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Updated: April 30, 2025
We must, says Clifford, regard the latter as the reality of which the former is the appearance or manifestation. "What I perceive as your brain is really in itself your consciousness, is You; but then that which I call your brain, the material fact, is merely my perception." This doctrine is Panpsychism, in the form in which it is usually brought to our attention.
Whatever be the value of this dualism, it will have to be discussed even in the hypothesis of panpsychism. As for myself, I shall also continue to make a distinction between what I have called objects of cognition and acts of cognition, because this is the most general distinction that can be traced in the immense field of our cognitions.
This refutation is enough as regards spiritualism. Nothing more need be added. Idealism is an exceedingly complex system, varying much with varying authors, very polymorphous, and consequently very difficult to discuss. The ancient hylozoism, the monadism of Leibnitz, and the recent panpsychism of M. Strong are only different forms of the same doctrine.
We are brought, whether we like it or not, to an experimental monism, which is neither psychical nor physical; panpsychism and panmaterialism will have the same meaning. But this monism can be only transitory, for it is more in the words than in the thing itself. It is brought about by the terminology adopted, by the resolution to call mental all the phenomena that it is possible to know.
It holds that the only real existences are minds, and that physical phenomena must be regarded as the manifestations under which these real existences make us aware of their presence. The term panpsychism may, it is true, be used in a somewhat different sense.
We understand by it that the objects we perceive exist in the consciousness, are of the consciousness, and are constituted by ideas; the whole world is nothing but idea and representation; and, since our mind is taken to be of a psychical nature, the result is that everything, absolutely everything, the person who knows and the thing known, are all psychical. This is panpsychism.
It may be employed merely to indicate the doctrine that all nature is animated, and without implying a theory as to the relation between bodies perceived and the minds supposed to accompany them. What shall we say to panpsychism of the type represented by Clifford? It is, I think, sufficiently answered in the earlier chapters of this volume:
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