often, when the Realist insists that there must be something to cause in
my mind this appearance, which I call my consciousness of a table, he
assumes all the while that this something--the real table, the table in
itself--is _there_, inside or behind the phenomenal table that I actually
see and feel; out there, in space. But if we were right in our analysis
of space, if we were right in arguing that space is made up of
intellectual relations[7] and that {51} intellectual relations can have
no being and no meaning except in and for a mind which apprehends them,
then it is obvious that you must not think of this Reality which is the
cause of our experience of external objects, as being _there_, as
occupying space, as being 'external.' If space be a form of our thought,
or (in Kantian language) a form of our sensibility, then the Reality
which is to have an existence in itself, cannot be in space. A reality
which is not in space can no longer be thought of as matter: whatever
else matter (as commonly conceived) means, it is certainly something
which occupies space. Now we know of no kind of existence which is not
in space except Mind. On the idealistic view to which I have been
endeavouring to lead you, we are, indeed, justified in saying that there
is a Reality which is the underlying cause or ground of our experiences,
but that that Reality is one which we may describe as Thought no less
than as Will.

It may interest some of you to know how near one who is often considered
the typical representative of naturalistic, if not materialistic, modes
of thought, ultimately came to accepting this identification. Let me
read to you a passage from one of Mr. Spencer's later works--the third
volume of his _Sociology_:--

'This transfiguration, which the inquiries of physicists continually
increase, is aided by that other {52} transfiguration resulting from
metaphysical inquiries. Subjective analysis compels us to admit that our
scientific interpretations of the phenomena which objects present, are
expressed in terms of our own variously-combined sensations and
ideas--are expressed, that is, in elements belonging to consciousness,
which are but symbols of the something beyond consciousness. Though
analysis afterwards reinstates our primitive beliefs, to the extent of
showing that behind every group of phenomenal manifestations there is
always a _nexus_, which is the reality that remains fixed amid
appearances which are