occurs a perpetual exchange of gifts and restitutions, so that the soul, in order to become conscious, has need of sensation; this, in its turn, of perception; this, again, of extension. Extension, in turn, cannot do without the soul.1

M. Dauriac thus admits the validity of the psychological distinction, of Reid and Hamilton, between sensation and perception. He admits that in perceiving-nay, as necessary to perceiving-there is the confronting opposite, the extended. But here he parts company with them, at least as he understands them. The inference supposed to be drawn from this distinction of mind or conscious subject on the one hand, and body or extended object on the other, as two separate coexisting realities which respectively contribute to the perception, he challenges. What, then, is his own doctrine?

In the first place, he premises that the notion or consciousness of the soul is the being of the soul. Apart from action or consciousness the being of the soul is mere potency. The soul owes its self-consciousness to extension, and 1 Croyance et Réalité, p, 145.

B

thus, though itself unextended, owes its being to the extended. It affirms itself in as far as it limits itself, poses itself in so far as it opposes itself. In this there is no formal contradiction. To know white is to discriminate it from notwhite; but this does not in the least imply the identity of whiteness and not-whiteness. In other words, the correlation of opposites does not identify them.

It is, accordingly, impossible to demand which. of the two events comes before the other. In order to be capable of perception there is needed the being of relation, and this reciprocally. Accordingly, that which is real is not perception on the one side, sensation on the other, but the connection between the two terms of one and the same relation. "The Me appears in a crisis when it makes the effort to eliminate extension, but this extension, which it drives back, returns to beset its shores, not in vengeance, but rather in compassion, and, as it were, to recall to its antagonist that their rivalry is the condition even of its own reality."

Common-sense is idealistic without knowing 1 Croyance et Réalité, p. 145.

it. Its test of reality is feeling. The proof of reality is contact, touch-impression. Impression is the sign of existence, so said Hume. Esse thus is percipi: the external world is a permanent possibility of sensations. Common-sense has nothing to reply to this. It holds that things are, because I perceive them. In demanding that things survive the extinction of thought, it cannot represent this survival without supposing, in spite of itself, the resurrection of thought; "the hypothesis is destroyed in its enunciation. Suppose we disappear, then, in order that the world should endure, it would be necessary to leave to our fellows the power of experiencing sensations and localising them instinctively out of self."1

When summarily stated, the view of M. Dauriac seems to be as follows:

1. Consciousness and extension are known by us as two opposed objects. The perception, or consciousness, I have of extension is a state wholly different from the extension as object: it belongs to me, is mine; the extension does not belong to me, is not-mine.

2. These two-consciousness and extension

1 Croyance et Réalité, p. 131.

are reciprocally necessary in order to the reality of each. Consciousness would not be without extension; extension ceases the moment consciousness disappears. There is no consciousness in and for itself; and there is no extension in and for itself.

3. Hence, that which is real is not consciousness by itself, nor extension by itself, "but the relation between the two terms of one and the same relation."1 What is ultimate is the relation of conflict which arises from consciousness beating back extension from it as foreign to itself; and extension, returning as it were to attack consciousness in order to recall to it that their rivalry is the condition even of its own reality.

1 Croyance et Réalité, p. 144.

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II.--PHENOMENON; PHENOMENALISM.

M. DAURIAC insists very strongly on the point that the reality of appearance, or phenomenal reality, is universally admitted by sceptic and dogmatist alike. The sceptic doubts the objective, not the subjective, reality of the phenomenon. He either denies that something is, or he affirms nothing about it. Nam quid is not in doubt, but only quid. There is, at the outset of our reflection, an initial matter, the subjective reality of which cannot be put in question; this initial matter is none other than the matter itself of knowledge.1 No one dreams of contesting this, nor even of transforming it. The fact of being invested with objective reality, in the Kantian sense of the expression, neither adds nor takes away an atom from its objective reality in Croyance et Réalité, p. 207.

1