The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Introduction to Philosophy, by George

particular telephone subscribers and by the contents of their messages. 
 
“So it is with our brain; the sounds from telephone and phonograph correspond to immediate and 
stored sense-impressions.  These sense-impressions we project as it were outwards and term the 
real world outside ourselves.  But the things-in-themselves which the sense-impressions 
symbolize, the ‘reality,’ as the metaphysicians wish to call it, at the other end of the nerve, 
remains unknown and is unknowable.  Reality of the external world lies for science and for us in 
combinations of form and color and touch – sense-impressions as widely divergent from the 
thing ‘at the other end of the nerve’ as the sound of the telephone from the subscriber at the other 
end of the wire.  We are cribbed and confined in this world of sense-impressions like the 
exchange clerk in his world of sounds, and not a step beyond can we get.  As his world is 
conditioned and limited by his particular network of wires, so ours is conditioned by our nervous 
 
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 Chap. III – Is There An External World? 
system, by our organs of sense.  Their peculiarities determine what is the nature of the outside 
world which we construct.  It is the similarity in the organs of sense and in the perceptive faculty 
of all normal human beings which makes the outside world the same, or practically the same, for 
them all.  To return to the old analogy, it is as if two telephone exchanges had very nearly 
identical groups of subscribers. In this case a wire between the two exchanges would soon 
convince the imprisoned clerks that they had something in common and peculiar to themselves.  
That conviction corresponds in our comparison to the recognition of other consciousness.” 
 
I suggest that this extract be read over carefully, not once but several times, and that the reader 
try to make quite clear to himself the position of the clerk in the telephone exchange, i.e. the 
position of the mind in the body, as depicted by Professor Pearson, before recourse is had to the 
criticisms of any one else.  One cannot find anywhere better material for critical philosophical 
reflection. 
 
As has been seen, our author accepts without question, the psychological doctrine that the mind 
is shut up within the circle of the messages that are conducted to it along the sensory nerves, and 
that it cannot directly perceive anything truly external.  He carries his doctrine out to the bitter 
end in the conclusion that, since we have never had experience of anything beyond sense-
impressions, and have no ground for an inference to anything beyond, we must recognize that the 
only external world of which we know anything is an external world built up out of sense-
impressions.  It is, thus, in the mind, and is not external at all; it is only “projected outwards,” 
thought of as though it were beyond us.  Shall we leave the inconsistent position of the plain man 
and of the psychologist and take our refuge in this world of projected mental constructs? 
 
Before the reader makes up his mind to do this, I beg him to consider the following: –  
 
(1) If the only external world of which we have a right to speak at all is a construct in the mind or 
ego, we may certainly affirm that the world is in the ego, but does it sound sensible to say that 
the ego is somewhere in the world? 
 
(2) If all external things are really inside the mind, and are only “projected” outwards, of course 
our own bodies, sense-organs, nerves, and brains, are really inside and are merely projected 
outwards.  Now, do the sense-impressions of which everything is to be constructed “come 
flowing in” along these nerves that are really inside? 
 
(3) Can we say, when a nerve lies entirely within the mind or ego, that this same mind or ego is 
nearer to one end of the nerve than it is to the other?  How shall we picture to ourselves “the 
conscious ego of each one of us seated at the brain terminals of the sensory nerves”?  How can 
the ego place the whole of itself at the end of a nerve which it has constructed within itself?  And 
why is it more difficult for it to get to one end of a nerve like this than it is to get to the other? 
 
(4) Why should the thing “at the other end of the nerve” remain unknown and unknowable?  
Since the nerve is entirely in the mind, is purely a mental construct, can anything whatever be at 
the end of it without being in the mind?  And if the thing in question is not in the mind, how are 
we going to prove that it is any nearer to one end of a nerve which is inside the mind than it is to 
 
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 Chap. III – Is There An External World? 
the other?  If it may really be said to be at the end of the nerve, why may we not know it quite as 
well as we do the end of the nerve, or any other mental construct? 
 
It must be clear to the careful reader of Professor Pearson’s paragraphs, that he does not confine 
himself strictly to the world of mere “projections,” to an outer world which is really inner.  If he 
did this, the distinction between inner and outer would disappear.  Let us consider for a moment 
the imprisoned clerk.  He is in a telephone exchange, about him are wires and subscribers.  He 
gets only sounds and must build up his whole universe of things out of sounds.  Now we are 
supposing him to be in a telephone exchange, to be receiving messages, to be building up a 
world out of these messages.  Do we for a moment think of him as building up, out of the 
messages which came along the wires, those identical wires which carried the messages and the 
subscribers which sent them?  Never! we distinguish between the exchange, with its wires and 
subscribers, and the messages received and worked up into a world.  In picturing to ourselves the 
telephone exchange, we are doing what the plain man and the psychologist do when they 
distinguish between mind and body, – they never suppose that the messages which come through 
the senses are identical with the senses through which they come. 
 
But suppose we maintain that there is no such thing as a telephone exchange, with its wires and 
subscribers, which is not to be found within some clerk.  Suppose the real external world is 
something inner and only “projected” without, mistakenly supposed by the unthinking to be 
without.  Suppose it is nonsense to speak of a wire which is not in the mind of a clerk.  May we 
under such circumstances describe any clerk as in a telephone exchange? as receiving messages? 
as no nearer to his subscribers than his end of the wire? May we say that sense-impressions