n myself. And in
the same way I can feel that the apple lies there. But what is the
perception of resistance, of hardness, of impenetrability? Nothing more
than a feeling, a change in my psychical state, which is unique and cannot
be described in terms of anything but itself. Even as regards "attraction
and repulsion," external existence only reveals itself to us through
changes in the mind and consciousness, which we then attribute to a cause
outside ourselves.

It is well enough known that this simple but incontrovertible fact has
often led to the denial of the existence of anything outside of ourselves
and our consciousness. But even if we leave this difficult subject alone,
it is quite certain that, if the question as to the pre-eminence of
consciousness and its relation to external things is to be asked at all,
it should be formulated as follows, and not conversely: "How can I,
starting from the directly given reality and certainty of consciousness
and its states, arrive at the certainty and reality of external things,
substances, forces, physics and chemistry?"

Creative Power of Consciousness.

To this insight into the underivability and pre-eminence of consciousness
over the world of external reality there must be added at this stage a
recognition of its peculiar creative character. We have here to recognise
that consciousness itself creates its world,--that is, the world that
becomes our own through actual experience, possession, and enjoyment. We
are led to this position even by the conception now current in natural
science of the world as it is, not as it is mirrored in consciousness, and
the theory of the "subjectivity of sensory qualities." The qualities which
we perceive in things through the senses are "subjective"; philosophy has
long taught that, and now natural science teaches it too. That is to say,
these qualities are not actually present in the things themselves; they
are rather the particular responses which our consciousness makes to
stimuli. Take, for instance, tone or colour. What we call tone or sound is
not known to acoustics. That takes cognisance only of vibrations and the
conditions of vibration in elastic bodies, which, by means of the ear and
the nerves of hearing, become a stimulus of consciousness. Consciousness
"responds" to this stimulus by receiving a sense-impression of hearing.
But in this, obviously, there is nothing of the nature of oscillations and
vibrations, but some