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810
Presidential Address
see the sea, but could only see people disembarking at Dover.” Eventually he recognizes sensations and sensa as the only reality, the external reality which was at first posited to explain sensa being eliminated altogether. All these points of view might show that he was an idealistic sensationalist, but he endeavours to range himself among materialists. And so he is, considering that the sensa according to him are physical occurrences in the brain, without any ulterior principle which would transmute them into consciousness. In fact, the same neutral particulars, according to Russell, belong to two worlds--the two cross-sections of Reality-the mental and the physical. Since sense organs play a part in the causation of sensa, and the sensa accordingly are private, it is argued that this position of Bertrand Russell must end in solipsism. But I think Russell would meet the criticism by regarding the sensa as private as viewed from within and public as viewed from without. The significance of this double aspect Russell has not cared to explore. He regards perception as a species of sensitivity. In truth, it involves sensitivity, but it is more than sensitivity. He sees no distinction between the case of a photographic plate sensitive to light and the mind in a living body except this that the living bodies are subject to the law of association or of the "conditional reflex.” But is there no difference between mind and wax because we speak of 'impressions' in both cases ? Similarly, between the sensitivity of a photographic plate and that of the mind in a living body? The confusion arises from failure to distinguish between the literal and the metaphorical use of the
