Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/76

62 QEOEGE GALLOWAY : objects given in presentation and objects reproduced in memory and imagination cannot be primitive, but when the differentiation was made the latter processes would naturally fall to be regarded as inward. We need only further mention the activity of the will, with the correspond- ing sense of a resisting environment, which would give force and vividness to the incipient distinction between an outward world and an inward self. If our view be right, then, the distinction of outer and inner has its rude beginning in the animistic mode of thought : and animism, as Dr. Tylor and others have shown, is universal in the lower culture. Survivals among civilised races prove the presence among them long before of animistic beliefs. Avenarius supposes that the wide- spread phenomena of animism is an extension to nature of the principle of introjection as applied to human beings. This is true if introjection means nothing more than the attribution of a soul. But the act of interpretation by which we place the thoughts and perceptions of another man within him as "internal states " is a somewhat developed one. It is not natural to make the cruder phenomena of animism de- pend on introjection thus conceived. We do better justice to the facts when we conclude that the distinction of outer and inner has its germ in the experience of individuals. The distinction was then developed by intersubjective inter- course, and the notion of an internal soul came to be applied not only to human beings but also to natural objects. The idea of " internal experience" is later, and grows out of the theory of a soul or finer second self within the body. We find then this theory of a fallacy of primitive thought does not solve our problem. But though we trace the dis- tinction to a basis in the actual experience of individuals, the larger question of its final validity still remains. For it is always possible that thought may misconstrue experience. And, so far as we have gone, the division of our world into two spheres may or may not have a justification in the real nature of things. To this further aspect of the problem we now turn. The expression outer and inner when applied to experience is to some extent metaphorical. For experience is not a process carried on within the head, nor are objects which appear external to us and to one another on that account outside consciousness. The distinction of inner and outer is one which falls within experience, and what we call an out- ward object and an inward idea are alike states of conscious- ness. That externality in space is not externality to mind