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This book, which contains the substance of lectures recently delivered in London and Peking, is primarily metaphysical in aim, though psychological as regards its subject matter. It has grown, the author tells us in his preface, out of an attempt to harmonize two apparently inconsistent tendencies in modern science—the materialistic attitude of many psychologists (especially those of the behaviourist school) and the contrary attitude of many physicists (especially Einstein and the other exponents of the theory of relativity) who 'have been making matter less and less material'. In pursuit of this aim Mr. Russell endeavours to bridge over the at first sight impassable gap between mind and matter by showing that mind is less mental and matter less material than is commonly supposed. His ultimate view of the nature of the world is that it is made up of a 'neutral stuff' itself neither mental nor material, but out of which both mind and matter are constructed, and with which, therefore, both psychology and the physical sciences are ultimately concerned, though the former is in a sense nearer to what actually exists than are the latter. The essential distinction between psychology and physics lies in the way in which they treat their data rather than in any difference as regards these data themselves. In either case the principal data consist of sensations, but whereas physics is interested in 'the appearance of a given thing from different places', psychology is concerned with 'the appearance of different things from a given place'. The former point of view leads to the conception of external things, the latter to the conception of a mind which apprehends these things. Psychology is, however, richer than physics in that it deals with images as well as sensations; since images are not capable of being included among the aspects which constitute a physical thing or piece of matter and therefore belong to psychology alone.
This rapprochement between the material a