The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Conybeare - Professor Clifford on the Soul in Nature
Clifford's theory is summed up as follows: (1) Matter is a mere picture in which mind-stuff is the thing represented. (2) Reason, Intelligence, and Volition are the properties of a complex which is made up of elements, themselves not rational, not intelligent, not conscious. After divesting feelings of the character which they have as gathered up into the unity of a self it is hard to see what is left. If they are to constitute the cosmos, they must have certain definite relations to each other; but relations are constituted by, and exist only for, a self. Nor is it intelligible how the mind is made up of mind stuff. Even if the molecules of my brain were each in possession of a consciousness as ample as my own, their mere juxtaposition could not give rise to my self-consciousness. Their soul-states would always remain theirs, and mine remain mine. Again C. tells us that the laws which govern the sequence and coexistence of feelings are counterparts of those which govern physical phenomena. He does not see that with the reduction of the real to feeling, physical facts disappear, and with them the laws to which the laws of feeling shall correspond. We must not allow to C. any more than to Hume the postulate of a real world, which shall give the cue to feelings when to follow and coexist.