t, do not hesitate to draw it,
as a matter of fact. It appears unnatural in the extreme to reject it.
What can induce men to regard it with suspicion?

I think the answer to this question is rather clearly suggested in the
sentence already quoted from Professor Huxley: "It is wholly
impossible absolutely to prove the presence or absence of consciousness
in anything but one's own brain, though, by analogy, we are justified
in assuming its existence in other men."

Here Professor Huxley admits that we have something like a proof, for
he regards the inference as _justified_. But he does not think that we
have _absolute proof_--the best that we can attain to appears to be a
degree of probability falling short of the certainty which we should
like to have.

Now, it should be remarked that the discredit cast upon the argument
for other minds has its source in the fact that it does not satisfy a
certain assumed standard. What is that standard? It is the standard
of proof which we may look for and do look for where we are concerned
to establish the existence of material things with the highest degree
of certainty.

There are all sorts of indirect ways of proving the existence of
material things. We may read about them in a newspaper, and regard
them as highly doubtful; we may have the word of a man whom, on the
whole, we regard as veracious; we may infer their existence, because we
perceive that certain other things exist, and are to be accounted for.
Under certain circumstances, however, we may have proof of a different
kind: we may see and touch the things themselves. Material things are
open to direct inspection. Such a direct inspection constitutes
_absolute proof_, so far as material things are concerned.

But we have no right to set this up as our standard of absolute proof,
when we are talking about other minds. In this field it is not proof
at all. Anything that can be directly inspected is not another mind.
We cannot cast a doubt upon the existence of colors by pointing to the
fact that we cannot smell them. If they could be smelt, they would not
be colors. We must in each case seek a proof of the appropriate kind.

What have we a right to regard as absolute proof of the existence of
another mind? Only this: the analogy upon which we depend in making
our inference must be a very close one. As we shall see in the next
section, the analogy is sometimes very remote, and we draw the
inference with much