Essays in Radical Empiricism E-Book

William James

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Essays in Radical Empiricism

by William James

EDITOR'S PREFACE

The present volume is an attempt to carry out a plan which William James

is known to have formed several years before his death. In 1907 he

collected reprints in an envelope which he inscribed with the title

'Essays in Radical Empiricism'; and he also had duplicate sets of these

reprints bound, under the same title, and deposited for the use of

students in the general Harvard Library, and in the Philosophical

Library in Emerson Hall.

Two years later Professor James published _The Meaning of Truth_ and _A

Pluralistic Universe_, and inserted in these volumes several of the

articles which he had intended to use in the 'Essays in Radical

Empiricism.' Whether he would nevertheless have carried out his original

plan, had he lived, cannot be certainly known. Several facts, however,

stand out very clearly. In the first place, the articles included in the

original plan but omitted from his later volumes are indispensable to

the understanding of his other writings. To these articles he repeatedly

alludes. Thus, in _The Meaning of Truth_ (p. 127), he says: "This

statement is probably excessively obscure to any one who has not read my

two articles 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure

Experience.'" Other allusions have been indicated in the present text.

In the second place, the articles originally brought together as 'Essays

in Radical Empiricism' form a connected whole. Not only were most of

them written consecutively within a period of two years, but they

contain numerous cross-references. In the third place, Professor James

regarded 'radical empiricism' as an _independent_ doctrine. This he

asserted expressly: "Let me say that there is no logical connexion

between pragmatism, as I understand it, and a doctrine which I have

recently set forth as 'radical empiricism.' The latter stands on its own

feet. One may entirely reject it and still be a pragmatist."

(_Pragmatism_, 1907, Preface, p. ix.) Finally, Professor James came

toward the end of his life to regard 'radical empiricism' as more

fundamental and more important than 'pragmatism.' In the Preface to _The

Meaning of Truth_ (1909), the author gives the following explanation of

his desire to continue, and if possible conclude, the controversy over

pragmatism: "I am interested in another doctrine in philosophy to which

I give the name of radical empiricism, and it seems to me that the

establishment of the pragmatist theory of truth is a step of first-rate

importance in making radical empiricism prevail" (p. xii).

In preparing the present volume, the editor has therefore been governed

by two motives. On the one hand, he has sought to preserve and make

accessible certain important articles not to be found in Professor

James's other books. This is true of Essays I, II, IV, V, VIII, IX, X,

XI, and XII. On the other hand, he has sought to bring together in one

volume a set of essays treating systematically of one independent,

coherent, and fundamental doctrine. To this end it has seemed best to

include three essays (III, VI, and VII), which, although included in the

original plan, were afterwards reprinted elsewhere; and one essay, XII,

not included in the original plan. Essays III, VI, and VII are

indispensable to the consecutiveness of the series, and are so

interwoven with the rest that it is necessary that the student should

have them at hand for ready consultation. Essay XII throws an important

light on the author's general 'empiricism,' and forms an important link

between 'radical empiricism' and the author's other doctrines.

In short, the present volume is designed not as a collection but rather

as a treatise. It is intended that another volume shall be issued which

shall contain papers having biographical or historical importance which

have not yet been reprinted in book form. The present volume is intended

not only for students of Professor James's philosophy, but for students

of metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. It sets forth systematically

and within brief compass the doctrine of 'radical empiricism.'

A word more may be in order concerning the general meaning of this

doctrine. In the Preface to the _Will to Believe_ (1898), Professor

James gives the name "_radical empiricism_" to his "philosophic

attitude," and adds the following explanation: "I say 'empiricism,'

because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions

concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the

course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the

doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the

halfway empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or

agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm

monism as something with which all experience has got to square" (pp.

vii-viii). An 'empiricism' of this description is a "philosophic

attitude" or temper of mind rather than a doctrine, and characterizes

all of Professor James's writings. It is set forth in Essay XII of the

present volume.

In a narrower sense, 'empiricism' is the method of resorting to

_particular experiences_ for the solution of philosophical problems.

Rationalists are the men of principles, empiricists the men of facts.

(_Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 35; cf. also, _ibid._, p. 44; and

_Pragmatism_, pp. 9, 51.) Or, "since principles are universals, and

facts are particulars, perhaps the best way of characterizing the two

tendencies is to say that rationalist thinking proceeds most willingly

by going from wholes to parts, while empiricist thinking proceeds by

going from parts to wholes." (_Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 35; cf.

also _ibid._, p. 98; and _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 7.) Again,

empiricism "remands us to sensation." (_Op. cit._, p. 264.) The

"empiricist view" insists that, "as reality is created temporally day by

day, concepts ... can never fitly supersede perception.... The deeper

features of reality are found only in perceptual experience." (_Some

Problems of Philosophy_, pp. 100, 97.) Empiricism in this sense is as

yet characteristic of Professor James's philosophy _as a whole_. It is

not the distinctive and independent doctrine set forth in the present

book.

The only summary of 'radical empiricism' in this last and narrowest

sense appears in the Preface to _The Meaning of Truth_ (pp. xii-xiii);

and it must be reprinted here as the key to the text that follows.[1]

"Radical empiricism consists (1) first of a postulate, (2) next of a

statement of fact, (3) and finally of a generalized conclusion."

(1) "The postulate is that _the only things that shall be debatable

among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from

experience_. (Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum,

but they form no part of the material for philosophic debate.)" This is

"the principle of pure experience" as "a methodical postulate." (Cf.

below, pp. 159, 241.) This postulate corresponds to the notion which the

author repeatedly attributes to Shadworth Hodgson, the notion "that

realities are only what they are 'known as.'" (_Pragmatism_, p. 50;

_Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 443; _The Meaning of Truth_, pp.

43, 118.) In this sense 'radical empiricism' and pragmatism are closely

allied. Indeed, if pragmatism be defined as the assertion that "the

meaning of any proposition can always be brought down to some particular

consequence in our future practical experience, ... the point lying in

the fact that the experience must be particular rather than in the fact

that it must be active" (_Meaning of Truth_, p. 210); then pragmatism

and the above postulate come to the same thing. The present book,

however, consists not so much in the assertion of this postulate as in

the _use_ of it. And the method is successful in special applications by

virtue of a certain "statement of fact" concerning relations.

(2) "The statement of fact is that _the relations between things,

conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct

particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things

themselves_." (Cf. also _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 280; _The Will to

Believe_, p. 278.) This is the central doctrine of the present book. It

distinguishes 'radical empiricism' from the "ordinary empiricism" of

Hume, J. S. Mill, etc., with which it is otherwise allied. (Cf. below,

pp. 42-44.) It provides an empirical and relational version of

'activity,' and so distinguishes the author's voluntarism from a view

with which it is easily confused--the view which upholds a pure or

transcendent activity. (Cf. below, Essay VI.) It makes it possible to

escape the vicious disjunctions that have thus far baffled philosophy:

such disjunctions as those between consciousness and physical nature,

between thought and its object, between one mind and another, and

between one 'thing' and another. These disjunctions need not be

'overcome' by calling in any "extraneous trans-empirical connective

support" (_Meaning of Truth_, Preface, p. xiii); they may now be

_avoided_ by regarding the dualities in question as only _differences of

empirical relationship among common empirical terms_. The pragmatistic

account of 'meaning' and 'truth,' shows only how a vicious disjunction

between 'idea' and 'object' may thus be avoided. The present volume not

only presents pragmatism in this light; but adds similar accounts of the

other dualities mentioned above.

Thus while pragmatism and radical empiricism do not differ essentially

when regarded as _methods_, they are independent when regarded as

doctrines. For it would be possible to hold the pragmatistic theory of

'meaning' and 'truth,' without basing it on any fundamental theory of

relations, and without extending such a theory of relations to residual

philosophical problems; without, in short, holding either to the above

'statement of fact,' or to the following 'generalized conclusion.'

(3) "The generalized conclusion is that therefore _the parts of

experience hold together from next to next by relations that are

themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs,

in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but

possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure_."

When thus generalized, 'radical empiricism' is not only a theory of

knowledge comprising pragmatism as a special chapter, but a metaphysic

as well. It excludes "the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality" (Cf.

below, p. 195). It is the author's most rigorous statement of his theory

that reality is an "experience-continuum." (_Meaning of Truth_, p. 152;

_A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. V, VII.) It is that positive and

constructive 'empiricism' of which Professor James said: "Let empiricism

once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange

misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe

that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be ready to

begin." (_Op. cit._, p. 314; cf. _ibid._, Lect. VIII, _passim_; and _The

Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 515-527.)

The editor desires to acknowledge his obligations to the periodicals

from which these essays have been reprinted, and to the many friends of

Professor James who have rendered valuable advice and assistance in the

preparation of the present volume.

  RALPH BARTON PERRY.

  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.

  January 8, 1912.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The use of numerals and italics is introduced by the editor.

CONTENTS

     I. DOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST?                          1

    II. A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE                          39

   III. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS                         92

    IV. HOW TWO MINDS CAN KNOW ONE THING                   123

     V. THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD

        OF PURE EXPERIENCE                                 137

    VI. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY                         155

   VII. THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM                            190

  VIII. LA NOTION DE CONSCIENCE                            206

    IX. IS RADICAL EMPIRICISM SOLIPSISTIC?                 234

     X. MR. PITKIN'S REFUTATION OF 'RADICAL EMPIRICISM'    241

    XI. HUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE                       244

   XII. ABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM                          266

        INDEX                                              281

I

DOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST?[2]

'Thoughts' and 'things' are names for two sorts of object, which common

sense will always find contrasted and will always practically oppose to

each other. Philosophy, reflecting on the contrast, has varied in the

past in her explanations of it, and may be expected to vary in the

future. At first, 'spirit and matter,' 'soul and body,' stood for a pair

of equipollent substances quite on a par in weight and interest. But one

day Kant undermined the soul and brought in the transcendental ego, and

ever since then the bipolar relation has been very much off its balance.

The transcendental ego seems nowadays in rationalist quarters to stand

for everything, in empiricist quarters for almost nothing. In the hands

of such writers as Schuppe, Rehmke, Natorp, Münsterberg--at any rate in

his earlier writings, Schubert-Soldern and others, the spiritual

principle attenuates itself to a thoroughly ghostly condition, being

only a name for the fact that the 'content' of experience _is known_. It

loses personal form and activity--these passing over to the content--and

becomes a bare _Bewusstheit_ or _Bewusstsein überhaupt_, of which in its

own right absolutely nothing can be said.

I believe that 'consciousness,' when once it has evaporated to this

estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing altogether.

It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first

principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the

faint rumor left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of

philosophy. During the past year, I have read a number of articles whose

authors seemed just on the point of abandoning the notion of

consciousness,[3] and substituting for it that of an absolute experience

not due to two factors. But they were not quite radical enough, not

quite daring enough in their negations. For twenty years past I have

mistrusted 'consciousness' as an entity; for seven or eight years past I

have suggested its non-existence to my students, and tried to give them

its pragmatic equivalent in realities of experience. It seems to me that

the hour is ripe for it to be openly and universally discarded.

To deny plumply that 'consciousness' exists seems so absurd on the face

of it--for undeniably 'thoughts' do exist--that I fear some readers will

follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only

to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most

emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean, no

aboriginal stuff or quality of being,[4] contrasted with that of which

material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made;

but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for

the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That

function is _knowing_. 'Consciousness' is supposed necessary to explain

the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known. Whoever

blots out the notion of consciousness from his list of first principles

must still provide in some way for that function's being carried on.

I

My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only

one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything

is composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure experience,' then knowing

can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one

another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation

itself is a part of pure experience; one of its 'terms' becomes the

subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower,[5] the other becomes the

object known. This will need much explanation before it can be

understood. The best way to get it understood is to contrast it with the

alternative view; and for that we may take the recentest alternative,

that in which the evaporation of the definite soul-substance has

proceeded as far as it can go without being yet complete. If neo-Kantism

has expelled earlier forms of dualism, we shall have expelled all forms

if we are able to expel neo-Kantism in its turn.

For the thinkers I call neo-Kantian, the word consciousness to-day does

no more than signalize the fact that experience is indefeasibly

dualistic in structure. It means that not subject, not object, but

object-plus-subject is the minimum that can actually be. The

subject-object distinction meanwhile is entirely different from that

between mind and matter, from that between body and soul. Souls were

detachable, had separate destinies; things could happen to them. To

consciousness as such nothing can happen, for, timeless itself, it is

only a witness of happenings in time, in which it plays no part. It is,

in a word, but the logical correlative of 'content' in an Experience of

which the peculiarity is that _fact comes to light_ in it, that

_awareness of content_ takes place. Consciousness as such is entirely

impersonal--'self' and its activities belong to the content. To say that

I am self-conscious, or conscious of putting forth volition, means only

that certain contents, for which 'self' and 'effort of will' are the

names, are not without witness as they occur.

Thus, for these belated drinkers at the Kantian spring, we should have

to admit consciousness as an 'epistemological' necessity, even if we had

no direct evidence of its being there.

But in addition to this, we are supposed by almost every one to have an

immediate consciousness of consciousness itself. When the world of outer

fact ceases to be materially present, and we merely recall it in memory,

or fancy it, the consciousness is believed to stand out and to be felt

as a kind of impalpable inner flowing, which, once known in this sort of

experience, may equally be detected in presentations of the outer world.

"The moment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness and to see

_what_, distinctly, it is," says a recent writer, "it seems to vanish.

It seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to

introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue; the other

element is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it _can_ be distinguished, if

we look attentively enough, and know that there is something to look

for."[6] "Consciousness" (Bewusstheit), says another philosopher, "is

inexplicable and hardly describable, yet all conscious experiences have

this in common that what we call their content has this peculiar

reference to a centre for which 'self' is the name, in virtue of which

reference alone the content is subjectively given, or appears ... While

in this way consciousness, or reference to a self, is the only thing

which distinguishes a conscious content from any sort of being that

might be there with no one conscious of it, yet this only ground of the

distinction defies all closer explanations. The existence of

consciousness, although it is the fundamental fact of psychology, can

indeed be laid down as certain, can be brought out by analysis, but can

neither be defined nor deduced from anything but itself."[7]

'Can be brought out by analysis,' this author says. This supposes that

the consciousness is one element, moment, factor--call it what you

like--of an experience of essentially dualistic inner constitution, from

which, if you abstract the content, the consciousness will remain

revealed to its own eye. Experience, at this rate, would be much like a

paint of which the world pictures were made. Paint has a dual

constitution, involving, as it does, a menstruum[8] (oil, size or what

not) and a mass of content in the form of pigment suspended therein. We

can get the pure menstruum by letting the pigment settle, and the pure

pigment by pouring off the size or oil. We operate here by physical

subtraction; and the usual view is, that by mental subtraction we can

separate the two factors of experience in an analogous way--not

isolating them entirely, but distinguishing them enough to know that

they are two.

II

Now my contention is exactly the reverse of this. _Experience, I

believe, has no such inner duplicity; and the separation of it into

consciousness and content comes, not by way of subtraction, but by way

of addition_--the addition, to a given concrete piece of it, of other

sets of experiences, in connection with which severally its use or

function may be of two different kinds. The paint will also serve here

as an illustration. In a pot in a paint-shop, along with other paints,

it serves in its entirety as so much saleable matter. Spread on a

canvas, with other paints around it, it represents, on the contrary, a

feature in a picture and performs a spiritual function. Just so, I

maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one

context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of

'consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of

experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective 'content.'

In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a

thing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have

every right to speak of it as subjective and objective both at once. The

dualism connoted by such double-barrelled terms as 'experience,'

'phenomenon,' 'datum,' '_Vorfindung_'--terms which, in philosophy at any

rate, tend more and more to replace the single-barrelled terms of

'thought' and 'thing'--that dualism, I say, is still preserved in this

account, but reinterpreted, so that, instead of being mysterious and

elusive, it becomes verifiable and concrete. It is an affair of

relations, it falls outside, not inside, the single experience

considered, and can always be particularized and defined.

The entering wedge for this more concrete way of understanding the

dualism was fashioned by Locke when he made the word 'idea' stand

indifferently for thing and thought, and by Berkeley when he said that

what common sense means by realities is exactly what the philosopher

means by ideas. Neither Locke nor Berkeley thought his truth out into

perfect clearness, but it seems to me that the conception I am defending

does little more than consistently carry out the 'pragmatic' method

which they were the first to use.

If the reader will take his own experiences, he will see what I mean.

Let him begin with a perceptual experience, the 'presentation,' so

called, of a physical object, his actual field of vision, the room he

sits in, with the book he is reading as its centre; and let him for the

present treat this complex object in the common-sense way as being

'really' what it seems to be, namely, a collection of physical things

cut out from an environing world of other physical things with which

these physical things have actual or potential relations. Now at the

same time it is just _those self-same things_ which his mind, as we say,

perceives; and the whole philosophy of perception from Democritus's time

downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is

evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer

space and in a person's mind. 'Representative' theories of perception

avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the

reader's sense of life, which knows no intervening mental image but

seems to see the room and the book immediately just as they physically

exist.

The puzzle of how the one identical room can be in two places is at

bottom just the puzzle of how one identical point can be on two lines.

It can, if it be situated at their intersection; and similarly, if the

'pure experience' of the room were a place of intersection of two

processes, which connected it with different groups of associates

respectively, it could be counted twice over, as belonging to either

group, and spoken of loosely as existing in two places, although it

would remain all the time a numerically single thing.

Well, the experience is a member of diverse processes that can be

followed away from it along entirely different lines. The one

self-identical thing has so many relations to the rest of experience

that you can take it in disparate systems of association, and treat it

as belonging with opposite contexts.[9] In one of these contexts it is

your 'field of consciousness'; in another it is 'the room in which you

sit,' and it enters both contexts in its wholeness, giving no pretext

for being said to attach itself to consciousness by one of its parts or

aspects, and to outer reality by another. What are the two processes,

now, into which the room-experience simultaneously enters in this way?

One of them is the reader's personal biography, the other is the history

of the house of which the room is part. The presentation, the

experience, the _that_ in short (for until we have decided _what_ it is

it must be a mere _that_) is the last term of a train of sensations,

emotions, decisions, movements, classifications, expectations, etc.,

ending in the present, and the first term of a series of similar 'inner'

operations extending into the future, on the reader's part. On the other

hand, the very same _that_ is the _terminus ad quem_ of a lot of

previous physical operations, carpentering, papering, furnishing,

warming, etc., and the _terminus a quo_ of a lot of future ones, in

which it will be concerned when undergoing the destiny of a physical

room. The physical and the mental operations form curiously incompatible

groups. As a room, the experience has occupied that spot and had that

environment for thirty years. As your field of consciousness it may

never have existed until now. As a room, attention will go on to

discover endless new details in it. As your mental state merely, few new

ones will emerge under attention's eye. As a room, it will take an

earthquake, or a gang of men, and in any case a certain amount of time,

to destroy it. As your subjective state, the closing of your eyes, or

any instantaneous play of your fancy will suffice. In the real world,

fire will consume it. In your mind, you can let fire play over it

without effect. As an outer object, you must pay so much a month to

inhabit it. As an inner content, you may occupy it for any length of

time rent-free. If, in short, you follow it in the mental direction,

taking it along with events of personal biography solely, all sorts of

things are true of it which are false, and false of it which are true if

you treat it as a real thing experienced, follow it in the physical

direction, and relate it to associates in the outer world.

III

So far, all seems plain sailing, but my thesis will probably grow less

plausible to the reader when I pass from percepts to concepts, or from

the case of things presented to that of things remote. I believe,

nevertheless, that here also the same law holds good. If we take

conceptual manifolds, or memories, or fancies, they also are in their

first intention mere bits of pure experience, and, as such, are single

_thats_ which act in one context as objects, and in another context

figure as mental states. By taking them in their first intention, I mean

ignoring their relation to possible perceptual experiences with which

they may be connected, which they may lead to and terminate in, and

which then they may be supposed to 'represent.' Taking them in this way

first, we confine the problem to a world merely 'thought-of' and not

directly felt or seen.[10] This world, just like the world of percepts,

comes to us at first as a chaos of experiences, but lines of order soon

get traced. We find that any bit of it which we may cut out as an

example is connected with distinct groups of associates, just as our

perceptual experiences are, that these associates link themselves with

it by different relations,[11] and that one forms the inner history of a

person, while the other acts as an impersonal 'objective' world, either

spatial and temporal, or else merely logical or mathematical, or

otherwise 'ideal.'

The first obstacle on the part of the reader to seeing that these

non-perceptual experiences have objectivity as well as subjectivity will

probably be due to the intrusion into his mind of _percepts_, that third

group of associates with which the non-perceptual experiences have

relations, and which, as a whole, they 'represent,' standing to them as

thoughts to things. This important function of the non-perceptual

experiences complicates the question and confuses it; for, so used are

we to treat percepts as the sole genuine realities that, unless we keep

them out of the discussion, we tend altogether to overlook the

objectivity that lies in non-perceptual experiences by themselves. We

treat them, 'knowing' percepts as they do, as through and through

subjective, and say that they are wholly constituted of the stuff called

consciousness, using this term now for a kind of entity, after the

fashion which I am seeking to refute.[12]

Abstracting, then, from percepts altogether, what I maintain is, that

any single non-perceptual experience tends to get counted twice over,

just as a perceptual experience does, figuring in one context as an

object or field of objects, in another as a state of mind: and all this

without the least internal self-diremption on its own part into

consciousness and content. It is all consciousness in one taking; and,

in the other, all content.

I find this objectivity of non-perceptual experiences, this complete

parallelism in point of reality between the presently felt and the

remotely thought, so well set forth in a page of Münsterberg's

_Grundzüge_, that I will quote it as it stands.

"I may only think of my objects," says Professor Münsterberg; "yet, in

my living thought they stand before me exactly as perceived objects

would do, no matter how different the two ways of apprehending them may

be in their genesis. The book here lying on the table before me, and the

book in the next room of which I think and which I mean to get, are both

in the same sense given realities for me, realities which I acknowledge

and of which I take account. If you agree that the perceptual object is

not an idea within me, but that percept and thing, as indistinguishably

one, are really experienced _there, outside_, you ought not to believe

that the merely thought-of object is hid away inside of the thinking

subject. The object of which I think, and of whose existence I take

cognizance without letting it now work upon my senses, occupies its

definite place in the outer world as much as does the object which I

directly see."

"What is true of the here and the there, is also true of the now and the

then. I know of the thing which is present and perceived, but I know

also of the thing which yesterday was but is no more, and which I only

remember. Both can determine my present conduct, both are parts of the

reality of which I keep account. It is true that of much of the past I

am uncertain, just as I am uncertain of much of what is present if it be

but dimly perceived. But the interval of time does not in principle

alter my relation to the object, does not transform it from an object

known into a mental state.... The things in the room here which I

survey, and those in my distant home of which I think, the things of

this minute and those of my long-vanished boyhood, influence and decide

me alike, with a reality which my experience of them directly feels.

They both make up my real world, they make it directly, they do not have

first to be introduced to me and mediated by ideas which now and here

arise within me.... This not-me character of my recollections and

expectations does not imply that the external objects of which I am

aware in those experiences should necessarily be there also for others.

The objects of dreamers and hallucinated persons are wholly without

general validity. But even were they centaurs and golden mountains, they

still would be 'off there,' in fairy land, and not 'inside' of

ourselves."[13]

This certainly is the immediate, primary, naïf, or practical way of

taking our thought-of world. Were there no perceptual world to serve as

its 'reductive,' in Taine's sense, by being 'stronger' and more

genuinely 'outer' (so that the whole merely thought-of world seems weak

and inner in comparison), our world of thought would be the only world,

and would enjoy complete reality in our belief. This actually happens in

our dreams, and in our day-dreams so long as percepts do not interrupt

them.

And yet, just as the seen room (to go back to our late example) is

_also_ a field of consciousness, so the conceived or recollected room is

_also_ a state of mind; and the doubling-up of the experience has in

both cases similar grounds.

The room thought-of, namely, has many thought-of couplings with many

thought-of things. Some of these couplings are inconstant, others are

stable. In the reader's personal history the room occupies a single

date--he saw it only once perhaps, a year ago. Of the house's history,

on the other hand, it forms a permanent ingredient. Some couplings

have the curious stubbornness, to borrow Royce's term, of fact; others

show the fluidity of fancy--we let them come and go as we please.

Grouped with the rest of its house, with the name of its town, of its