84 THE GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE

In opposition to the notion of Solipsism that everything

we can perceive or imagine is but a mode of our own

personality may be opposed the contradictory form of

Idealism, before referred to by us,* which would assert

that our personality is but a mode of the Absolute or

of some Divine existence. But, as Mr. Arthur Balfour

has well remarked, " the very notion of personality ex-

cludes the idea of any one person being a ' mode ' of any

other."

A system which would strongly, and with reason, deny

that it was Idealist, may conveniently, with apologies to

its advocates, be here briefly referred to.

This at present popular system is Monism, which solves

the conflict between the advocates of mind and the advocates

of matter (as alone the source of all whereof we can have

any knowledge) by denying them both and affirming that

nothing exists but a substance utterly unknowable save as

regards two of its aspects, one psychical, the other material.

According to it, thought is nervous tissue in motion just

so far as nervous tissue in motion is thought, both being

eternally divergent and antithetical modes of a substance

which is neither thought nor matter.

This system affords a seemingly easy way of explaining

the ever -recurring puzzle about "matter" and "mind."

How can mind (unextended and immaterial) ever possibly

act or be acted on by such a thing (extended and material)

as matter? This question has tortured many choice minds

for more than two centuries, because men sought to obtain

an answer to it in impossible terms, namely, in terms of

the imagination. But it is utterly impossible for us to

imagine the action of mind on matter or of matter on

mind, simply because the mind never has been or can

be a matter of sensuous experience, and we can never

See ante, p. 40

In opposition to the notion of Solipsism that everything

we can perceive or imagine is but a mode of our own

personality may be opposed the contradictory form of

Idealism, before referred to by us,* which would assert

that our personality is but a mode of the Absolute or

of some Divine existence. But, as Mr. Arthur Balfour

has well remarked, " the very notion of personality ex-

cludes the idea of any one person being a ' mode ' of any

other."

A system which would strongly, and with reason, deny

that it was Idealist, may conveniently, with apologies to

its advocates, be here briefly referred to.

This at present popular system is Monism, which solves

the conflict between the advocates of mind and the advocates

of matter (as alone the source of all whereof we can have

any knowledge) by denying them both and affirming that

nothing exists but a substance utterly unknowable save as

regards two of its aspects, one psychical, the other material.

According to it, thought is nervous tissue in motion just

so far as nervous tissue in motion is thought, both being

eternally divergent and antithetical modes of a substance

which is neither thought nor matter.

This system affords a seemingly easy way of explaining

the ever -recurring puzzle about "matter" and "mind."

How can mind (unextended and immaterial) ever possibly

act or be acted on by such a thing (extended and material)

as matter? This question has tortured many choice minds

for more than two centuries, because men sought to obtain

an answer to it in impossible terms, namely, in terms of

the imagination. But it is utterly impossible for us to

imagine the action of mind on matter or of matter on

mind, simply because the mind never has been or can

be a matter of sensuous experience, and we can never

See ante, p. 40