_external_ object which I had
on looking at the sun, or that presentative knowledge of _resistance_
and _extension_, and of an extended, resisting _substance_, I had when
in contact with the door of my study? Mr. Mill very confidently affirms
that this belief includes all; and this phrase expresses all the meaning
attached to extended "matter" and resisting "substance" by the common
world.[239] We as confidently affirm that it does no such thing; and as
"the common world" must be supposed to understand the language of
consciousness as well as the philosopher, we are perfectly willing to
leave the decision of that question to the common consciousness of our
race. If all men do not believe in a permanent _reality_--a substance
which is external to themselves, a substance which offers resistance to
their muscular effort, and which produces in them the sensations of
solidity, extension, resistance, etc.--they believe nothing and know
nothing at all about the matter.

[Footnote 239: "Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i.
p. 243.]

Still less does the phrase "_a permanent possibility of feelings"_
exhaust all our conception of a personal self. Recurring to the
experiences of yesterday, I _remember_ the feelings I experienced on
beholding the sun, and also on pressing against the closed door, and I
confidently _expect_ the recurrence, under the same circumstances, of
the same feelings. Does the belief in "a permanent possibility of
feelings" explain the act of memory by which I recall the past event,
and the act of prevision by which I anticipate the recurrence of the
like experience in the future? Who or what is the "I" that remembers and
the "I" that anticipates? The "ego," the personal mind, is, according to
Mill, a mere "series of feelings," or, more correctly, a flash of
"_present_ feelings" on "a background of possibilities of present
feelings."[240] If, then, there be no permanent substance or reality
which is the subject of the present feeling, which receives and retains
the impress of the past feeling, and which anticipates the recurrence of
like feelings in the future, how can the _past_ be recalled, how
distinguished from the present? and how, without a knowledge of the past
as distinguished from the present, can the _future_ be forecast? Mr.
Mill feels the pressure of this difficulty, and frankly acknowledges it.
He admits that, on the hypothesis that mind is simply "a series of
feelings," the ph