which I am immediately conscious is extended and without my body (immediately perceived), I may assume that the object in his consciousness is also extended and without the body in his consciousness. His representative of my object is not in the head I see, for his head as I see it is in my consciousness, if the object I see is, and any object in his consciousness is the same with any corresponding object in mine only in sense sixth—a sense of sameness which I have explained at length in the earlier part of my work. This reasoning is, it seems to me, clear enough and consistent enough, and should be plain to any one who will take the trouble to follow it carefully. It lands one in no such difficulties and inconsistencies as result from the doctrine I have been criticizing. Should it be said this is a form of Idealism, and at least abandons what is extra-mental, I answer, the name is a matter of taste and of little significance; what is important is that this doctrine does not found its reasoning upon an assumption which its conclusion declares to be false; nor does it maintain that what is immediately known is not extended, figured, external to the body, as it seems to be, but something quite different and dissimilar. It is in harmony with the revelation of consciousness. Should it still be objected that it makes no distinction between things and the sensations or impressions which represent them, I answer, one can object to things being regarded as complexes of sensations only as long as he separates sensations and things, making the former unlike the things and relegating them to a place (the brain) where the things are not, and to exist in which they must be very bad copies of the things indeed. The doctrine I advocate does not deny the things as perceived at all; it merely holds that consciousness does declare for the things, and not for a set of representatives much unlike them and said to exist in a place in which we are not conscious of perceiving anything. It objects to seeing double through an incomplete reflection upon what consciousness reveals.