ons and thoughts and emotions is
so obvious to Common-sense that such a creed can hardly be explicitly
maintained: it is a creed which is refuted in the very act of
enunciating it. For practical purposes, therefore, Materialism may be
said to be the view that the ultimate basis of all existence is matter;
and that thought, feeling, emotion--consciousness of every kind--is
merely an effect, a by-product or concomitant, of certain material
processes.

Now if we are to hold that matter is the only thing which exists, or is
the ultimate source of all that exists, we ought to be able to say what
matter is. To the unreflecting mind matter seems to be the thing that
we are most certain of, the one thing that we know all about. Thought,
feeling, will, it may be suggested, are in some sense appearances which
(though we can't help having them) might, from the point of view of
superior insight, turn out to be mere delusions, or at best entirely
unimportant and inconsiderable entities. This attitude of mind has
been amusingly satirised by the title of one of Mr. Bradley's
philosophical essays--'on the supposed uselessness of the Soul.'[1] In
this state of mind matter presents itself as the one solid reality--as
something undeniable, something perfectly intelligible, something, too,
which is pre-eminently {7} important and respectable; while thinking
and feeling and willing, joy and sorrow, hope and aspiration, goodness
and badness, if they cannot exactly be got rid of altogether, are, as
it were, negligible quantities, which must not be allowed to disturb or
interfere with the serious business of the Universe.

From this point of view matter is supposed to be the one reality with
which we are in immediate contact, which we see and touch and taste and
handle every hour of our lives. It may, therefore, sound a rather
startling paradox to say that matter--matter in the sense of the
Materialist--is something which nobody has ever seen, touched, or
handled. Yet that is the literal and undeniable fact. Nobody has ever
seen or touched or otherwise come in contact with a piece of matter.
For in the experience which the plain man calls seeing or touching
there is always present another thing. Even if we suppose that he is
Justified in saying 'I touch matter,' there is always present the 'I'
as well as the matter.[2] It is always and inevitably matter + mind
that he knows. Nobody ever can get away from this 'I,' nobody can ever