thing quite different. What outside of us is nothing
more than a complex process of movement according to mathematical
conditions, blossoms within us to a world of sound, tone, and music. The
world itself is soundless, toneless. And the same is true of light and
colour; "light" and "blue" are nothing in themselves--are not properties of
things themselves. They are only the infinitely rapid movements of an
infinitely delicate substance, the ether. But when these meet our
consciousness, they spin themselves within us into this world of light and
colour, of brilliance and beauty. Thus without us there is a world of a
purely mathematical nature, without quality, charm, or value. But the
world we know, the world of sound, light, and colour, of all properties
whatsoever, of the ugly or the beautiful, of pain and pleasure, is in the
most real sense the product of consciousness itself, a creation which,
incited by something outside of itself and of a totally different nature,
which we can hardly call "world," evolves out of itself and causes to
blossom. No part of this creation is given from without; not the blue of
the heavens, for outside of us there is no colour, only vibrations of the
ether; not the gold of the sun nor the red glory of the evening sky.
External nature is nothing more than the stimulus, the pressure upon the
mind, which liberates from its depths the peculiar reactions and responses
to this stimulus, and calls them forth from its own treasure-stores.
Certainly in this creating the consciousness is entirely dependent on the
impressions stamped on it from outside, and to that extent upon
"experience." But it is by no means a _tabula rasa_, and a merely passive
mirror of the outer world, for it translates the stimulus thus received
into quite a different language, and builds up from it a new reality,
which is quite unlike the mathematical and qualityless reality without.
And this activity on the part of consciousness begins on the very lowest
stages. The simplest perception of light or colour, the first feeling of
pleasure or discomfort, is a reaction of the psychical, which brings about
something entirely new and unique. "The spirit is never passive."

That the psychical is not derivable from the physical, that it does not
arise out of it, is not secondary to it, but pre-eminent over it, is not
passive but creative; so much we have already gained to set over against
naturalism. But its claims are even more affect