l had a complete right to
"cross the boundary of the experimental evidence by an intellectual
necessity"; for the necessity comes from the assumption of a possible
explanation by the aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against such
a procedure to insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolute
continuity of matter and physical life, or that the dead begets the
living. The hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; it
is only not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not,
as yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these,
the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time; and
his attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr. Tyndall did
on the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis.

But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr. Huxley,
has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the developing
process, and confined the sphere in which evolution is applicable, to
natural objects. Between objects and the subject, even when both subject
and object are man himself, there lies "an impassable gulf."

Even to try "to comprehend the connection between thought and thing is
absurd, like the effort of a man trying to lift himself by his own
waist-band." Our states of self-consciousness are symbols only--symbols
of an outside entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know only
these states; we only _infer_ "that anything answering to our
impressions exists outside of ourselves." And it is impossible to
justify even that inference; for, if we can only know states of
consciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or that
there is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this theory,
ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly pointing out
that, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is, you will observe,
no very rank materialism here," Mr. Tyndall forgets that he has
destroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced evolution into a
law of "an outside entity," of which we can never know anything, and any
inference regarding which violates every law of thought.

It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory, which
Mr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else it is
useless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature which is
the phantom of the individual's mind." I prefer the science of Mr.
Tyndall (and of Mr