Even were I to leave off here, I might, I think, say that the inapplicability of Prof. Green’s arguments is sufficiently shown; but it may be desirable to point out that beyond these general misapprehensions, by which they are vitiated, there are special misapprehensions. Much to my surprise, considering the careful preliminary explanation I have given, he has failed to understand the mental attitude assumed by me when describing the synthesis of experiences {326} against which he more especially urges his objections. In chapters entitled “Partial Differentiation of Subject and Object,” “Completed Differentiation of Subject and Object,” and “Developed Conception of the Object,” I have endeavoured, as these titles imply, to trace up the gradual establishment of this fundamental antithesis in a developing intelligence. It appeared to me, and still appears, that for coherent thinking there must be excluded at the outset, not only whatever implies acquired knowledge of objective existence, but also whatever implies acquired knowledge of subjective existence. At the close of the chapter preceding those just named, as well as in First Principles, where this process of differentiation was more briefly indicated, I recognized, and emphatically enlarged upon, the difficulty of carrying out such an inquiry: pointing out that in any attempts we make to observe the way in which subject and object become distinguished, we inevitably use those faculties and conceptions which have grown up while the differentiation of the two has been going on. In trying to discern the initial stages of the process, we carry with us all the products which belong to the final stage, and cannot free ourselves from them. In First Principles (§ 43) I have pointed out that the words impressions and ideas, the term sensation, the phrase state of consciousness, severally involve large systems of beliefs; and that if we allow ourselves to recognize their connotations we inevitably reason circularly. And in the closing sentence of the chapter preceding those above named, I have said—
“Though in every illustration taken we shall have tacitly to posit an external existence, and in every reference to states of consciousness we shall have to posit an internal existence which has these states; yet, as before, we must ignore these implications.”
I should have thought that, with all these cautions before him, Prof. Green would not have fallen into the error of supposing that in the argument thereupon commenced, the phrase “states of consciousness” is used with all its ordinary implications. I should have thought that, as in {327} a note appended to the outset of the argument I have referred to the parallel argument in First Principles, where I have used the phrase “manifestations of existence” instead of “states of consciousness,” as the least objectionable; and as the argument in the Psychology is definitely described in this note as a re-statement in a different form of the argument in First Principles; he would have seen that in the phrase “states of consciousness,” as used throughout this chapter, was to be included no more meaning than was included in the phrase “manifestations of existence.”[46] I should have thought he would have seen that the purpose of the chapter was passively to watch, with no greater intelligence than is implied in watching, how the manifestations or states, vivid and faint, comport themselves: excluding all thought of their meanings—all interpretations of them. Nevertheless, Prof. Green charges me with having, at the outset of the examination, invalidated my argument by implying, in the terms I use, certain products of developed consciousness.[47] He contends that my division of the “states of consciousness,” or, as I elsewhere term them, “manifestations of existence,” into vivid and faint, is vitiated from the first by including along with the vivid ones those faint ones needful to constitute them perceptions, in the ordinary sense of the word. Because, describing all I passively watch, I speak of a distant {328} head-land, of waves, of boats, &c., he actually supposes me to be speaking of those developed cognitions under which these are classed as such and such objects. What would he have me do? It is impossible to give any such account of the process as I have attempted, without using names for things and actions. The various manifestations, vivid and faint, which in the case described impose themselves on my receptivity, must be indicated in some way; and the words indicating them inevitably carry with them their respective connotations. What more can I do than warn the reader that all these connotations must be ignored, and that attention must be paid exclusively to the manifestations themselves, and the modes in which they comport themselves. At the stage described in this “partial differentiation,” while I suppose myself as yet unconscious of my own individuality and of a world as separate from it, the obvious implication is, that what I name “states of consciousness,” because this is the current term for them, are to have no interpretations whatever put upon them; but that their characters and modes of behaviour are to be observed, as they might be while yet there had been none of that organization of experiences which makes things known in the ordinary sense. It is true that, thus misinterpreting me in December, Prof. Green, writing again in March, puts into the mouth of an imagined advocate the true statement of my view;[48] though he (Prof. Green) then proceeds to deny that I can mean what this imagined advocate rightly says I mean: taking occasion to allege that I use the phrase “states of consciousness” “to give a philosophical character” to what would else seem “written too much after the fashion of a newspaper correspondent.”[49] Even, however, had he admitted that intended meaning which he sees, but denies, the rectification would have been somewhat unsatisfactory, coming three months after various {329} absurdities, based on his misinterpretation, had been ascribed to me.
But the most serious allegation made by Mr. Hodgson against Prof. Green, and which I here repeat, is that he habitually says I regard the object as constituted by “the aggregate of vivid states of consciousness,” in face of the conspicuous fact that I identify the object with the nexus of this aggregate. In his defence Prof. Green says—
“If I had made any attempt to show that Mr. Spencer believes the object to be no more than an aggregate of vivid states of consciousness, Mr. Hodgson’s complaint, that I ignore certain passages in which a contrary persuasion is stated, would have been to the purpose.”
Let us look at the facts. Treating of the relation between my view and the idealistic and sceptical views, he imagines addresses made to me by Berkeley and Hume. “‘You agree with me,’ Berkeley might say, ‘that when we speak of the external world we are speaking of certain lively ideas connected in a certain manner;’”[50] and this identification of the world with ideas, I am tacitly represented as accepting. Again, Hume is supposed to say to me—“You agree with me that what we call the world is a series of impressions;”[51] and here, as before, I am supposed silently to acquiesce in this as a true statement of my view. Similarly throughout his argument, Prof. Green continually states or implies that the object is, in my belief, constituted by the vivid aggregate of states of consciousness. At the outset of his second article,[52] he says of me:—“He there” [in the Principles of Psychology] “identifies the object with a certain aggregate of vivid states of consciousness, which he makes out to be independent of another aggregate, consisting of faint states, and identified with the subject.” And admitting that he thus describes my view, he nevertheless alleges that he does not misrepresent me, because, as he says,[53] “there is scarcely a page of my article in {330} which Mr. Spencer’s conviction of the externality and independence of the object, in the various forms in which it is stated by him, is not referred to.” But what if it is referred to in the process of showing that the externality and independence of the object is utterly inconsistent with the conception of it as an aggregate of vivid states of consciousness? What if I am continually made to seem thus absolutely inconsistent, by omitting the fact that not the aggregate of vivid states itself is conceived by me as the object, but the nexus binding it together?
A single brief example will typify Prof. Green’s general method of procedure. On page 40 of his first article he says—“And in the sequel the ‘separation of themselves’ on the part of states of consciousness ‘into two great aggregates, vivid and faint,’ is spoken of as a ‘differentiation between the antithetical existences we call object and subject.’ If words mean anything, then, Mr. Spencer plainly makes the ‘object’ an aggregate of conscious states.” But in the entire passage from which these words of mine are quoted, which he gives at the bottom of the page, a careful reader will observe a word (omitted from Prof. Green’s quotation in the text), which quite changes the meaning. I have described the result, not as “a differentiation,” but as “a partial differentiation.” Now, to use Prof. Green’s expression, “if words mean anything,” a partial differentiation cannot have the same sense as a complete differentiation. If the ‘’object’ has been already constituted by this partial differentiation, what does the ‘object’ become when the differentiation is completed? Clearly, “if words mean anything,” then, had Prof. Green not omitted the word “partial,” it would have been manifest that the aggregate of vivid states was not alleged to be the object. The mode of treatment which we here see in little, exemplifies Prof. Green’s mode of treatment at large. Throughout his two articles he criticizes detached portions, and ascribes to them meanings {331} quite different from those which they have when joined with the rest.
With the simplicity of “a raw undergraduate” (to some of whose views Prof. Green compares some of mine) I had assumed that an argument running through three chapters would not be supposed to have its conclusion expressed in the first; but now, after the professorial lesson I have received, my simplicity will be decreased, and I shall be aware that a critic may deal with that which is avowedly partial, as though it were entire, and may treat as though it were already developed, a conception which the titles of the chapters before him show is yet but incipient.
Here I leave the matter, and if anything more is said, shall let it pass. Controversy must be cut short, or work must be left undone. I can but suggest that metaphysical readers will do well to make their own interpretations of my views, rather than to accept without inquiry all the interpretations offered them.