objective conditions the nature of which we have yet to find. Not only the green in the grass and the blue in the sky, the perfume of the rose and the taste of the orange, are mental states, but the grass itself and the rose and the orange, yes, and the sun and stars as we experience these things, are mental constructs of sensation or phenomena in our minds. Not only so, but our bodies with all their organs as known in our experience are just so many constructs of sensation or phenomena to us. The whole objective material universe is thus resolved into subjective phenomena of which the noumena or objective causes are as yet unknown to us. Such a universe may seem at first sight to have been dissolved into airy nothingness, but the world of our experience has not been touched by this process of reasoning and remains as solid, orderly, and trustworthy as ever. We have simply taken the first steps towards discovering the nature of the world of causation that lies back of our experience.

This subjectivity of sensation has thus profoundly remodeled our view of the external world and has carried us far from the plain man's world towards the metaphysician's world. So far psychologists and metaphysicians are generally agreed. We must now look into a deeper and still more startling subjectivity.

CHAPTER IV

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE

We have now reached a point where we see that external objects as regards their sensational qualities are subjective states of the mind. As invisible actinic rays of the sunbeam in falling upon a sensitive photographic plate stir its chemicals into activity and call forth in it images that are wholly unlike themselves, so influences from external objects fall upon the mind and stir it into action by which sensational images arise in it that are unlike the supposed exciting causes. These various images of color, sound, odor, taste, and touch combine into unitary images, or objects.

But there are two additional elements in these objects we have not yet considered space and time. The sensational images combine into objects that assume spatial forms and are successive in time. These additional elements are called intuitions, in distinction from the sensations of the senses. Whence come these intuitions? Are they inherent qualities of the supposed external objects which impose themselves on the mind's subjective states? or are they also subjective principles in the mind, like its sensational powers, which the mind itself supplies to, and imposes upon, its

own sensational states? The latter view is the one held by idealists. This subjectivity of space and time is the hardest saying and greatest rock of offense in philosophy to the plain man, and at first sight he can hardly think of it as other than an absurdity. Nevertheless, what has gained and compelled the consent of so many master thinkers in this field of thought must have some foundation, and should receive our close and unprejudiced consideration.

I. THE THEORY EXPLAINED

Let us first understand the theory. We must now for our present purpose assume the idealistic point of view and think of external objects as spiritual in their nature, or spirit, the kind of reality we immediately know in ourselves and know as non-spatial in its nature. Influences from these mental objects fall upon the mind and excite it into action according to its own constitution and laws. By such action the mind experiences a number of sensational states which combine into a unitary image or object under a spatial form. This spatial form does not come from the external object in the sense that it is a copy of the form of the external object, for this object is itself spirit and has no spatial form. The spatial form is the product of the mind's own activity, just as are the sensational qualities excited by the external object. Objects as we know them are thus created within the mind by its own inherent powers as these are excited by external influences. Space is thus sub

jective in the mind, and is not a condition or mode of being in the ontological world. There is no space anywhere except as a mental intuition or mode of experience. Space is in the mind, but the mind is not in space; just as color and hardness are in the mind, but the mind is not colored or hard. The real world is a purely mental world, or world of spirit, without any spatial qualities.

But while space does not exist in the ontological world, it does exist as a mental form or intuition in the phenomenal world. It is a mode of our experience, and as such its reality stands untouched by the theory of the subjectivity of space. The phenomenal world, which is the practical world in which we live, is constantly and intuitively conceived by us under spatial forms, and nothing can ever, in our present constitution or in our present mode of existence, dissolve the reality of this world and dissipate it into nothingness. If we keep this distinction between the non-spatial form of the ontological world and the spatial form of the phenomenal world clearly before us, it will save us from the common misconceptions of the theory of the subjectivity of space and relieve it from the appearance of absurdity.

It should be further said, in explanation of the theory, that while space is viewed as wholly subjective, yet it is not viewed as an uncaused and arbitrary condition of mind, any more than sensations are. It is started into action by the excitation of objective causes, just as sensations are thus excited. And, further, the forms of

space correspond with particular activities or relations in objective conditions, just as sensations correspond with definite appropriate causes. Space is thus a symbol or kind of language which reports to us corresponding modes or relations in the ontological world. We shall revert to this point again.

2. REASONS OF THE THEORY

Some of the arguments that metaphysicians have used to establish this theory are subtle and difficult to grasp, but the more convincing ones are easily understood.

(1) The first argument for the subjectivity of space is its analogy with the subjectivity of sensation. As sensations are found to be indubitably subjective states that arise within us on occasion of objective excitation, the tendency is strong to think that the intuition of space arises in the same way. The attempt has been made to call the intuitions of space and time the primary qualities of matter, and the sensations of color, sound, odor, taste, and touch the secondary qualities, and hold that the former inhere in matter and the latter are subjective in the mind. But no good grounds can be given for this distinction. As the mind when stirred to action produces its own sensations, so it would appear that it produces its own intuitions. The subjectivity of the primary qualities presents no new principle or difficulty over the subjectivity of the secondary qualities.

(2) The primary quality of space cannot be transmitted through the senses, just as the secondary quali