PHILOSOPHY : 
 WHAT IS IT? 
 
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
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 LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C 4 
 
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PHILOSOPHY 
 
 WHAT IS IT ? 
 
 F. B. JEVONS, LITT.D. 
 
 FKOKKSeOR OF HULLO SO 1'H Y IN THE UNIVERSITY Of DUBHAM 
 
 Cambridge : 
 
 at the University Press 
 1920 
 
First Edition 1914 
 Rtfrtntid 1910 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ONE of the branches of the Workers' Educa- 
 tional Association expressed a desire to know 
 what Philosophy is; thereby assuming that 
 Philosophy is a concern of the average man 
 and of practical life, and should not be the 
 monopoly of the professed student. Of the 
 truth of this view there can be no doubt, and 
 this book consists of the five lectures which 
 were given by way of an attempt, not so 
 much to answer their question as to bring 
 out the meaning of the question. Hence the 
 interrogative form of the title Philosophy: 
 what is it ? 
 
 The attempt was necessarily made, in the dis- 
 cussion of the question, to avoid technical terms 
 as far as possible. Without technical terms it is 
 impossible, it may be said, to go very far in the 
 discussion. But it should be possible, without 
 them, to go far enough to open the discussion, 
 and to indicate both the nature of answers 
 
 4706 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 which have been given to the question, and 
 the reasons why some of the answers are less 
 satisfactory than others. Indeed, each of the 
 lectures was followed by an hour's discussion 
 in class, which served to show that working 
 men and women found the question to be 
 interesting and the answers to admit of debate. 
 The lectures are, therefore, now printed, on 
 the chance that others also, as well as those 
 who heard them, may find the question attrac- 
 tive and the answer worth discussing. 
 
 F. B. JEVONS 
 
 HATFIELD HALL 
 
 DURHAM 
 5/ March 1914 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PACK 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE ..... i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM .... 27 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 SCEPTICISM IN PHILOSOPHY ..... 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICE . . . . . 77 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 PERSONALITY AND THE WHOLE . . . . 101 
 
 INDEX . . . 133 
 
PHILOSOPHY: WHAT IS IT? 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 
 
 IN the lives of most, and perhaps of all, of us 
 there come moments of dejection, or even of 
 despair, when the burden and the mystery of 
 this unintelligible world come with such crush- 
 ing weight upon us that, in spite even of 
 religion itself, we ask, u What does it all 
 mean? What is the good of it all?" The 
 questions are asked in a despair which implies 
 that there is no meaning in it all, and no good 
 in life ; or, that if there is, at any rate we 
 cannot see it. 
 
 But though the questions may be asked, 
 and in moments of personal despair are asked, 
 in a tone which implies that no satisfactory 
 answer is or can be forthcoming ; they may 
 also be considered, in a calmer mood, as ques- 
 tions which call for a reasoned answer, and 
 with regard to which we must ask, as a matter 
 
 A 1 
 
2 EXPERIENCE 
 
 of deliberation rather than of despair, whether 
 an answer is possible at all. Now, it is 
 the calm consideration of these questions in 
 a reflective mood, and of the answers that are 
 to be given to them if any answer can be 
 given that constitutes philosophy. 
 
 Let us look, therefore, once more at the 
 questions, " What does it all mean? What is 
 the good of it all?" and let us see what is 
 implied by the questions- The "it" in 
 u What does it all mean ? What is the good 
 of it all ? " evidently refers to the experience 
 we have of the world and life. Obviously, 
 therefore, it is with experience that philosophy 
 has to do with our experience in life ; it 
 is from experience, therefore, that philosophy 
 has to start, and it is on experience, and the 
 things experienced, that philosophy has to 
 reflect. 
 
 Next, the questions are put not about this 
 or that particular experience, this or that 
 particular phase of experience, this or that 
 particular department of knowledge, or of 
 life, or of experience, but about it all 
 what does it all mean ? It is, therefore, all 
 experience, experience as a whole, being and 
 knowledge as a whole, that philosophy has to 
 contemplate. 
 
 Further, the tone in which the questions are 
 
DOUBT 3 
 
 put, "What does it all mean? What is the 
 good of it all ? " implies that the person who 
 puts these questions despairingly to the uni- 
 verse, took it for granted, once upon a time, 
 that life was worth living, that there was some 
 good in it and that it had some meaning ; but 
 that now he is beginning to wonder whether 
 there is any meaning in it all, whether the 
 universe is rational and intelligible, and whether 
 there is any good in it. He is beginning to be 
 sceptical and doubtful on these points. 
 
 Now, you and I may be convinced in the 
 bottom of our hearts that the world is run on 
 rational and intelligible principles, and that 
 there is some good in life, and might be more 
 if only men would think and act reasonably. 
 But, if we are convinced of this, we ought to 
 be able to give some answer to the man who 
 is doubtful and sceptical about it. And if you 
 are to understand his difficulties, you must put 
 yourself in his position. You must put your- 
 self in his place so far as to ask whether there 
 is any meaning in life, any good in it all. 
 And you must ask the question fairly and 
 squarely, is there any meaning in it all ? And 
 to answer the question you must turn to 
 experience, his experience, your experience, 
 the experience of all of us, and you must 
 reflect upon it as a whole that is to say, you 
 
4 REFLECTION 
 
 must become a philosopher. Each science 
 tells us about some particular set of things ; 
 but when every science has done so, the 
 question still remains, " What does it all mean ? 
 What does it all come to ? " And any attempt 
 j to answer these questions is a philosophy. It 
 is with the whole of experience that philosophy 
 attempts to deal. Philosophy is the attempt 
 to deal with the whole, and with our experience 
 as a whole. 
 
 It is from experience we have to start, and 
 to experience that we have to return. We 
 start, and must start, from it, because we have 
 nothing else we can start from. We reflect 
 upon it and the reflection upon it is philosophy 
 in the hope that having done so we may 
 understand it rather ..better when we have 
 thought it over. If that should be the for- 
 tunate result, then we shall find that we 
 understand our experience better than we did, 
 and that there is more in it than we thought 
 at first, and even that it is in some respects 
 really different from what at first we took it 
 to be. 
 
 Of course there is also the possibility even 
 if it be but a bare possibility that the more 
 we reflect upon experience, the more difficult 
 it will be to discover any meaning in it, or to 
 make any sense out of it. And if we finally 
 
SCEPTICISM 5 
 
 come to the conclusion that there is no mean- 
 ing in the world, or none discoverable by us, 
 the conclusion will still be a philosophical con- 
 clusion, because it is the conclusion to which 
 we are brought by reflection upon experience, 
 but it will be a sceptical philosophy. 
 
 In philosophy, as in other departments of 
 enquiry, scepticism is the revolt against dog- 
 matism ; that is to say, philosophical scepticism, 
 or scepticism in philosophy, is the revolt 
 against the notion that there are some con- 
 clusions which we may not question, but must 
 accept without enquiry or reason. But it is 
 the very breath and being of philosophy that 
 it should at all times be ready to reconsider 
 its conclusions in the light of new evidence 
 and fresh facts. Only by doing so can philo- 
 sophy either grow or live at all. The dog- 
 matism which forbids it to readjust itself to 
 the growth of knowledge is a dead hand laid 
 upon philosophy and fatal to it. So far, then, 
 as scepticism is a revolt against dogmatism and 
 destructive of it, it is an essential condition of 
 the growth of philosophy. 
 
 But destruction, necessary though it often 
 is, in philosophy as elsewhere, is not con- 
 struction. It may be necessary to pull down 
 an old building before we can build a new one 
 on the site. But if we destroy, it is only in 
 
6 FINALITY 
 
 order that we may reconstruct. And that is 
 why scepticism never in the course of philos- 
 ophy has been, and never in the course of 
 things can be, final. But that is just the 
 important fact which is overlooked by those 
 who consider that scepticism is the last word 
 in philosophy. The truth is that philosophy 
 is a living, growing study ; and that, so long 
 as it lives and grows, the last word has not yet 
 been said. 
 
 The reason why philosophy is a living, 
 growing, department of enquiry and thought, 
 is, as has already been said, that it is with ex- 
 perience that philosophy has to do : it is from 
 experience that philosophy has to start. Philos- 
 ophy is reflection upon experience and the 
 things experienced and it is on the whole of 
 experience that it must be based, if it is to 
 have any value. But experience is continu- 
 ally increasing: the world is growing older 
 and riper in experience every day. That is to 
 say, the whole of experience never is or can 
 be before us. Finality in philosophy, there- 
 fore, is for ever beyond our reach, if by finality 
 we imagine, with the dogmatist, that it is 
 possible to say to the free spirit of philosophy 
 "thus far shah thou go, and no further." 
 Philosophy, therefore, can never recognise 
 finality in this shape, but must ever press 
 
DOGMATISM 7 
 
 forwards and onwards. We may take stock 
 of our experience, and its results up to the 
 moment when we take stock of it; we may 
 even form some notion of whether the business 
 is going up or down. But the business of 
 experience is a going concern ; we are acquiring 
 experience every day, and we do not know 
 how it will stand a year or a century hence. To 
 say or imagine that we do know is simply the 
 dogmatism which is fatal to the development 
 of philosophy. What we can do is to form 
 some notion of how it is going. We can say 
 how things look now. To say how they will 
 look a century hence is simply dogmatism, and 
 simple folly. The philosophers of a century 
 hence must do that. What we have to start 
 from is experience as far as it has already 
 gone. That is the experience which philos- 
 ophy has to reflect upon, and about which it 
 has to enquire whether it has any meaning, 
 and what is the good of it all. 
 
 But if we say this, perhaps we shall be 
 understood to mean that philosophy, being 
 concerned with experience, is concerned only 
 with what is past. That however would be 
 to misunderstand us. As philosophers we are 
 not concerned with the past, or rather are not 
 concerned to write a history of the things that 
 are past and done for. With the past we are 
 
8 THE WHOLE 
 
 only concerned so far as it is related to the 
 present and the future. If experience has 
 any meaning, if any meaning runs through it, 
 then that meaning has run through all the 
 successive moments of the past, or has been 
 displayed in them, and has been displayed as 
 binding them together into one whole. Those 
 successive moments of the past were each of 
 them at one time future, then present, and 
 then past. Now, we look back upon them 
 and see them forming one whole a whole of 
 which we have had and still have experience. 
 In the same way, the successive moments, 
 which are not yet past, but are running by 
 us now, are each of them in turn first future, 
 then present, and then past. And if we look 
 upon them, and reflect, we shall see that they, 
 too, are forming one whole ; the future 
 moment, ere I can get the words out of my 
 mouth, has become present and has fallen back 
 into the past. But if the past and future 
 moments are thus related, if they are thus in- 
 deed inseparable, then they form one whole. 
 We may, indeed, distinguish one moment from 
 another, but we cannot separate them, just as 
 we can distinguish the sides of a straight line, 
 though we cannot put one side of the line 
 here and the other somewhere else. The 
 past moment and the future are, like the sides 
 
THE WHOLE 9 
 
 of the line, related and inseparable : they are 
 related in the present, when we are continu- 
 ally passing through the one into the other; 
 and they are, though distinguishable, insepar- 
 able, because they are parts of one whole. 
 That, then, is the nature of our experience and 
 of its successive moments, which we may dis- 
 tinguish, but cannot possibly separate, from 
 one another. Experience is a whole, and it 
 is that whole which philosophy has to con- 
 template and on which it reflects. 
 
 But to say that experience is a whole is to 
 make a statement which is dogmatic ; and 
 which, being dogmatic, necessarily provokes 
 scepticism, that is to say, invites enquiry and 
 requires explanation. To say that experience 
 is a whole is to make a statement which 
 especially requires explanation, because, as we 
 have already seen, philosophy that is to say 
 the explanation of experience never can be 
 final, for the simple reason that experience 
 itself is continually increasing : it never is, but 
 always is to be, completed. If, then, experi- 
 ence never is complete, if philosophy accord- 
 ingly never can be final, how, the sceptical 
 philosopher may enquire, how can experience 
 ever be a whole ? 
 
 The difficulty thus raised can be met to 
 some extent by means of an analogy. Thus, 
 
io GROWTH OF THE WHOLE 
 
 a circle, for instance, is a whole. Yet we can 
 understand what is meant if any one speaks of 
 an expanding circle. Experience, on this 
 analogy, may be spoken of as a circle con- 
 tinually expanding. The analogy, however, is 
 obviously imperfect, because knowledge not 
 only increases in extent and in amount but 
 grows richer and more diversified in its 
 quality and content. We may then, perhaps, 
 find a closer analogy, if we compare experi- 
 ence to an organism. A living organism is a 
 whole, having its parts, each one of which is 
 different from every other, and no one of 
 which can live apart from the others. And 
 yet the organism, though it is a whole, and 
 because it is a living organism, is continually 
 growing. At no moment in the process of its 
 growth has the organism attained its final 
 shape. And at no moment in its growth has 
 experience, either, attained finality ; yet at 
 every moment it is a whole, even though it 
 has the capacity always of further growth. 
 
 We may then fairly say there is nothing 
 unreasonable in supposing that experience may 
 be a whole and a growing whole ; and that 
 though it grows, or rather because it grows, 
 it has not attained finality. But though there 
 seems to be nothing unreasonable in supposing 
 to start with that experience may form a 
 
HYPOTHESIS 1 1 
 
 whole, still we can only put it forward as 
 a supposition or hypothesis. To put it for- 
 ward as a fact would be to commit the error 
 of dogmatising. We should be forgetting 
 the very point from which we started in this 
 lecture. We started with the question which 
 some men ask about life and experience, 
 u What does it all mean? What is the good 
 of it all ? " And that is precisely the question 
 which philosophy is continually attempting to 
 answer. We must assume either that there 
 is an answer to it, or that there is not. And 
 whether we assume, to begin with, that there 
 is or is not an answer, we have in the end to 
 show that our assumption fits in with the 
 facts. We may, indeed, assume that there is 
 an answer, and we may put forward what we 
 consider to be the answer. If we do, then it 
 is the business of other philosophers to show 
 how far the answer we give fails to be satis- 
 factory ; and then it becomes our business to 
 re-shape the answer so that it will fit the 
 facts. And this process goes on and will go 
 on, just so long as fresh facts turn up, or so 
 long as our answers fail to account for all the 
 old facts. 
 
 Now, this, which is the process of philos- 
 ophy, is, of course, the process of science 
 also. Science, like philosophy, has continually 
 
12 SCIENCE 
 
 to re-shape itself in order to find place and 
 to find the proper place for all the facts. 
 That is the way, and the only way, in which 
 either science or philosophy can advance. 
 
 And here the question may reasonably be 
 asked, since we have science, what is the need 
 or the use of philosophy ? What is philos- 
 ophy, anyhow? Well, I repeat, philosophy 
 is the attempt to answer the question which 
 some men ask about life and experience, 
 " What does it all mean ? What is the good 
 of it all ? " Now, there are many sciences 
 mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, 
 biology, physiology, geology, and hosts of 
 others but not one of them even asks, much 
 less answers, the question which is the most 
 interesting question of all What does our 
 experience come to ? What does it all mean ? 
 What is the good of it all ? It is philosophy 
 and philosophy alone which puts that question 
 and attempts to answer it. 
 
 Each of the particular sciences deals with 
 one particular set of facts. Philosophy, on 
 the other hand, is the attempt to contemplate 
 all experience and all being, not to deal with 
 any one particular set of facts but to regard 
 them as forming one whole, and to ask what 
 is the meaning of the whole. No science does 
 
 that. No science faces all the facts. In war 
 
 y 
 
THE SEPARATE SCIENCES 13 
 
 successful strategy often consists in taking the 
 enemy in detail and in beating one division of 
 the hostile army after the other. And that 
 is the kind of strategy that science employs. 
 Instead of attacking the problems presented 
 by nature all at once, science takes the 
 problems singly and deals with them one at 
 a time. That is why there are so many 
 sciences ; each is told off to do its special 
 work and deal with its own particular problems. 
 Each, therefore, can give us information about 
 its own particular department of knowledge, 
 while none can tell us anything about the 
 iwork of any other science. Still less can 
 any one science undertake to sum up all the 
 work of all the other sciences. 
 
 As I have said, no science faces all the facts. 
 The strategy of science the uniform method 
 of all the sciences consists in dividing the 
 enemy's forces, as it were, and so beating 
 them in detail. Every object has a host of 
 various qualities, and each of those qualities is 
 dealt with separately by a separate science 
 its colour by optics, its weight by physics, its 
 chemical constitution by chemistry, its organism 
 by physiology, and so on. Of course the 
 colour of a thing does not exist separately 
 from the thing ; nor can you take the weight 
 out of a thing, and carry off the weight into 
 
i 4 ABSTRACTION 
 
 one room whilst you leave the thing without 
 any weight in the other. All you can really 
 do is to concentrate your attention on one of 
 the many qualities that a thing possesses, and 
 dismiss from attention all the other qualities. 
 And when we do this, we are said to abstract 
 that particular quality from the thing ; and 
 the quality itself is called an abstraction. 
 These qualities these abstract qualities can 
 be studied by themselves in one way only, and 
 that is by pretending that they exist by them- 
 selves. And the study of such abstractions is 
 what is called science. 
 
 All sciences are abstract sciences. No one of 
 them deals with things as wholes ; every science 
 deals with some one quality of things, that is 
 to say, with some abstraction. Every science 
 studies some one aspect of reality separately ; 
 no one science studies all the aspects of reality 
 together. And yet it is very necessary that 
 all the aspects of reality, that is to say, the 
 whole of our experience should be studied 
 together, because the question will arise, 
 What does it all come to? What is the 
 meaning of it all? And that is just the 
 question which no science undertakes to 
 answer. And the reason why no science 
 even attempts to answer the question is that 
 every science is abstract ; every science deals 
 
ABSTRACT SCIENCE 15 
 
 with this or that abstract quality of things. 
 No one science deals with all the qualities of 
 any single thing. Much less does any science 
 deal with all things together, and ask, What 
 do they all come to ? What is the meaning of 
 them as a whole? 
 
 Science, then, is abstract and studies ab- 
 stractions, not things as wholes. It takes things 
 to pieces, as it were, and studies the pieces 
 separately. Or rather it pretends to take 
 them to pieces, and to take the weight of 
 a thing, or the colour of a thing, and to study 
 these abstractions. But of course it it im- 
 possible to separate the weight from a material 
 thing, just as it is impossible for the thing to 
 exist without weight. And science does not 
 imagine that a material thing can exist without 
 weight, or that weight exists apart from 
 material things. Science knows that these 
 are abstractions, and that the abstract 
 sciences deal with abstractions and not with 
 wholes. Science then is abstract in this 
 way. 
 
 But science is doubly abstract, for it is 
 abstract in another way also. The man of 
 science concentrates his attention on some one 
 of the many qualities that a thing possesses, 
 and studies it, and gains some knowledge of 
 it. The thing could not be studied unless 
 
1 6 SCIENCE AND THE STUDENT 
 
 it were there ; nor could it be studied unless 
 the student were there to study it and gain 
 some knowledge about it. If the thing did 
 not exist it could not be known to the student; 
 and neither could it be known to the student 
 if the student did not exist. Both must be 
 there the student and the thing. But though 
 both must be there, science does not attend to 
 both. The thing has many qualities weight, 
 size, colour, and so on but any particular 
 science attends to only one particular quality, 
 and dismisses the other qualities from attention. 
 So, too, though both the student and the 
 thing studied must be present, if any scientific 
 knowledge of the thing is to be attained, 
 science attends only to the thing studied, and 
 pays no attention to the student. His hopes 
 and fears, his feelings of triumph or of dis- 
 appointment, as his experiment succeeds or 
 fails, matter no more to science than the 
 clothes he wears or the cut of his hair. 
 Science is concerned only with the thing or 
 rather the abstraction studied, not with the 
 student or his indigestion or the dirtiness of 
 his hands. All those things real though 
 they may be science dismisses from attention. 
 It is not the student that science is attending 
 to or cares about, but the experiment. The 
 student may be dismissed from attention, just 
 
SCIENCE DOUBLY ABSTRACT 17 
 
 as all the other qualities of the thing, except 
 the one quality that is under examination, may 
 be dismissed. And science does dismiss the 
 student from attention. 
 
 Hence it is that science is doubly abstract. 
 It is abstract in the first place because it 
 dismisses from attention all qualities except 
 the one under investigation, and pretends that 
 that one alone exists ; and it is abstract in the 
 next place because it dismisses the student 
 from attention and pretends that the thing 
 under investigation alone exists. 
 
 Now, so long as everyone remembers that 
 the thing under investigation does not exist 
 by itself, and could not be under investigation 
 and could not be known, unless there were 
 some one there by whom it was investigated 
 and to whom it was known, so long no harm 
 is done. But this simple fact is not always 
 remembered ; it is sometimes forgotten, and 
 then those who forget it imagine that the 
 thing under investigation can exist all by 
 itself. Yet the notion that the thing exists 
 all by itself is an abstraction of just the same 
 kind as the notion that weight can exist by 
 itself apart from material things, or matter 
 exist without weight. We never find matter 
 apart from weight, or weight apart from 
 matter. And we never find ourselves apart 
 
1 8 THINGS AN ABSTRACTION 
 
 from everything we know. Neither do we 
 ever find the things we know apart from 
 ourselves. How can we? If we find them, 
 we know them ; and if we find and know 
 them, we of course must be there and they, 
 too, must be there. We can pretend, by 
 abstraction, that they alone are there; we 
 can concentrate our attention upon our work 
 or upon some scene of beauty or of horror, 
 and become so absorbed in it as to forget 
 ourselves and our own existence. But we are 
 there all the same. If we forget our own 
 existence, we must be there to do so. 
 
 Just then as weight by itself is an ab- 
 straction, and not a reality, so, too, things 
 by themselves are an abstraction and not a 
 reality. Weight is never found in the abstract, 
 but always in combination with many other 
 qualities. And so, too, things are never found 
 in the abstract and by themselves ; they are 
 always found by somebody or else they are 
 not found at all. We never find the things 
 we know, apart from ourselves. Neither do 
 we ever find ourselves apart from all that we 
 know. 
 
 We can think of ourselves apart from 
 things, just as we can think of things apart 
 from ourselves. But in both cases we are 
 thinking of abstractions and not of realities. 
 
ATTENTION 19 
 
 Things apart from us are unreal abstractions ; 
 and we, apart from things, are equally abstract 
 and unreal. 
 
 No one would maintain that the inside of a 
 curve could be found without the outside, or 
 could exist without it. You can, of course, 
 concentrate your attention on what is inside 
 and dismiss what is outside from attention. 
 But the one side cannot exist without the 
 other; they cannot be divorced. And science, 
 which deals with one quality apart from others, 
 or things apart from the mind that studies 
 them, does not really divorce them ; it simply 
 considers the inside of the curve by itself or 
 the outside by itself. It cannot separate 
 them, for the simple reason that they are 
 inseparable. 
 
 But though the inside and the outside of a 
 curve cannot be separated, they are quite 
 distinguishable, and, in a way, opposed to 
 each other. So, too, the person or subject 
 who attends to something is quite distinguish- 
 able from the object to which he attends, and 
 is, in a way, opposed to it. 
 
 Perhaps, however, you will feel that the 
 subject or person who attends to things is 
 not always attending to the same thing. And 
 that is undeniable. But if you are not attend- 
 ing to one thing, you are to another; so long 
 
20 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 as you are conscious at all, you are conscious 
 of something. You are always aware of some 
 object or other. You the subject can't 
 get on without some object. You are, let us 
 say, the outside of the curve. Well! you 
 can't get on without an inside. 
 
 But what about things ? Well ! are they 
 things that anybody knows, or things that 
 nobody knows? If they are things nobody 
 knows, no one need pay any attention to 
 them indeed, nobody can. And if they are 
 things that are known, why! then they are 
 objects of attention, the inside of that curve 
 of which the mind is the outside or, if you 
 like it better, they are the outside of that 
 curve of which the mind is the inside. 
 
 But the root of the whole matter and the 
 key to all philosophy is that the two sides 
 of the curve, though distinguishable, are in- 
 separable. Subject and object cannot be 
 divorced. We may consider the one apart 
 from the other. But if we do so, we are 
 considering an abstraction and not a reality. 
 We may consider matter apart from mind, or 
 mind apart from matter ; we may consider the 
 subject apart from the object, or the object 
 apart from the subject. But in either case we 
 are starting from an abstraction and not from 
 a reality. 
 
MIND AND MATTER 21 
 
 We may put our backs to the inside of the 
 curve and walk away from it, or we may put 
 our backs to the outside of the curve and 
 walk away in the opposite direction. And, 
 whichever we do, the further we go, the 
 further away we get from reality. On one 
 side of the curve lies matter, and the world of 
 material objects ; on the other lies mind and 
 its various manifestations. Whether we go 
 forward into the world of material objects or 
 into the sphere of mind and its manifestations, 
 we are plunging deeper and deeper into a 
 collection of abstractions, and getting further 
 and further away from reality. 
 
 If we go in the one direction we find 
 nothing but matter and motion ; and then we 
 shall be tempted to proclaim that there is no 
 reality but matter in motion. If we go in the 
 other direction we shall find nothing but mental 
 states and mental processes ; and then we shall 
 be tempted to proclaim that there is no such 
 thing as matter, but only mental processes and 
 mental states. But the truth is that matter 
 apart from mind, or mind apart from objects, 
 is a mere abstraction, an unreality. This I 
 shall dwell on at greater length in the next 
 chapter. For the moment I wish to consider 
 an argument that may already have suggested 
 itself to your minds. 
 
12 ANALYSIS 
 
 It is this. Granted, you may say, that 
 every science deals with abstractions, such as 
 the weight of things, or colour, or number; 
 surely that is the proper method of procedure: 
 let us attack the various problems in detail 
 first, and afterwards let us piece our results 
 together. The only way, you may say, in 
 which to see how anything is made is to 
 take it to pieces, and then to put it together 
 again. 
 
 Now, this might be a very admirable 
 method of procedure, if it were possible with 
 the things of nature as it is with the things 
 made by man. But it is not possible. A 
 watch that man has made, man can take to 
 pieces and put together again. An egg that 
 a hen has laid may be taken to pieces or 
 analysed by man but he can't put it together 
 again. 
 
 And there are some things that man cannot 
 take to pieces ; he cannot take one side of a 
 curve and put it down here, and take the 
 other side of a curve and put it down there. 
 He cannot separate himself from all the things 
 that he knows and put them down by them- 
 selves in one place and himself without any 
 of them in another. Still less even if he 
 could would it be possible to bring them 
 together again. Yet that is precisely what 
 
KNOWER AND KNOWN 23 
 
 was suggested just now as the proper method 
 of procedure. It was in effect suggested that 
 man and the things he knows, or the subject 
 and the object, are, as it were, the two ends of 
 a stick ; and that, if you want to separate them 
 and study them apart from each other, you 
 have only got to cut the stick in two, and 
 there you are. 
 
 But you cannot separate the subject and the 
 object in that way, just as you cannot cut the 
 end off a stick. Perhaps, however, as some 
 persons think that the subject can be separated 
 from the object, you think you can cut the end 
 off a stick. There is the stick, with two ends. 
 Are you quite so sure that you can cut one 
 end off? Cut a piece off, and then tell me 
 how many ends the stick has ! Of course it 
 still has two, and always will have two, how- 
 ever many pieces you chop off. And so, too, 
 you never can chop off the object from the 
 subject. Every stick has two ends all the 
 time. And they cannot be separated, any 
 more than the two sides of a curve can; or 
 than subject and object you and all that you 
 know can be separated. 
 
 And now to sum up this chapter. 
 
 Philosophy consists in reflecting upon experi- 
 ence for the purpose of discovering whether 
 experience, as a whole, has any meaning ; and, 
 
24 PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 
 
 if so, what meaning. But experience is con- 
 tinually increasing ; and, as experience never 
 ceases, philosophy never comes to an end ; it 
 never can be final. The dogmatist, however, 
 thinks that his explanation of the world and 
 life is final ; while the sceptic in philosophy 
 thinks that no explanation whatever will hold 
 water ; he thinks that experience has no mean- 
 ing whatever. Both the dogmatist and the 
 sceptic, however, are wrong ; the dogmatist is 
 wrong in thinking that any explanation is final ; 
 the sceptic is wrong in denying that experi- 
 ence is a whole. The sceptic says that ex- 
 perience cannot be a whole because it is 
 continually increasing. And he is wrong in 
 saying so, because a circle, for instance, is a 
 whole, and yet it may expand and increase 
 continually without ceasing to be a circle and 
 a whole. We shall therefore hold that experi- 
 ence is a whole. But we shall not lay it down 
 dogmatically that experience is a whole; we 
 shall always recognise that this is only a sup- 
 position or hypothesis that we put forward ; 
 and that we have perpetually to enquire 
 whether it does really explain all the facts. 
 In this respect philosophy is like science ; for 
 science also makes hypotheses and is constantly 
 modifying them so that they may fit all the 
 facts. But though philosophy and science 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND EXISTENCE 15 
 
 both make hypotheses and then modify them 
 to suit the facts though philosophy and 
 science are alike in this respect yet there 
 is a great difference between them. The 
 difference is this: each science deals with 
 one particular set of facts and no one science 
 deals with all the facts of experience, whereas 
 it is with all the facts and with experience as 
 a whole that philosophy deals ; for the object 
 and purpose of philosophy is to enquire, what 
 does all our experience come to what is the 
 meaning of it all ? 
 
 That is the difference between science and 
 philosophy : philosophy deals with experience 
 as a whole with life as it is lived. Science 
 deals with abstractions : it treats of the move- 
 ments of the stars, or of the weight or the 
 colour or the numerical relations of things. 
 And these are all abstractions. Again, the 
 things studied by science are studied by some- 
 body and known to somebody ; they could not 
 be known unless they were known by someone. 
 But this fact is set aside by science. Science 
 abstracts the things known, and treats them as 
 though they existed without being known. 
 But the truth is that knowledge and existence 
 are like the two sides of a curve ; the two 
 sides are different in a way, and yet they are 
 inseparable. Now, it is from that fact that we 
 
26 KNOWLEDGE AND EXISTENCE 
 
 ought to start, that the curve has two sides. 
 But some people think that we need only 
 attend to one of the two sides, to the side on 
 which matter is, or to the side on which mind 
 is. They even think we can deny the exist- 
 ence of the other side. It seems rather strange 
 to suppose that a curve has only one side, or 
 that a stick has only one end ; but we must 
 enquire what grounds there are for thinking 
 so. And in the next chapter we will enquire. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 I SAID in the last chapter that our experience 
 of life is sometimes bitter so bitter that we 
 cannot help asking, What does it all mean? 
 What is the good of it all ? And I pointed 
 out that philosophy is just the attempt to 
 answer these questions. Philosophy takes 
 experience, all together, as a whole, and asks 
 what it all means. Further, I argued that 
 there can be no experience, except where 
 there is some one who experiences something. 
 The some one and the something are, as it were, 
 the two sides of a curve. On the inside of the 
 curve is the internal world of our thoughts and 
 feelings, sensations and ideas, our pleasures and 
 pains ; on the outside of the curve is the 
 external world of moving, material things. 
 On the inside of the curve is mind, on the 
 outside is matter. On the one side is the 
 subject; on the other, the object, of 
 experience. 
 
28 CONSTRUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Now, constructive philosophers assume that 
 experience is really, if we could only see it 
 properly, a whole, and an intelligible whole, 
 with some good in it ; and they try to show 
 that such is the nature of experience. Destruct- 
 ive philosophers, however, that is to say 
 sceptical philosophers, try to show that no 
 such explanation does explain all the facts in 
 an intelligible manner for the simple reason 
 that, as it seems to them, the facts are unintel- 
 ligible. But constructive philosophers, though 
 they agree that experience is a whole, and 
 that the business of philosophy is to try to 
 understand it, are by no means agreed as to 
 what it is that we have experience of. Some 
 think that moving, material things, outside us, 
 are the only realities of which we have ex- 
 perience. Others think that the only things 
 we know for certain are our own sensations. 
 
 Let us then examine each of these two 
 views ; and let us begin with the one which 
 asserts that the outside of the curve, the 
 external world of matter, and material, moving 
 things, the objects of which we have experi- 
 ence, alone are real. With this view we all 
 must have a certain sympathy. At any rate 
 it is a view which is easily understood. If we 
 are asked what reality is, we may not be able 
 to say offhand ; but we can easily point to 
 
MATERIAL THINGS 29 
 
 real things. The walls which we see, the 
 desk which we touch, the chair on which we 
 sit, and the ground on which it rests are all 
 real things. And they are all material ; they 
 are all matter in one form or another. Every- 
 thing that we can see, touch, hear, smell, and 
 taste is real and material. The earth on 
 which we live, and the countless stars around 
 it are all real and all of them are matter. 
 
 Further we know from personal observation 
 that many of these material things move ; and 
 science tells us that everyone of these things 
 is made up of molecules, which are all of them 
 vibrating with great rapidity, though the mole- 
 cules are so infinitely small that we cannot see 
 or feel their vibration and motion. Thus of 
 every object we perceive or can perceive, 
 whether by the senses or by means of the 
 scientific imagination, of every object and of 
 the whole objective world we can say that it 
 is matter in motion. 
 
 Not only can we say of every object and 
 of the whole objective world of all on the 
 outside of the curve that it is matter in 
 motion, but, thanks to the labours of science, 
 we even know many of the laws according to 
 which matter moves. 
 
 First of all there is what is called the Law 
 of Universal Causation, that is the great law 
 
30 LAWS 
 
 that nothing whatever can happen without a 
 cause. The value of this law for the purposes 
 of science is immense, for, even when we do 
 not know what is the cause of a thing in which 
 we are for any reason interested, we may be 
 sure that it must have a cause ; and so long as 
 we know that, we can go on trying to find it 
 out, until we do find it out. That is the faith 
 which supports the men of science in their long 
 labours : they know there is a cause for every- 
 thing that happens, however long and arduous 
 the search for it may be. 
 
 Next, there is another great law which is 
 called the Law of the Uniformity of Nature. 
 Not only must everything have a cause, as the 
 Law of Universal Causation affirms, but a cause 
 must always if not counteracted by some 
 other cause have its effect ; and that is the 
 Law of the Uniformity of Nature ; the same 
 cause always has, or tends to have, the same 
 effect. 
 
 Indeed, the Law of the Uniformity of Nature 
 goes further, for it assumes that the same 
 causes are uniformly at work. It is because 
 the same causes are uniformly and always at 
 work that we get to know how they work. 
 The Law of Universal Causation would not be 
 of iuch use to us, if no cause ever operated 
 more than once, and if at every moment some 
 
CAUSATION AND UNIFORMITY 31 
 
 new cause were at work that had never acted 
 before, and never would act again. In such 
 a case the Law of Universal Causation might 
 still be true, it might still be true< that every- 
 thing had a cause ; but if at every moment some 
 new cause came into operation that we had never 
 come across before, there would be no Uni- 
 formity in Nature, and we could never possibly 
 know what to expect next. 
 
 But if these laws of the Uniformity of Nature 
 and of Universal Causation are true, we can 
 know, or can learn, not only the effects of 
 causes which are at work, but we can discover 
 also the causes of the things we see around 
 us. We can see, or science can see and tell 
 us, how the world around us has come to be 
 what it is. And that is precisely what the 
 theory of Evolution does undertake to tell us. 
 It shows us how the various species of animals 
 and plants have come to be what they are ; it 
 traces them back to the earliest speck of 
 protoplasm. It shows how the earth at one 
 time was a molten mass as indeed, except for 
 a thin crust on its surface, it is now. It shows 
 how at a still earlier period the whole of what 
 is now the solar system was a nebulous vapour. 
 But nebulous though it was, the vapour was 
 then, as the earth is now, matter in motion, ^l 
 
 And not only does the theory of Evolution 
 
32 FREEDOM 
 
 tell us what has been, and how it has come to 
 be what it is ; not only does it tell us the 
 causes of all that we see around us, but it also 
 foretells the effect of the causes at work. 
 The earth and the sun must eventually lose all 
 their heat, for their heat is radiating away into 
 space as hard as it can ; the earth will eventu- 
 ally become uninhabitable, as the moon is now, 
 for it will freeze down and at last it will have 
 neither heat nor light to give out, but will 
 become like one of the other black invisible 
 bodies of matter in motion which are moving 
 about in space. 
 
 All this follows from the Law of the Uni- 
 formity of Nature. The same causes are 
 always at work, and all tend to produce the 
 same results. There is no freedom in nature, 
 no variety, no spontaneity ; everything is 
 according to law the Laws of Nature. There 
 is only one course which events can follow 
 that which is determined for them by the laws 
 of Causation and the Uniformity of Nature. 
 If only we knew all the causes at work now 
 and could understand the way in which they 
 worked, and worked in with one another, we 
 could foretell and foresee with absolute 
 certainty everything that is to happen. All 
 that has happened, and all that will happen, is 
 fixed absolutely and irrevocably. Nothing can 
 
MEANING 33 
 
 alter it. It is all predetermined, and we cannot 
 modify or change it by one hair's breadth. 
 We might as well be non-existent, for any- 
 thing we can do to change it. 
 
 And that brings us round to the funda- 
 mental question, with which we started in the 
 first chapter, What is the good of it all ? We 
 said that philosophy is the attempt to answer, 
 or at any rate to see if there is any answer to 
 the questions which we cannot help asking 
 What does it all mean ? What is the good of it 
 all ? Well, then, how far does the philosophy, 
 which I have been expounding to you for the 
 last few minutes, seem to you to answer those 
 questions? It started, you will remember, 
 from the assumption that the only real things 
 are things that we can see and touch, that is 
 to say that the only reality is matter in motion 
 that the things on the outside of the curve 
 are real, and that the things on the inside, our 
 sensations and thoughts and feelings, are not. 
 If this assumption leads to conclusions which 
 are felt to be satisfactory, we shall accept the 
 conclusions. If not, we will try some other 
 assumption. But, at the present, what I wish 
 to ask you is whether the conclusions are 
 satisfactory. 
 
 Starting from experience we asked, What 
 does it all mean ? What is the good of it all ? 
 c 
 
34 MEANING AND EXPLANATION 
 
 We are told that the only reality we find in 
 our experience is matter in motion ; and con- 
 sequently that the only meaning, in all that we 
 do and suffer and go through, is that particles 
 of matter move about according to the Laws of 
 Universal Causation and the Uniformity of 
 Nature. That is the only lesson there is to 
 be learnt ! 
 
 It may be one lesson that is to be learnt, 
 but it certainly is not the only one; nor is 
 it the most important or the most interesting 
 one. It may be true that particles of matter 
 are continually in motion ; but there are many 
 other truths which are of much higher value. 
 The experience that each one of us has gone 
 through means much more than that. What 
 does all our experience mean ? It is absurd 
 to say that its only meaning is that particles 
 of matter move about. That may be true, 
 but it is not the whole truth or the funda- 
 mental truth. It is not a satisfactory explana- 
 tion of experience indeed, it is not an ex- 
 planation at all. If experience is to be 
 explained, it is necessary to show that it has 
 some good end. If it has no good end, it is 
 no good ; and there was no good in our going 
 through it. An explanation of our experience, 
 if it is to be a satisfactory explanation, must 
 explain what is the good of it. And what 
 
ASSUMPTIONS OF MATERIALISM 35 
 
 conceivable good is there in particles of matter 
 being moved about ? 
 
 The philosophy then the materialistic 
 philosophy which endeavours to explain the 
 whole of our experience by saying that there 
 is nothing in it but matter in motion, that what 
 our experience all comes to is that there is no 
 reality but matter in motion, proves to be an 
 unsatisfactory explanation, because it can give 
 no answer to the very natural question, Then 
 what is the good of it all ? But if Materialism 
 is reduced to admit that it cannot see or say 
 what good there is in it all, it may be that 
 Materialism is based upon an assumption which 
 is false. Now, the assumption on which 
 Materialism is based is a double or twofold 
 assumption. It is the assumption, first, that the 
 material things which we see, feel and touch 
 and hear are real ; and next, that those 
 material things are the only reality of which 
 we have experience. At first sight it may 
 seem, however, that to say that the material 
 things around us are real is not an assumption. 
 It may seem to you that it is not an assumption 
 at all, but a simple fact, that the material things 
 around us the walls and the ground, the tables 
 and chairs, and so on are real. We will, there- 
 fore, for the present not argue that point, though 
 we may have to come back to it hereafter. 
 
36 MATTER AND REALITY 
 
 But what about the other point, that 
 the material things around us are the only 
 real things that there are? That plainly 
 is an assumption ; there may quite possibly, 
 and quite conceivably be, for anything we 
 know, other things that are real and yet are 
 not material things. Your thoughts, feelings, 
 ideas, sensations are quite real, but you 
 cannot see or touch a thought. You may 
 talk of an idea as a great idea, yet you cannot 
 measure it with a tape. You may speak of 
 weighty arguments, yet you cannot really put 
 them on a pair of scales and weigh them. 
 Your thoughts and ideas are quite real, though 
 you cannot measure them with a yard-measure, 
 or touch them with your fingers. They are 
 quite real though they are not material things. 
 
 Thus, though it may be true that material 
 things are real, it is an assumption that 
 material things are the only realities we are 
 aware of. Now, the assumptions that we 
 make in the ordinary course of life may turn 
 out to be true, or they may turn out to be 
 false. When we make an assumption we 
 think it may, or even that it will probably, 
 turn out to be true, but we don't know that it 
 will. It is only experience which will show. 
 I assume that my train will be punctual. 
 That is an assumption which may turn out 
 
EXPERIENCE TESTS ASSUMPTIONS 37 
 
 true or not. Experience alone will show 
 whether it is or is not. And the assumptions 
 we make in philosophy are of just the same 
 kind: when we make them, they seem likely 
 to turn out true, but experience alone will 
 show whether they prove true. 
 
 Thus in philosophy some of us assume that 
 there is a meaning in our experience of the 
 world, and that there is some good in life. 
 But whether the assumption is true or not 
 depends on what experience has to say. So, 
 too, in philosophy some people assume not 
 only that material things are real, but that 
 they are the only realities. Whether this 
 assumption will explain all the facts is a 
 question which can only be tested by ex- 
 perience. If in your experience there are 
 things, such as joy and grief, thoughts and 
 ideas, which are indubitably real and undoubt- 
 edly not material things, then the assumption, 
 that matter in motion alone exists and alone is 
 real, is an assumption which does not account 
 for all the facts. And in philosophy what we 
 want is an assumption which will fit in with 
 the whole of our experience, and account for 
 it all. 
 
 Now, the theory of Materialism is a philo- 
 sophical theory. That is to say, it is an 
 assumption which is made in the belief that 
 
38 MATERIALISM & CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 all the facts of experience will fit into it, when 
 we come to examine them. If some of the 
 undoubted facts of experience do not fit in with 
 it, then it is an assumption which does not 
 explain all the facts, and it cannot be accepted 
 as the correct explanation of our experience. 
 Materialism certainly does not account for all the 
 facts. It is an obvious fact that it is we who 
 have experience. That is just as plain as it 
 is that there are things which we experience. 
 But Materialism leaves out of account us who 
 have the experience, and attends only to the 
 things. As I have already said, Materialism 
 sees only the things on the outside of the 
 curve the world of material objects. It 
 closes its eyes to the inside of the curve our 
 thoughts and ideas and sensations and pains 
 and joys. 
 
 Not only does Materialism close its eyes to 
 them at the start, and say that in the beginning 
 there was only matter in motion ; but it never 
 accounts for the existence of consciousness. 
 Indeed, if it were right in its assumption that 
 matter alone really exists, the consequences 
 would follow that our thoughts and ideas, our 
 joy and grief, and our very consciousness do 
 not exist. But we have no doubt about our own 
 consciousness and our own existence ; and we 
 see accordingly that the assumption on which 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS REAL 39 
 
 Materialism is based is a false assumption, for 
 it assumes that our feelings and thoughts are 
 not real. It is an assumption made for the 
 purpose of explaining our experience ; and it 
 accounts only for one side of our experience, 
 viz. the outside of the curve, the world of 
 material objects; and it leaves, unexplained 
 and unaccounted for, the inside of the curve, 
 the thoughts and sensations of the subject. 
 
 It is, therefore, not wonderful if other 
 philosophers have tried to account for what 
 the Materialists have left unexplained. The 
 Materialist placed his back to the outside of 
 the curve and walked forth into the world of 
 matter and material objects ; and the further 
 he advanced the further away he got, until he 
 forgot and even denied that the curve had an 
 inside. The only realities, he declared, were 
 the material things, the matter in motion on 
 the outside of the curve. But since the 
 thoughts and ideas, the griefs and the joys that 
 we all have, are undoubtedly real, it was in- 
 evitable that some philosophers should turn to 
 the inside of the curve and seek to find reality 
 in its contents. These philosophers place 
 their back to the inner side of the curve and 
 plunge in that direction in the search for 
 reality. And we have now to follow them. 
 
 And you will see at once that the furthei 
 
40 EXISTENCE OF MATTER 
 
 they travel and the deeper they get into the 
 inside, the greater is the danger that they will 
 forget that the curve has an outside, just as the 
 other philosophers, the Materialists, forgot that 
 it had an inside. However, you are quite sure 
 that the material things which you can see, 
 touch, feel, hear, taste, and smell are real. 
 There does not seem to you to be any sup- 
 position or assumption about that. It may 
 also be true that your sensations and thoughts 
 and feelings are real ; but you have no doubt 
 that the chair on which you sit, the ground on 
 which it rests, and the things around you are 
 both material and real. 
 
 You have no doubt about the existence of 
 matter. You have the evidence of your senses 
 to prove that it is there. You look at the 
 desk and you have a sensation of sight. You 
 run your hand over it and you have the sensa- 
 tion of smoothness. You press your hand on 
 it and you have the sensation of resistance. Or, 
 you have an orange in your hand and, when 
 you peel it, you have a sensation of smell. 
 When you put it to your mouth you have the 
 sensation of taste. Or, there is a bell in the 
 tower and, when the clapper strikes the bell, 
 you have the sensation of sound. But the 
 sensation of taste, of course, is in your mouth : 
 if you had no palate you would have no taste. 
 
SENSATIONS AND THINGS 41 
 
 And the sensation of smell is in your nostrils : 
 it is not in the rose. The sensation of sound 
 which arises, when the clapper strikes the bell, 
 is in your ears and not in the bell : if you 
 were stone deaf, the clapper might strike the 
 bell ever so hard and you would have no 
 sensation of sound. So the sensation of sound 
 is in you : it is not in the bell. And the 
 sensation of taste is not in the plum-pudding 
 in the shop-window : it is, or will be, in you. 
 And so, too, if nobody smelt the rose, there 
 would be no sensation of smell. 
 
 Evidently, therefore, the sensation you have 
 when you smell the rose is not the same thing 
 as the rose. And the sensation you have when 
 the bell is rung is not the same thing as the 
 bell. Nor is the taste of the apple the same 
 thing as the apple. The sensations of taste 
 and smell and sound, when you have them, 
 are in you, and not in the apple or orange 
 or bell. 
 
 But you can see the apple or the orange, 
 when it is before you. And since you can see 
 it you know that it is there, a real, material 
 thing : seeing is believing. But you will admit 
 that what you mean by seeing a thing is that 
 you have a sensation of sight. And evidently 
 the sensation of sight is in you and not in the 
 thing. So the sensation of sight is just like 
 
42 SENSATIONS AND THINGS 
 
 the sensations of sound and smell and taste: 
 they are all in you and not in the things. 
 
 But you may say the apple is here in my 
 hand : I can feel it, smooth and hard. Yes ! 
 you can feel it. But what does that mean? 
 It means that you have a feeling the feeling 
 of smoothness or the feeling of firmness and 
 resistance. You have the feeling or sensation, 
 just as you had the sensation of smell or of 
 sound or of taste or of sight. And like those 
 sensations, the sensation of smoothness or 
 resistance is in you, not in the things. All 
 the sensations you have are, without exception, 
 in you. 
 
 But, you will say, "the real material things 
 are not in me : they are quite separate from 
 me and independent of me and my sensations. 
 They are there ! " Well, then, I want to know, 
 first of all, what exactly is there; and, next, 
 whether it would matter if it was not there. 
 
 Let us start once more with the orange. 
 When you have it in your hand, you have 
 sensations of sight, sensations of firmness 
 and roughness, of smell and of taste. But 
 you say that there is something more : there 
 is the matter of which it is made. Now what 
 is this " matter " ? It is not, you say, any of 
 the sensations which you have. It is not 
 your tasting, smelling, seeing, touching : they 
 
SENSATIONS AND MATTER 43 
 
 are all sensations, and matter is something dif- 
 ferent from any sensation. Well, then, if it is 
 different from any sensation you ever had, or 
 ever can have, what is it like ? what can it be ? 
 and how can you know it ? All that you know 
 about any of the things around you, you know 
 by your sensations. Go through everything 
 you know about the orange and you will find 
 all you know about it is the sensations of 
 sweetness and firmness and roughness and 
 smoothness, and so on, that you have, v 
 
 But you will obstinately have it that over 
 and above these sensations, or below or behind 
 them, there is something more, which you call 
 " matter," and that this u matter" is quite 
 different from any sensation that you have of 
 it. What it is, or what it is like, you cannot 
 possibly say. And yet you ask me to believe 
 in it. How can I ? 
 
 If anybody came up to you, for instance, and 
 told you that there was something there which 
 neither he nor you nor anyone could see or 
 feel or touch or hear or taste or smell, but he 
 was sure it was there what should you think 
 of him? Of course you would think that 
 he did not know what he was talking about. 
 Well, when people talk about " matter," are 
 you quite sure that they know what they are 
 talking about ? 
 
44 WHAT IS MATTER? 
 
 Anyhow, it is not easy to understand exactly 
 what they do mean. Generally, they seem to 
 mean, as I said just now, that matter is quite 
 different from any sensation that anybody ever 
 has of it. And then, as we have seen, they 
 cannot say what it is. But as they, like you, 
 are quite sure that matter does exist, would it 
 help to improve things and make them a little 
 more intelligible, if, instead of saying that 
 matter is quite different from any sensation 
 anybody has of it, we were to turn it round and 
 say just the opposite that matter and material 
 things are just exactly what we see, and nothing 
 more or different? That seems to remove all 
 mystery and make everything plain. 
 
 But how does the case stand then? We 
 have sensations of sight, touch, sound, taste, 
 smell ; and when we ask u and what is matter ? " 
 we are now told, matter is just those sensations, 
 and nothing more or different. But, if that is 
 the case, then there are sensations of sight, 
 touch, taste, and so on, but there is nothing 
 more than sensations, nothing different from 
 them; and, in that case, there is no "matter." 
 
 Once more, then, we are driven to the 
 conclusion either that matter does not exist, 
 or, at any rate, that it is very difficult to 
 understand what is meant by the people who 
 say that it does exist. And this brings me to 
 
DOES MATTER EXIST? 45 
 
 the other question I raised a minute or two 
 ago : suppose matter did not exist, would it 
 make any very great difference ? If I have 
 the sensations of tasting and eating a meal and 
 of feeling refreshed and fit to work after it, I 
 am satisfied. Certainly I shall not be in the 
 least disturbed by discovering matter does not 
 exist, or by discovering that those who believe 
 in it have to admit that it is something which 
 nobody can possibly see or touch or taste or 
 hear or smell, or feel that it is in itself 
 something unknown and unknowable. 
 
 Now, I do not suppose that what I have 
 said is enough to convince you that matter 
 does not exist ; but I hope it is enough to 
 show you that if anyone asks you, " What is 
 matter ? " the question is not one which it is 
 easy to answer. Matter is not the sensations 
 or feelings that you and I have. And if you 
 take any object, such as a chair or a table, 
 which you are in the habit of calling a material 
 thing, >and ask yourself what you actually 
 know of it, you will find that all you can say of 
 it is that you have certain sensations of touch 
 and sight, and so on. And if that is so, why 
 should you say anything more ? Why should 
 you say that, besides the sensations of touch and 
 sight and taste and sound, and so on, which you 
 have and which you know, there is something 
 
46 THE SENSATION PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 else which you don't know, and which you call 
 Matter? Why not confine yourself to what 
 you do know from experience, that is, the fact 
 that you have sensations, and that certain 
 sensations go together, so that when you have 
 a certain sensation of yellowness and roundness, 
 you know that you can have a certain sensation 
 of taste ? The orange will taste and smell 
 exactly the same, whether you believe that 
 over and above all your sensations there is 
 some mysterious thing which you call Matter, 
 or whether you don't, v 
 
 Now, there are some philosophers who say 
 that we know we have sensations and that we 
 don't know that there is anything else. And 
 as they maintain that sensations are the only 
 reality, they are called Sensationalists or the 
 Sensational philosophers. Or sometimes, be- 
 cause they do not believe in Matter, but do 
 say that we have sensations and ideas, they 
 are called Idealists. They are, of course, 
 altogether opposed to the Materialists. 
 
 The Materialists, you will remember, assume 
 that there is matter, matter in motion ; and 
 that there is nothing else. The Sensation 
 philosophers assume that there are sensations, 
 and that there is nothing else. And why do 
 they make these assumptions ? For the simple 
 reason that, when we reflect upon our experi- 
 
THE MATERIALIST'S ASSUMPTIONS 47 
 
 ence of the world and life, we want to know 
 what it all comes to, what it all means, what 
 is the good of it all. 
 
 It is clear that, when we ask ourselves what 
 our experience means, and what it all comes 
 to, we do not know what it all means, or what 
 it all comes to. And it is because we don't 
 know, that we have to make suppositions and 
 frame hypotheses. And when we have framed 
 a hypothesis, or made an assumption, we have 
 to see whether it does what it is intended 
 to do, that is to say, whether it does really ex- 
 plain our experience, and show us what it all 
 comes to. 
 
 The assumption or supposition which the 
 Materialist makes is that matter, matter in 
 motion, alone exists. And it is clear that that 
 supposition will not explain all our experience, 
 because we certainly have experience of our 
 own thoughts and feelings, and they certainly 
 are not material things ; they cannot be 
 weighed in a pair of scales or measured by a 
 foot-rule. So the supposition of the Materialist, 
 that matter alone exists, will not explain all 
 our experience. Even if matter exists and 
 is real, our own thoughts and feelings and 
 sensations and ideas are real also. 
 
 Accordingly, other philosophers, the Sensa- 
 tionalists or Idealists, put forward another 
 
48 SENSATIONALISM & MATERIALISM 
 
 supposition or assumption. They say, let us 
 suppose that sensations or ideas exist ; and 
 what is more they say, let us suppose that 
 sensations or ideas alone exist that there are 
 no material things, or matter. The question 
 then is whether these suppositions, which the 
 Senationalist invites us to make, will explain our 
 experience and enable us to understand what 
 it all comes to. For if they will not, we 
 shall have to abandon them and seek for 
 some other supposition which will explain 
 our experience as a whole and show us 
 what it all comes to. 
 
 Now, every curve has both an inside and an 
 outside ; and neither can exist without the 
 other. You can look at the one side and 
 forget the other; but it is there all the same. 
 And so, too, in experience, there is the person 
 who has the experience, and there is the 
 experience which he has. You may look at 
 the one and forget the other ; but it is there 
 all the same. And Materialism looks at the 
 one side of the curve, and sees the world of 
 material things and seeing them, it forgets 
 the other side of the curve altogether. The 
 supposition which it makes is that material 
 things, on the outside of the curve, alone exist 
 and are real. Its supposition, therefore, leaves 
 out of account one-half of our experience 
 
SENSATIONALIST OR IDEALIST 49 
 
 the half that lies on the inside of the curve. 
 Its supposition, therefore, offers no explanation 
 of one side of our experience. It cannot, 
 therefore, be accepted as a satisfactory ex- 
 planation of the whole. 
 
 The Sensationalist philosopher looks at the 
 other side, the inside, of the curve, and sees 
 the inner world of our thoughts and feelings 
 and sensations and ideas and, seeing them, 
 the Sensationalist or Idealist forgets the other 
 side of the curve altogether. The Sensa- 
 tionalist, like the Materialist, makes a supposi- 
 tion ; but whereas the Materialist says, let us 
 suppose that the material things, on the 
 outside of the curve, alone exist and are real, 
 the Sensationalist says, let us suppose that the 
 sensations and ideas, on the inside of the 
 curve alone exist and are real. So the Sensa- 
 tionalist leaves out of account one-half of our 
 experience the half that lies on the outside 
 of the curve. The supposition, therefore, that 
 the Sensationalist invites us to make, offers no 
 explanation of one side of our experience 
 our experience of the external world. It 
 cannot, therefore, be accepted as a satisfactory 
 explanation of the whole of our experience. 
 
 But if the supposition or assumption which 
 the Sensationalist invites us to make cannot 
 possibly be a satisfactory explanation of the 
 
50 EXPERIENCE AND ITS MEANING 
 
 whole of our experience, it must be a false 
 assumption. We must look into that point in 
 the next chapter. 
 
 There can be no experience, except where 
 there is some one who experiences something. 
 The some one and the something are, as it 
 were, the two sides of a curve. Materialist 
 philosophers hold that the outside of the curve, 
 the external world of matter and material, 
 moving things, the objects of which we have 
 experience, alone are real. The material 
 things which we see and touch are, on this 
 assumption, the only realities, and they move 
 and behave in accordance with the Laws of 
 the Uniformity of Nature and of Universal 
 Causation. The theory of Evolution can be 
 set forth in accordance with these laws and 
 with the assumption that material things alone 
 are real. The philosophy of Materialism, 
 however, that is, the assumption that matter 
 in motion is all that we have experience of, 
 affords no answer to the question, what does 
 our experience mean what is the good of it 
 all ? And it accounts only for one side of our 
 experience the outside of the curve, the 
 world of material objects: and it leaves, un- 
 explained and unaccounted for, the inside of 
 the curve, the thoughts and sensations of the 
 subject. It makes what you at any rate must 
 
SENSATIONALISM OR IDEALISM 51 
 
 consider one great omission ; for you may 
 truly say, "it leaves out me ! " 
 
 We turn, then, to the philosophers who hold 
 that the inside of the curve, our sensations and 
 ideas, alone are real. They are the Sensation 
 philosophers or Idealists. For the existence 
 of matter we have the evidence of the senses, 
 that is to say, sensations. But the sensations 
 we have are all in us, not in the things : what 
 then is "matter"? It is not any sensation 
 you have, but something different from ^iy 
 sensation, that is to say, something totally 
 unlike what you see or feel or smell or taste 
 or hear. Then, if you suppose matter not to 
 be what you see or feel or taste or hear, 
 would you or anybody miss anything, if you 
 supposed it did not exist? If you have the 
 sensations of seeing, feeling, tasting, eating, 
 and digesting a meal and feeling refreshed 
 after it, why should you say that in addition 
 to all the sensations there was a mysterious 
 something else called " matter " and why 
 should you make this statement, when you 
 cannot prove it ? 
 
 To return to the simile of the curve : every 
 curve has an inside and an outside. The 
 Materialist says let us suppose that what is on 
 the outside of the curve, viz. matter in motion, 
 alone exists ; and then it follows that the curve 
 
52 SENSATIONALIST HYPOTHESIS 
 
 has no inside. The Sensationalist says, let us 
 suppose that what is on the inside of the curve, 
 our sensations and ideas, alone is real ; and 
 then it follows that the curve has no outside. 
 But the object of philosophy is to find out 
 some supposition which, if made, will explain 
 the whole of experience, both the inside and 
 the outside of the curve. And if the Sensa- 
 tionalist hypothesis fails to explain the outside, 
 it cannot be a satisfactory hypothesis. But 
 way it is thus unsatisfactory remains to be 
 enquired. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SCEPTICISM IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 THE questions in which philosophy has its rise 
 are whether our experience, when we come to 
 reflect upon it as a whole, has any meaning, 
 and if so, what. The only way in which 
 philosophy can answer those questions is to 
 make some supposition or assumption about 
 experience; and then see whether that sup- 
 position enables us to understand experience 
 as a whole and to understand what is the good 
 of it all. 
 
 Now, when we speak of experience, we 
 imply not only that there is experience but 
 also that somebody has it. The person who 
 has the experience and the experience which 
 he has are, as it were, the two sides of a line : 
 we may if we will distinguish them, and as a 
 matter of fact we do. We cannot confuse 
 them or mistake one for the other. But we 
 cannot separate them. We cannot take one 
 side of the line away from the other. The 
 
54 MATERIALISM & SENSATIONALISM 
 
 two sides cannot exist apart. We can attend 
 to one side ; and, whilst we are doing so, we 
 can forget about the other. When we do so 
 attend to one side and forget about the other, 
 we are said to be dealing with an abstraction. 
 And it is, as has been said already, with such 
 abstractions that all science deals. Physical 
 science deals with abstractions on one side of 
 the line with such abstractions as weight, or 
 light, or heat, or motion, or matter. Psy- 
 chology, or the science of the mind, deals with 
 abstractions on the other side of the line 
 with such abstractions as sensations, feelings, 
 will. And when the question arises, what is 
 the meaning of our experience? what does 
 it all come to? some philosophers look out 
 from one side of the line and say that they can 
 see nothing but matter in motion ; while others 
 look out from the other side of the line and 
 say they can see nothing but sensations. 
 
 The supposition which the Materialist 
 philosophers make is : let us suppose that 
 matter in motion alone exists. But that sup- 
 position obviously will not explain all our 
 experience, for our thoughts and ideas and 
 sensations certainly exist, and certainly are not 
 material things. The supposition which the 
 Sensationalist philosophers make is : let us 
 suppose that sensations exist and that sensa- 
 
SENSATIONS 55 
 
 tions alone exist. But that supposition obviously 
 will not explain all our experience, for the 
 world of things around us certainly exists. 
 
 Then, if the Sensation philosopher is wrong 
 in saying that our sensations alone exist, and 
 that the world of objects around us has no 
 existence and no reality, are we sure that he 
 is right even in saying that there are such 
 things as sensations? That is an important 
 question, because if there are such things as 
 sensations some very remarkable consequences 
 follow. 
 
 Now, it may seem at first very absurd to 
 ask whether there are such things as sensa- 
 tions, because, of course, everybody knows 
 that we have sensations of sight and touch 
 and taste and hearing. But the Sensation 
 philosopher says not only that there are sensa- 
 tions, but that sensations alone exist, and that 
 they can and do exist by themselves. And 
 that, when you come to think of it, is just as 
 absurd as saying not only that some things 
 have weight, but that weight can exist and 
 does exist all by itself. Some knives are 
 sharp ; but it would be absurd to say that 
 sharpness exists, all by itself, and that knives 
 do not that there are no knives. And so, 
 too, it is absurd to say that because we have 
 sensations, therefore sensations can exist and 
 
56 THE SENSATIONALIST HYPOTHESIS 
 
 do exist all by themselves. Sensations by 
 themselves are, of course, abstractions not 
 realities, just as sharpness is an abstraction 
 and not something which you find going about 
 all by itself. 
 
 But that is just the supposition which the 
 Sensation philosophers make, and which they 
 ask you to believe that sensations can and do 
 exist all by themselves. They say, let us 
 suppose that there are sensations, separate 
 sensations, all by themselves, and then we 
 shall be able to explain experience as a whole 
 and to show what is the good of it all. Well, 
 it does not seem to us in the least likely that 
 by starting from sensations by themselves, 
 which are abstractions not realities, that we 
 shall ever get reality out of them : sensations 
 by themselves do not exist, they are nought ; 
 and by adding nought to nought, all we shall 
 get in the end is nought. However, the 
 Sensation philosopher says that if with him we 
 suppose the ultimate facts of our experience to 
 be loose and separate sensations, we shall be 
 able to explain experience as a whole. So let 
 us try to suppose it. 
 
 Of course, if the Sensationalist is right in 
 saying not only that sensations exist, but that 
 sensations alone exist, it naturally follows that 
 matter and material things do not exist. We 
 
THE SENSATIONALIST HYPOTHESIS 57 
 
 will concede that to him right off. When we 
 have the orange in our hands, we have certain 
 sensations of touch and resistance, of sight 
 and colour and smell, and we may have 
 certain sensations of taste. And if anybody 
 asks us what else there is in the orange, and 
 what we mean by saying that the orange is a 
 material thing, or made of matter, we will 
 reply that that is a difficult question. We 
 will look the difficulty boldly in the face and 
 pass on. If, indeed, sensations alone exist, 
 then, of course, matter and material things do 
 not. That naturally follows from the supposi- 
 tion which the Sensation philosopher makes : 
 his supposition is that the world of material 
 things, on the outside of the curve, is not real 
 and does not exist. 
 
 The one thing, and the only thing of which 
 I can be certain, if the Sensation philosopher 
 is right in his supposition, is that I have 
 sensations and that my sensations exist. If I 
 see an orange, I am certain that I have a 
 sensation of sight. If I feel it, I am certain I 
 have a sensation of touch. If I eat it, I am 
 certain I have a sensation of taste. But if I 
 go further and say that in addition to my sen- 
 sations of sight, touch, taste, and so on, there 
 is something else that there is a real orange, 
 then, according to the Sensation philosopher, 
 
58 PERSONS 
 
 I am talking nonsense, and saying I know not 
 what. 
 
 The real orange, according to the Sensation- 
 alist, is simply my sensations and nothing else. 
 Very good ! but, if this is true, let us see 
 what follows. Suppose I am talking with 
 somebody, say with you. What do I know of 
 you ? I see you, that is to say I have certain 
 sensations of sight, as I look at you. I hear 
 you speak, that is to say I have certain 
 sensations of sound, as I listen to you. I 
 shake hands with you, that is to say I have 
 certain sensations of touch, as I feel the grasp 
 of your hand. And then, according to the 
 Sensation philosopher, I go further and say to 
 myself that in addition to the sensations of 
 sight and hearing and touch that I have, there 
 is something else that there is a real person 
 before me, and that you really exist. 
 
 But, according to the Sensation philosopher, 
 if I say that, I must be talking nonsense, just 
 as, according to him, I was talking nonsense 
 when I said before that I was eating a real 
 orange. The truth, according to him, was 
 that then I was not eating a real orange but 
 that I was having certain sensations. And 
 the truth according to him is that now I am 
 not talking to a real person but that I am 
 having certain sensations. If in the one case 
 
PERSONS AND THINGS 59 
 
 I was not eating a real orange, but only 
 having certain sensations, so in the other case 
 I am only having certain sensations and not 
 talking to a real person. Just as, according 
 to him, there is no real orange but only 
 certain sensations that I have, so there are no 
 real persons besides myself, but only certain 
 sensations that I have. 
 
 Thus, if we agree to the supposition which 
 the Sensation philosopher makes, it not only 
 follows that there are no things beyond my 
 sensations, but that there are no persons 
 either. I am the only person who exists. 
 That may be a conclusion very satisfactory to 
 me. But how do you like it ? 
 
 Of course, when the Sensationalist concludes 
 that the table or the chair does not exist, the 
 table or the chair cannot object, because the 
 table and the chair are not alive and are not 
 conscious of their own existence. But you 
 are. And you may object to being told that 
 you are only certain sensations that I have, 
 and that you have no real existence. Perhaps 
 you will say to the Sensation philosopher that 
 you are not like the table or the chair ; that 
 you do exist ; and that you are as real as he 
 is. And doubtless the Sensationalist will feel 
 that there is something in that : he will have 
 to admit that you are as real as he is. And 
 
60 SENSATIONS AND THINGS 
 
 you may think that that settles the question. 
 But it does not. And that brings us to the 
 next consequence which follows from the 
 supposition that the Sensationalist makes. 
 
 The Sensationalist has said, as we know, 
 let us suppose that we have sensations. And 
 you saw nothing wrong with that : of course, 
 we have sensations. Very well! then, he 
 said, if we have sensations, there is no need 
 to suppose that there is anything else. If we 
 have the sensations of seeing, touching, and 
 tasting an orange, and always can have them 
 or get them when we want them, what on 
 earth is the need of supposing that over and 
 above them there is something else a real, 
 material orange ? There is no need, he said. 
 And if I have the sensations of seeing and 
 hearing and touching other people, what is 
 the need of supposing that over and above or 
 behind the sensations there is any person? 
 There is no need, he said, to suppose that 
 there is anybody in existence, or anything in 
 existence, but myself and my own sensations. 
 But, you said, I am as real as you are, my 
 sensations are as good as yours. And, as we 
 saw, the Sensationalist has to admit that. 
 And you thought that settled the question. 
 
 But it does not settle the question. That 
 is just where a difference of opinion comes in. 
 
SELF 6 1 
 
 And the difference is this. You tell the Sen- 
 sationalist that you are as real as he is ; and 
 you mean that you are both real persons. He 
 will admit, he cannot deny, that you are as 
 real as he is. But, then, he does not believe 
 that you are real. And accordingly he must 
 admit that if you are not a real person, neither 
 is he himself. And he not only admits it, he 
 maintains it. 
 
 The Sensationalist says, you believe, or 
 think you believe, in the existence and the 
 reality of yourself; but what do you mean 
 by yourself? Let us clear up our notions, 
 the Sensationalist will say, and see what is 
 really the meaning of the words we use, and 
 we shall find out that there is no more 
 meaning in the word "self" than there is in 
 the word " matter." 
 
 We have seen that, if we suppose we have 
 sensations, there is no need to suppose that 
 there really are material things : if we have 
 the sensation of seeing an orange and feeling 
 it and smelling it and tasting it, there is no 
 need to suppose that there really is anything 
 more than the sensations we have had of it, or 
 may have of it. Indeed, if we come to think 
 of it, "matter" is a word which has no 
 meaning in it; for what is supposed to be 
 meant by it ? 
 
62 SELF MERELY A WORD 
 
 Something purely negative. Matter is not 
 what we see it is not the sensation of sight. 
 It is not the sensation of touch, or the 
 sensation of smell or taste or of sound. It is 
 not any sensation or perception that we have. 
 The truth is, the Sensationalist says, matter 
 is not anything whatever at all. Take away 
 from a thing everything we know of it, every 
 sensation or perception that we have of it 
 and what there is left, he says, is nothing 
 that is "matter." 
 
 Well, he goes on to say, if you apply the 
 same course of reasoning to the self, you will 
 find that you are driven to the same conclusion. 
 
 Just as in all your sensations or perceptions 
 of sight, touch, sound, taste, smell, you never 
 come across anything but the sensations or 
 perceptions and never find any " matter," so 
 too in all your sensations or perceptions of 
 sight, touch, sound, taste or smell, you never 
 come across anything but the sensations or 
 perceptions you never come across any 
 "self." Like the word "matter," the term 
 "self" is merely a word which we use. 
 
 The Sensationalist philosopher, Hume, states 
 this quite clearly and plainly. He says : x 
 
 * " There are some philosophers who imagine we are every 
 moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF ; that we 
 feel its existence and its continuance in existence, and are certain, 
 beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect 
 
HUME 63 
 
 " When I enter most intimately into what I 
 call myself, I always stumble on some particular 
 perception or other, of heat or cold, light or 
 shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I 
 never can catch myself 'at any time without a 
 perception, and never can observe anything 
 but the perception. ... If any one, upon 
 serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he 
 has a different notion of himself, I must confess 
 I can no longer reason with him. ... He 
 may perhaps perceive something simple and 
 continued which he calls himself \ though I am 
 certain there is no such principle in me. But 
 setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, 
 I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind 
 that they are nothing but a bundle or collection 
 of different perceptions." 
 
 Self, then, according to Hume and the Sensa- 
 tionalists, is a mere word : it stands for 
 " nothing but a bundle or collection of differ- 
 ent perceptions " or sensations. In reality, 
 according to the Sensationalists, there exists 
 nothing but perceptions or sensations ; and 
 though people will believe that they them- 
 selves exist, and that things or matter exists, 
 the truth, according to Hume, is that matter 
 
 identity and simplicity. . . . Unluckily all these positive asser- 
 tions are contrary to that very experience which i* pleaded for 
 them, nor have we any idea of Self, after the manner it is here 
 explained. . . . For my part, when, etc." 
 
64 PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 
 
 and self are mere words and nothing more, or, 
 at any rate, if they are anything more, we do 
 not know and cannot possibly know what 
 they are. 
 
 The object of philosophy is, let us remember, 
 to discover whether our experience of the 
 world and life has any meaning; and, if so, 
 what. For this purpose, philosophers make 
 suppositions or assumptions. The Sensation 
 philosophers say, Let us suppose that sensa- 
 tions exist, and we will explain the meaning 
 of experience and what good it all is. We, 
 therefore, have listened to their supposition 
 and what is the result of it all ? The result is 
 that if we suppose that there are such things 
 as sensations abstract sensations, all by them- 
 selves then there are no persons and no 
 matter, or, at any rate, we cannot possibly 
 know whether there are or what they are. 
 
 Now, that conclusion is philosophical 
 scepticism : it is that everybody believes that 
 there are persons or things, but nobody can 
 possibly know whether there are or what they 
 are. And that conclusion is the logical result 
 of the supposition which the Sensationalist 
 invited us to make, viz. that there are such 
 things as sensations, loose and separate sensa- 
 tions, all by themselves. We were invited to 
 make that supposition on the ground that, if 
 
EXPERIENCE AND MEANING 65 
 
 only we would admit it, then it would be 
 possible to explain the meaning of experience 
 and what good it all is. And now we find 
 that, so far from explaining our experience, 
 this supposition leads us to the conclusion that 
 if there are persons who have experience, and 
 if there are things of which they have experience, 
 it is impossible to know who or what they are. 
 
 The truth, of course, is that sensations exist 
 but not all by themselves, loose and separate. 
 There is no such thing as a toothache, loose 
 and separate, all by itself, floating about in 
 space, with nobody to feel it. If nobody has 
 the toothache, there will be no toothache in 
 existence. If nobody feels anything, there will 
 be no sensation at all. So, too, if there are no 
 things to have experience of, nobody can have 
 experience of them, and there will be no experi- 
 ence at all. And if there is nobody to have any 
 sensations, nobody to have any experience, there 
 will be no experience and no sensations at all. 
 
 But the point we have started from all 
 along is that there is experience, and that 
 what philosophy has to do is to enquire 
 whether experience has any meaning what it 
 all comes to and what is the good of it all. 
 Plainly, then, if there is experience, there 
 must be some one who has the experience 
 the subject of experience and there must be 
 
66 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 something which he experiences the object 
 of experience. They are the two sides of 
 the curve, the inside and the outside, and they 
 may be distinguished, but they cannot possibly 
 be separated. Still less is it possible to deny 
 the existence of either the one side or the other. 
 
 Hume, in the passage already quoted, does 
 deny the existence of the one side : he denies 
 the existence of the self he denies the 
 existence of himself. But how could he deny 
 it, if he did not exist, himself, to do it ? He 
 says, in effect, When I enter into myself, I find 
 that there is no self and that I do not exist. 
 But if there is no self, how can he enter into 
 it ? If he is right in saying that I do not 
 exist, how can he be right in saying that " I 
 enter into myself" and find this sensation or 
 that ? The plain truth of the matter simple 
 enough for the simplest of us to see is that 
 no man can say " I do not exist " without 
 contradicting himself, for, unless he existed, he 
 could not say it. And if, when he says, " I 
 do not exist," he contradicts himself, then he 
 is wrong in saying so, and he does exist. 
 
 But what if, when he is talking to you and 
 arguing with you, he says that you, at any rate, 
 don't exist ? Well, then he is contradicting 
 himself, again, for he says, " I am arguing with 
 you. I know very well what you mean, when 
 
THE TWO SIDES OF A CURVE 67 
 
 you say that you exist. And I tell you that 
 you don't." Now, if you didn't exist, he could 
 not tell you that, or anything else. But he is 
 telling you. So he is just contradicting himself 
 once more, when he is trying to make you 
 believe that you don't exist. If you did not 
 exist, he could not convince you. And if he 
 does convince you that you don't exist, he must 
 be wrong, because he could not convince you, 
 unless you were there to be convinced. So 
 anyway he is wrong in saying that that side of 
 the curve the side which is you or me, the side 
 which is the subject of experience, does not exist. 
 
 And he is just as wrong in saying that the 
 other side of the curve, on which lie the things 
 we experience, the objects of experience, does 
 not exist. Just consider what Hume says. He 
 says, let us suppose that there are no things 
 or objects : let us suppose that there are only 
 loose and separate sensations. For instance, 
 let us suppose that there is no real orange, but 
 that we have only loose and separate sensations 
 of colour, shape, touch, and taste and smell. 
 Of course, you will agree that if, indeed, 
 there is no real orange, then there can only be 
 the sensations of smell and taste and colour 
 and shape and touch. 
 
 If, however, there is a real orange, as you 
 and I believe, like everybody else, then the 
 
68 EXPECTATION 
 
 various qualities it has of colour and shape and 
 smell, and so on, belong to it : they are found 
 in an orange and nowhere else the orange is 
 the only thing in which precisely those qualities 
 are found. But if, as Hume says, there is no 
 real orange, in which those qualities are to be 
 found combined, then the qualities or, as he 
 calls them, the sensations of colour, smell, 
 taste, and so on, are not combined, but are, as 
 he calls them, loose and separate. 
 
 But though the sensations are, according to 
 him, loose and separate, and have no connection 
 with each other in themselves, still he admits 
 that when we have one of the sensations, we 
 expect the others when we have the sensation 
 of seeing a lemon, or of seeing somebody eat 
 a lemon, our mouths water, or at least we have 
 that sensation we can almost taste the sour- 
 ness of the lemon. 
 
 So, then, this is how things stand : Hume 
 says, Let us suppose that sensations are loose 
 and separate, and that, when we see a fire, 
 that is, when we have a certain sensation of 
 sight, there is no real reason why we should, 
 when we go up to the fire, have a certain 
 other sensation, viz. a feeling of warmth. 
 Then, we say to Hume, if there is no real 
 reason why the two sensations should be con- 
 nected together, why ever do we expect the 
 
HABIT 69 
 
 one sensation when we have the other when 
 we see fire, why do we expect warmth? Surely, 
 we say, the reason why we expect them 
 together is that they are really connected 
 together. No ! says Hume, the two sensations 
 are quite loose and separate : they have no 
 connection together whatever ; all that happens 
 is that you have got into the habit of thinking 
 that they go together, but that is merely a 
 habit and nothing else. 
 
 You have got into the habit, Hume says, of 
 expecting the one when you see the other, but 
 the habit and the expectation are in you and in 
 your mind, not in them : the connection is in 
 your thought, there is no connection in them ; 
 they, as he has always said, are loose and 
 separate. That is what Hume has said all 
 along : let us suppose that sensations are 
 loose and separate and not connected together. 
 And when you say, But they are not loose and 
 separate : whenever I see a fire I find it hot ; 
 he says, Oh ! that is only a habit you have 
 got into. 
 
 Now, the fact is that Hume has begged the 
 question all along. The question is whether 
 there is a fire ; and Hume has said in effect, 
 though perhaps you did not notice it, let us 
 suppose that there is no fire ; let us suppose 
 that there are only sensations the sensations 
 
70 ASSUMPTION AND EXPLANATION 
 
 of seeing a blaze and feeling it warm then I 
 shall be able to convince you that there is no 
 fire. And, naturally, if you admit to begin with 
 that there is no fire, you will have to admit to the 
 end that there is no fire. But the idea that 
 there is really no fire was, at the beginning, 
 only a supposition which Hume invited you to 
 make. And he asked you to make it, on the 
 ground that then he could do what it is the 
 business of a philosopher to do, viz., explain 
 our experience, and tell us what it all means. 
 And if he had done so, then we should have had 
 to think that after all, unlikely as it seemed that 
 there was no real fire, there might be some 
 thing in the supposition. 
 
 But, what has been the result of making 
 the supposition that there is no real fire and 
 that there are no real objects of any kind? 
 
 The result has been a perfectly natural and 
 logical result and exactly what we might have 
 expected. If we begin by supposing that 
 there are really only loose and separate sensa- 
 tions in the world, we must end by believing 
 that loose and separate sensations alone exist, 
 and that there are no real things or objects, 
 such as a fire, and no real persons; and that 
 no rational man can believe that there are any 
 real things or any real persons. And, plainly, 
 any rational man who begins by assuming that 
 
ASSUMPTION AND EXPLANATION 71 
 
 there are no real things that fire, for instance, 
 does not exist must, if he is consistent and 
 logical, maintain up to the end, that there are 
 no real things that the external world, the 
 world of things on the outside of the curve, 
 has no existence. 
 
 But no rational man, when he comes to see 
 what are the consequences of assuming that 
 loose and separate sensations alone exist, will 
 agree to the assumption. The rational man 
 wants some assumption that will explain ex- 
 perience ; and if such an assumption as that 
 which Hume and the Sensationalists make 
 results in the conclusion that experience has 
 no meaning at all, the rational man will set 
 aside that assumption and seek some other. 
 
 Now, can we learn anything from Hume 
 and the sensation philosophers ? Yes ! we can. 
 We learn this, that if we begin by denying 
 the existence of the outside of the curve, that 
 is of the external world of such objects as fire, 
 for instance, we can never reach an explana- 
 tion of anything. Very good ! then, if we 
 want to learn what our experience all comes 
 to, what is the meaning and the good of it 
 all, we must begin by supposing that the 
 outside of the curve is real, that objects do 
 really exist. 
 
 And what of the inside or the curve ? Well, 
 
72 OBJECTS IMPLY SUBJECTS 
 
 as I hope you will remember, we saw that 
 some men of science started by assuming, for 
 their own part, that the things around us, the 
 things on which they experimented, were real 
 and were the only realities. But, of course, 
 those things were things which they observed 
 and on which they experimented. Things 
 which nobody can observe or form any opinion 
 about are things which physical science de- 
 clines to have to do with. Science deals only 
 with things that can be presented to the mind. 
 Mind is essential to science : science can't get 
 on without it. The outside of the curve 
 the world of objects is essential to science ; 
 and the inside of the curve the mind to 
 which those objects are presented is equally 
 essential to science. 
 
 The reason of that is of the very simplest : 
 neither side of the curve can exist without the 
 other. And what is true of science is equally 
 true of all knowledge and all experience : there 
 must be a subject who knows, and objects 
 which he knows. And neither can exist with- 
 out the other. We can abstract the one from 
 the other; and whilst we are examining it, we 
 can forget the other. But the other is there 
 all the same. 
 
 A mind without anything to know, would 
 not be a mind : if it were conscious of nothing 
 
MATTER AND OBJECTS 73 
 
 at all, it would not be a consciousness, or a 
 mind. And an object which nobody whatever 
 knows to exist, is one of which nobody can 
 say whether it exists or not. Obviously it is 
 not an object of knowledge, for nobody even 
 knows whether there is such a thing. And 
 if nobody knows whether there is such a 
 thing, it cannot be of any use for explaining 
 things, or for any other purpose. Conse- 
 quently, if that is what is meant by matter, 
 then nobody even knows whether there is 
 such a thing or not : it is something which 
 nobody whatever knows to exist, and of which 
 nobody can ever possibly say whether it exists 
 or not. If there were such a thing it would 
 be of no use to us; and we do not know 
 whether there is such a thing or not. 
 
 If anyone were to tell us that there is 
 something such that no mind whatever could 
 know it, or know whether it existed or not, 
 we might very well say to him, then how, 
 pray, do you know that there is such a thing ? 
 And of course he could not tell us, for a very 
 simple reason : he would be talking nonsense. 
 Very well ! then, if we are going to use the 
 term " matter," and to put any meaning on it, 
 it must be something that we know partially, 
 at any rate and not something that we can 
 never know. It must be an object of know- 
 
74 SENSATION AND EXPERIENCE 
 
 ledge, and something that we can find out 
 about. In that sense of the word, as some- 
 thing that can be the object of knowledge, 
 it stands for the outside of our curve. And 
 the outside of a curve may be distinguished 
 from the inside, but it never can exist apart 
 from it. 
 
 The Sensationalist undertakes to explain 
 experience, if we will trust to our five senses 
 and assume that sensations alone exist. From 
 this assumption, however, it follows that, when I 
 am talking with you, I have certain sensations 
 of sight and sound, and so on, but that those 
 sensations alone exist, and you do not, just as 
 it follows on the Sensationalist argument that, 
 when I am eating an orange, I have certain 
 sensations, but that no real orange exists. If 
 you insist that you exist just as much as the 
 Sensation philosopher who says that you don't, 
 if you maintain that there is as much reality 
 in yourself as in himself, his reply is that 
 he sees as little reason to believe in the exist- 
 ence of himself as of yourself: "self" is 
 merely a word with nothing to correspond to 
 it, just as " matter " is. There is no reason, 
 he says, to believe in the existence of either 
 person or things. 
 
 Thus the Sensation philosophy, which begins 
 by assuming that sensations alone exist, so far 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 75 
 
 from solving the problem of philosophy and 
 offering some explanation of our experience, 
 ends up in philosophical scepticism, and in 
 doubting or denying that either persons or 
 things have any existence at all. 
 
 But this sceptical conclusion is plainly self- 
 contradictory, for it requires us to say, " I 
 know I don't exist " and if I don't exist, I 
 can't know that or anything else, whereas, if 
 I do exist, I contradict myself 'by saying that 
 I don't. 
 
 In the same way this scepticism requires us 
 to say, "I know things do not exist." But 
 this also is a self-contradiction, for if things do 
 not exist, I can know nothing about them, 
 nothing whatever, not even so much as 
 whether they do exist or not. On the other 
 hand, if things are known to me, if anything 
 whatever is known to me, then I am con- 
 tradicting myself if I say that " I know things 
 do not exist." 
 
 The plain and simple truth is that both 
 sides of the curve are known to us, even if 
 our knowledge does not go very far in either 
 direction. We know that the self or subject 
 exists and that things or objects are known to 
 it. But though the outside of a curve may 
 be distinguished from the inside, it can never 
 exist apart from it. 
 
76 SCEPTICISM AND COMMONSENSE 
 
 Finally, it is impossible to deny the exist- 
 ence of either side of the curve, without 
 denying the existence of the other side. You 
 may deny the existence of the one side, and 
 not see at first that, when you do so, you are 
 really denying the existence of the other side 
 also. But, when you come to see this, you 
 must do one of two things : you must either 
 say with the sceptic, " Very well, then, 
 neither side exists neither matter nor mind " ; 
 or, if that seems too absurd, then you must 
 say that both sides exist that you who 
 know something exist, and that the objects 
 which you know also exist. In other words, 
 you must give up Scepticism and fall back on 
 common sense. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICE 
 
 EVERY form of philosophy and in different 
 ages philosophy has taken many forms is 
 built upon some supposition and is the work- 
 ing out of some assumption or hypothesis. 
 And the supposition or assumption is always 
 based or supposed to be based upon experi- 
 ence, and is applied to experience. Even 
 philosophical scepticism, inasmuch as it is 
 a form of philosophy, is an assumption 
 made about experience : it is the supposition 
 that experience is essentially unintelligible. 
 Scepticism when pushed to that extreme is 
 obviously untenable, for experience is certainly 
 not altogether unintelligible : we can and do 
 work it in practical life with a considerable 
 amount of success. But the scepticism which, 
 without going to this extreme, points out to 
 any form of philosophy that there are things 
 which that philosophy does not succeed in 
 explaining, is very necessary to prevent the 
 
 77 
 
78 THE GOOD 
 
 philosophy of the time being from falling into 
 dogmatism. The use and the value of scepti- 
 cism is that it reminds philosophy, sometimes 
 very sharply and disagreeably, that no form of 
 philosophy is final ; and that any form of it is 
 useless and simply cumbers the ground if it 
 does not live and grow. 
 
 The supposition by which we have tested 
 the philosophy of Materialism on the one 
 hand, and Sensationalism on the other, is the 
 assumption that experience is intelligible, and 
 in some sense a whole, and that there is not 
 only meaning but also good in it. But on 
 this point on the question, What is the good 
 of it all? a question that certainly deserves 
 considering we have said nothing hitherto, 
 because we have been examining Sensation- 
 alism and Materialism, and they only profess to 
 consider what is, or what existence is, or what 
 reality is, and they do not go on to ask what 
 is the good of matter in motion, or of loose 
 and separate sensations. And yet it is clear 
 not only that we find in our experience matter 
 and mind, or subjects and objects, but that we 
 also find action and will. 
 
 Any philosophy, therefore, which professes 
 to offer us some supposition which will explain 
 experience, ought certainly to try not only to 
 explain knowledge and existence, but also to 
 
PHILOSOPHY IS PRACTICAL 79 
 
 explain action and will. When we will things 
 and do them, we have some reason for doing 
 so we have some end in view; and, at the 
 time, we consider the end we have in view to 
 be good. So philosophy ought to consider 
 whether there is really any end, and any good, 
 in our experience, and if so, what it is. And, 
 as has already been said, the supposition on 
 which we have been going is that there is some 
 good in our experience, and in experience as a 
 whole, just as we have assumed that there is 
 some meaning in it. 
 
 You will see, therefore, that from this point 
 of view, on this supposition that is to say, 
 philosophy is intensely practical. We want 
 to know what is the meaning of experience, 
 that is to say, to what end it is directed, what 
 good it achieves or attempts to achieve. The 
 questions we started from at the beginning 
 were, What is the meaning of experience? 
 What does it all come to ? What is the good 
 of it all ? These questions are practical ques- 
 tions ; and the attempt to answer them, in word 
 and deed, is philosophy in practice. 
 
 Philosophy, in a word, is practical. It does 
 not deal with abstractions, as science does 
 for science deals with such abstractions as 
 weight or heat or light; and it deals with 
 them not only as if they existed apart from 
 
8o PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 
 
 things, but as if these abstractions could exist 
 without being known by the person who 
 abstracts them. 
 
 Philosophy again does not deal with such 
 abstractions as knowledge and existence are, 
 if they are taken by themselves. Philosophy, 
 being practical, deals with life as it is lived, 
 with knowledge and existence as they are 
 manifested and actually experienced that is 
 with the very life of experience itself. 
 
 The object of philosophy is not merely to 
 construct a system of truth : to do that, it 
 would have to consider knowledge and exist- 
 ence as things apart from our actual lives as 
 we actually live them ; and if it did so consider 
 them as something apart, then it would not be 
 constructing a system of truth, for it would be 
 leaving out the most important fact of all 
 that is, our life as we actually live it. Such 
 truth as philosophy would attain, if it confined 
 its attention to knowledge and existence, would 
 be partial, incomplete, and abstract truth. Or, 
 rather, since philosophy does sometimes confine 
 its attention to knowledge (epistemology) and 
 existence (ontology), such truth as it does 
 then attain is partial, incomplete, and abstract. 
 And so it is like such truth as is attained by 
 science, but with this difference, that science 
 deals only with material existence, or with 
 
LIVING TRUTH 81 
 
 matter alone, and consequently the truth which 
 science attains is even more partial and more 
 abstract. 
 
 The living truth -is truth which is carried 
 into action. I tender you a coin, and ask 
 whether it is a sovereign. You look at it and 
 say that it is. Now, if you will give me 
 twenty shillings for it, what you say is a living 
 truth: it is readiness to act and results, if 
 necessary, in action. If you say that it is a 
 sovereign, and won't give me twenty shillings 
 for it, your words are not a living truth. 
 
 Now, philosophy aims at the living truth 
 a truth you can live by, and act on. Philosophy, 
 when it is practical, is not merely a system of 
 truth but a method of action. It is not merely 
 abstract truth but living truth. It is, that is 
 to say, not merely the truth about what is, 
 but something more the truth about what 
 ought to be, the only truth in the light of 
 which it is possible to live. When a man 
 acts, he intends to do something which is as 
 yet not done ; and he intends to do it because 
 it seems good to him to do it. He has an end 
 in view which he means to accomplish; and 
 he means to accomplish it, because he thinks 
 good to do so. The end at which he aims 
 and the good which he means to realise are 
 the same thing. But the end and the good 
 
 F 
 
82 THE END EVER IN PROCESS 
 
 which he aims at must be known to him, 
 otherwise he could not aim at it, and intend 
 it. Being known to him, it must have some 
 reality and existence ; but, being something 
 which he is engaged in doing and resolved to 
 accomplish, it is something not yet achieved, 
 not yet realised. The end and the good, 
 therefore, that he has in view is real, because 
 it is known to him and intended by him ; and 
 yet it is not perfectly realised because he is 
 still engaged in doing it and has not yet fully 
 done it. 
 
 Now, that is the description and character 
 both of every moment of our lives, and of all 
 our life. We are, at every moment, and all 
 through our active life, engaged on something 
 which is as yet not done but only in the 
 process of being done. The end and the 
 good are never at any moment realised, but 
 always and at all times in process of being 
 realised. The end and the good is never done 
 but is always to be done. It is in this that 
 the continuity of our lives consists. What 
 makes them continuous is the fact that, all the 
 time, we are engaged in doing something not 
 yet achieved ; we are always in process of 
 doing something not yet done. Life's work 
 is never done. It is never fully accomplished. 
 And the work of life is the good and the end 
 
THE GOOD THE ONLY END 83 
 
 which you are always striving to realise and 
 are always finding to be not yet realised. 
 
 To some extent and in some sense, the good 
 exists and is known to you, otherwise you 
 could not aim at it or strive after it. Your 
 will is set on it, and your action directed to it ; 
 and to some extent you are achieving it. 
 And whatever you are engaged in doing, you 
 are trying to do because you think it good, 
 and because you think it ought to be done, 
 and because you think you can do it. You 
 would not be trying to do it, if you thought 
 you could not do it, or if you did not think 
 good to do it. 
 
 Well, then, if at every moment of our lives 
 we are engaged in doing something that is as 
 yet not done, and if we are trying to do it 
 because we think we can do it, and because 
 we see fit, of think it good, to do it, what is 
 the end or good, the work of life, which is 
 never fully accomplished but is always yet to 
 be done? What is the meaning of experi- 
 ence that experience which is the life we 
 live ? What is the good which, in experience, 
 is partly disclosed to us but never fully realised 
 by us, and which is or may be partly, but is 
 never wholly, attained by us ? 
 
 Those are the very questions from 
 which we started out in the first chapter 
 
84 EXPERIENCE AND ACTION 
 
 the questions which philosophy is the 
 attempt to answer. And they are practical 
 questions. Further, they are questions to 
 which every man is always giving a practical 
 answer by the way in which he lives. But 
 though he is giving a practical answer, he 
 rarely stays to consider what the answer is, or 
 whether it is the right one. The moment he 
 stays if ever he does stay to put those 
 questions to himself, he becomes a philosopher, 
 and tries to frame some answer to them. 
 
 We see now, however, that experience is 
 not merely something that we suffer but also 
 something that we do ; and that the important 
 question is not so much, What is the nature of 
 the experience which one has, or through 
 which one goes? not so much, What do I 
 suffer? as, What should I do? The funda- 
 mental fact about our experience is that we 
 are always, at every moment of our conscious 
 lives, trying to do something and in process of 
 doing it. 
 
 The most important question, then, that we 
 can raise is, whether we are engaged in trying 
 to do the right thing. And if we want to 
 answer the question, as we do want, seeing 
 that we are philosophers, that is to say 
 practical men, we can only turn to experience. 
 To it alone can we look for an answer, 
 
CONSCIOUS BEING AND DOING 85 
 
 because we have nothing but experience to 
 turn to. And the experience to which we 
 have to turn is the experience of living beings 
 who are engaged always in trying to do some- 
 thing and are in process of doing it. That is 
 in truth and in fact the only experience that 
 is known to us. 
 
 Experience is not mere knowledge, or 
 knowledge of existence : it consists in what a 
 conscious being tries to do, and is in constant 
 process of doing. It is conscious being and 
 doing. 
 
 We must, therefore, now revise the con- 
 ception of experience which we adopted in 
 the previous chapters when we were concerned 
 principally with the question of knowledge 
 and existence the questions whether matter 
 in motion alone existed, whether existence 
 without knowledge was an intelligible proposi- 
 tion, whether loose and separate sensations 
 could exist without being known by any 
 person. 
 
 In the earlier chapters, our supposition was 
 that knowledge and existence were inseparable, 
 as are the sides of a curve. And we left action 
 altogether out of account. But we stuck 
 to the supposition that experience is in some 
 sort a whole : we were logically bound to 
 do so because our purpose was to find out 
 
86 UNITY IN EXPERIENCE 
 
 what could be said of experience as a whole 
 whether as a whole it had any meaning and 
 any good. We recognised that experience 
 had two sides or presented two aspects, mind 
 and matter, knowledge and existence, subject 
 and object. On the outside of the curve lay 
 the world of material things ; on the inside 
 the world of thoughts and sensations. As 
 regards the outside of the curve, science is 
 every day making it more and more probable 
 that through all the host of material things 
 one system runs ; and that there is some 
 reason for supposing that that side of 
 experience forms a whole. 
 
 But what of the inside of the curve, on which 
 lie thoughts, sensations, emotions, passions, 
 desires ? On the inside there lies evidently 
 and undeniably not one mind or human being, 
 but countless minds, all the individual human 
 beings that make up the human race. Well, 
 here we can see that even they have some 
 unity and in some sort form a whole. 
 
 In the first place, they are not wholly cut off 
 from one another: they communicate with 
 each other. They have thoughts in common. 
 They have or may have common purposes. 
 They take or can take common action to 
 realise the purposes and carry out the ideas 
 that they have in common. We live to a 
 
EXPERIENCE A WHOLE 87 
 
 large extent in and for one another. Indeed, 
 were that not so, no one of us could live at all. 
 
 Again, we say, and with more truth than 
 perhaps we imagine, that we can enter into 
 one another's thoughts. And when we do 
 this, and put ourselves into the other man's 
 place, we find the difference between us less 
 vast: in spite of apparent differences, the man's 
 a man for all that. There is the bond, which 
 unites or is capable of uniting all the countless 
 individuals, who occupy the inside of our curve. 
 
 But though we thus see vaguely that what 
 is on the inside of the curve forms, in a way, 
 a unity of which the individuals are members ; 
 and that what is on the outside of the curve 
 probably forms one system ; still, even if this 
 be so, what we have on our hands forms 
 two wholes. And the supposition which we 
 originally put forward was : let us suppose 
 that experience forms one whole. If, therefore, 
 we are to suppose that experience forms one 
 whole, evidently we must give up the simile of 
 the curve, that is to say, we must recognise 
 that the division of experience into know- 
 ledge and existence, one on the inside and the 
 other on the outside of the curve, is a distinction 
 which we draw, and must draw, when we see in 
 experience only knowledge and existence. But 
 it is not a distinction which we can maintain, 
 
a 8 THE GOOD AND GOD'S WILL 
 
 when we come to see what is a simple and undeni- 
 able fact, viz., that we are active beings, always and 
 at every moment of our conscious lives engaged 
 in trying to do somethingand in process of doing 
 it. That is the character and actual nature of 
 experience : it is conscious being and doing. 
 And if we suppose, as we do suppose or 
 assume, that experience forms one whole, 
 though it contains an infinite number of parts, 
 then that whole must be realised in the exist- 
 ence, and known to the mind, of a supreme 
 being, who is at once omniscient and perfect 
 the being, in short, whom we call God. 
 Only to Him is real existence and full know- 
 ledge of the whole possible ; and thus each 
 one of the parts, as it comes to comprehend 
 that the parts cannot exist without the whole, 
 declares : " without Thee I cannot live." It 
 is God, " in whom we live and move and have 
 our being." 
 
 Thus our assumption that experience is a 
 whole, and has a meaning and a good, proves, 
 when we examine it, to require a previous 
 assumption, viz., that God is, and that in His 
 will, and in doing His will, our good and the 
 only good consists. 
 
 Philosophy, then, is practical. It does not 
 deal with abstractions, but with life as it is lived 
 and as it should be lived. Always and at 
 
IS EXPERIENCE BLIND? 89 
 
 every moment we are engaged in trying to do 
 something and in process of doing it. As 
 practical men we are philosophers even if we 
 are philosophers without knowing it. And it is 
 only so far as we are philosophers, and consciously 
 philosophers, that we are truly practical. 
 
 Even so, much or most, of what we do, we 
 do without knowing to what end it tends or 
 what results it will bring about. The steam 
 plough is the direct descendant of earlier forms 
 of the plough ; and they were all descended 
 from the digging-stick first used. And yet 
 the man who used it first had no conception 
 of what it would eventually become. So we 
 for the most part are similarly "ignorant of what 
 will come of what we, as active, living, conscious 
 beings are always, and at every moment of our 
 conscious lives at this moment, for instance 
 engaged in trying to do and are in process of 
 doing. That ignorance would be appalling, if 
 you and I were the only conscious beings in 
 existence ; or if all conscious beings were as 
 ignorant as you and I of the meaning of 
 experience and of the good that is being 
 achieved in the process of experience. But 
 we cannot believe that experience is thus blind 
 throughout. 
 
 Nor would the supposition, made by philo- 
 sophy, that experience expresses a meaning and 
 
90 REALITY FELT AND KNOWN 
 
 attains a good, be of much value ; nor has 
 it indeed any practical force so long as it 
 remains a supposition merely. Unless it is 
 not merely known but also felt, it is not 
 practical philosophy or actual experience but 
 a mere abstraction from experience, as lifeless 
 as that other abstraction, matter ; and as 
 unmeaning as those other abstractions, loose 
 and separate sensations. If the supposition is 
 to be anything more than an abstraction merely 
 known, if it is to be a reality felt, still more, if 
 it is to be a reality acted on, then the man who 
 is to feel it and to realise it must have access 
 in his heart to God. 
 
 The question from which we started at 
 the beginning was, What is the meaning of 
 experience? What does it all come to? 
 What is the good of it all? And philosophy, 
 I said, was the attempt to find out whether 
 there is an answer to them ; and, if so, what. 
 For the purpose of finding out, it was, I said, 
 open to us to make any supposition or 
 assumption or hypothesis that we liked. The 
 one and only rule of the game was that as the 
 hypothesis or supposition or assumption had 
 no other purpose than to provide an explana- 
 tion of experience, any supposition, which 
 failed to explain experience satisfactorily, must 
 be ruled off the board. 
 
ASSUMPTIONS AND EXPLANATION 91 
 
 I also said that as experience is continually 
 growing, any supposition we might make could 
 only be regarded as provisional and not final, 
 even if it seemed to explain all the facts 
 known up to the time. But there is no 
 supposition which does explain all the known 
 facts to the satisfaction of all philosophers. 
 And that is one reason which makes philos- 
 ophy so interesting and so exciting. And 
 for fear you should imagine, w r hen you have 
 got a supposition which commends itself to 
 you, that all the excitement is over, and that 
 nothing but the shouting remains to be done, 
 I will just indicate one or two of the many 
 points on which a considerable difference of 
 opinion exists. 
 
 Like the philosopher, the man who is a 
 philosopher without being aware of it makes 
 assumptions, all of which require testing by 
 experience, and some of which fail under the 
 test. One assumption made by the ordinary 
 man, and adopted by science, is that matter 
 and material things exist whether anybody is 
 aware of them or not ; and this supposition is 
 disputed by some philosophers, who suggest 
 the assumption that the only things that are 
 known or can be known are objects of 
 knowledge, which only exist as known to 
 exist. The first supposition, that matter and 
 
$2 SPACE 
 
 material things exist, whether anybody knows 
 them or not, carries with it the further 
 supposition that such material things exist in 
 space a supposition which is made alike by 
 the ordinary non-philosopher and by the man 
 of science. If this supposition is true, then 
 it ought to be at least an intelligible suppos- 
 ition, consistent with itself and with any other 
 supposition which we make. 
 
 But when we come to examine the notion of 
 space, we find it inconsistent with itself. It is 
 inconsistent with itself in the first place, because 
 we cannot conceive whether space is or is not 
 infinite. One or the other it ought to be: it 
 cannot be both infinite and not infinite. And 
 yet, if we suppose that space really exists, we 
 find that we must contradict ourselves and say 
 both that it is infinite and that it cannot be 
 infinite. It appears first one and then the 
 other; and both appearances cannot be real. 
 Hence the other supposition, that space is only 
 an appearance and not a reality. 
 
 In the next place, the very term we use for 
 the purpose of expressing the supposition that 
 space exists the terms " here " and " there " 
 contradict each other, and each of them 
 contradicts itself. Consider both points. They 
 contradict each other: what do we mean by 
 "here"? Certainly we mean, or rather we 
 
SPACE SELF-CONTRADICTORY 93 
 
 suppose that we mean, "not there." Very 
 well ! then. By " here " we may mean, here 
 in this room, here in this county, or here in 
 the north of England, or here in England, or 
 here in this world, or here in this universe 
 and beyond that we cannot go, there is no 
 " there " left. The " here " swallows up the 
 " there " : they contradict each other. Every- 
 thing is contained in the " here," and there is 
 no " there." 
 
 But by " here " we may also mean here in 
 this room, here at this desk, here on this 
 paper, or this word on the paper, or this letter 
 in the word, or this dot upon the letter " i," 
 and a dot is a point, and a point is position 
 without magnitude, something, that is to say, 
 which has nothing inside it and no room inside 
 it for anything, that is to say, which is not 
 space at all, for space is supposed to be that 
 in which something is. Thus the very notion 
 of " here," that is of space, contradicts itself. 
 
 And yet you believe in the assumption that 
 space exists : you suppose that it does. But 
 the supposition is one on which it is possible 
 for a difference of opinion to exist. It is a 
 supposition which is made to account for that 
 other supposition that there are material 
 things which exist whether any conscious being 
 whether God Himself knows them or not. 
 
94 TIME 
 
 So much for space. But there is another 
 assumption which we all make without thinking 
 about it ; and that is that time exists. 
 
 Once more, if we make a supposition, it 
 ought to be one which does not contradict 
 itself: if it is self-contradictory, there must be 
 something wrong with it. Well, look at this 
 supposition that time exists. There is past 
 time, present time, and future time, or we may 
 say that there is the "now" and the "not 
 now." And these two terms like the " here " 
 and the " there " contradict each other ; and 
 each of them contradicts itself. For what 
 do we mean by " now " ? Obviously, there 
 can be no " now " unless there is also a " then " : 
 there could be no present unless there were a 
 past and a future. But the past exists no 
 longer and the future has not yet come into 
 existence, that is to say, both the future and 
 the past are non-existent. But we said just 
 now that there could be no present, unless 
 there were a past and a future. And now we 
 see that the past and the future do not 
 exist. 
 
 Perhaps we shall see this more clearly, if 
 we ask ourselves what we mean by the present, 
 by " now." " Now " means the present time, 
 the present hour, the present day, the present 
 age, the present century, the present dis- 
 
TIME SELF-CONTRADICTORY 95 
 
 pensation. The u now " spreads itself out as 
 far as ever we can go and swallows up every 
 " then " that comes in front of it. Everything 
 that exists, every event, I should say, that 
 takes place, takes place "now." Very good! 
 but look at this "now." It means the present 
 time, the present hour, the present lecture, the 
 present minute ; but the present minute has 
 sixty seconds in it; then " now " means the 
 present second ; but that is over, long before 
 you can get the words out. The present 
 moment is, as it were, the line which divides 
 the future from the past. And a line, as you 
 know, is length without breadth. Length 
 without breadth ! There is no such thing. 
 Then there is no such thing as the present : 
 it is just as imaginary as length without breadth. 
 It is the imaginary division between the past 
 and the future. And the past and the future 
 do not exist. The one is already over and 
 non-existent ; the other does not yet exist, for 
 it has not come into existence. The time- 
 divisions, past, present and future, are all alike 
 imaginary. They are divisions and distinctions 
 which we suppose to exist ; but the supposition 
 is simply a supposition which we make ; and 
 it is a supposition which contradicts itself. And 
 it is a supposition contradictory to our belief 
 that all things both those things which we 
 
96 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 call present and those which we call future 
 alike are known to God. 
 
 Evidently, therefore, this supposition is one 
 about which a difference of opinion may exist : 
 people may fairly ask themselves whether the 
 supposition is one which we can really hold, 
 or really understand whether it is not really 
 self-contradictory. 
 
 It appears as though the present alone 
 existed ; and it also appears as though the 
 present were a purely imaginary line of division 
 between the past and the future. It appears 
 first one and then the other; and both 
 appearances cannot be real. And we have 
 seen that space, in the same way, appears both 
 to be finite and infinite, as does time itself. 
 
 Thus we are brought face to face with a 
 third point on which a considerable difference 
 of opinion exists amongst philosophers the 
 relation of appearance to reality, and what we 
 mean by the two terms. 
 
 A thing, such as a building, looks rather 
 different presents a rather different appear- 
 ance from different points of view. 
 
 From one point of view you see one side of 
 it, from another another : from each of the 
 sixty-four different points of the compass it 
 presents a different appearance. And from the 
 inside it appears different again. A surface, 
 
APPEARANCE AND REALITY 97 
 
 which feels smooth, and looks smooth, when 
 examined by the naked eye, does not appear 
 smooth, when examined by a magnifying glass 
 or microscope. Which is it really smooth or 
 not smooth ? A thing which appears simple, 
 and for long is considered simple, may prove on 
 further examination to be compound : as you 
 know, science, which discovered that things 
 appeared to be made up of atoms, then dis- 
 covered that the atoms were made up of 
 molecules, and then that the molecules were 
 only appearance and the reality was something 
 else, electrons, or what not. And probably they 
 in their turn will be pronounced to be ways 
 in which the ultimate reality appears to us. 
 
 Then, can we ever know the ultimate reality 
 of things? Surely, it must always appear to 
 us, if we are to know anything about it. And 
 if so, it is the appearance alone which will be 
 known to us. At least, so some philosophers 
 argue. But other philosophers say : You talk 
 of appearance ; well, then, something ap- 
 pears, and what appears is the real thing, 
 reality. Take the case of the building which 
 presents sixty-four different appearances from 
 the sixty-four different points of the compass 
 It is one and the same building which appears. 
 Whatever point you view it from, it is the 
 same building: view it from sixty-four dif- 
 o 
 
98 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 ferent points, and it is still the same building. 
 Any one appearance can only be misleading if 
 it is mistaken for the only appearance that the 
 thing can have and is alleged to be the reality 
 and the whole. We, indeed, never see the 
 building or anything else from every point of 
 view at the same time. But, though with the 
 senses we never can see the whole building, 
 we can conceive, and, as a matter of fact, we 
 always do conceive it to be a whole ; and the 
 whole is uhat we conceive to be the reality. 
 Very good, then what is true of the building 
 is true of the universe: we never can with 
 our eyes see the universe as a whole, but we 
 do conceive it to be a whole. As it presents 
 itself to us through our senses, it presents 
 only appearance ; and it is a mistake we make 
 if we imagine that the appearances presented 
 are the reality and the whole. 
 
 Still some philosophers hold that reality, 
 even if it appears to us, can but appear; and 
 consequently that we can never know any- 
 thing but the appearance. Perhaps the truth 
 is that " we now see as through a glass 
 darkly " ; and that God alone is not separated 
 from reality by appearances, but is Himself 
 the reality and the source of the reality, that 
 He alone knows as it really is. 
 
 In our experience we find not matter alone, 
 
THE GOOD OF EXPERIENCE 99 
 
 as the Materialist says, nor sensations alone, as 
 the Sensationalist says ; we find, further, not 
 only knowledge and existence, but also action 
 and will. 
 
 Philosophy, therefore, which enquires of 
 experience, what it all comes to, cannot 
 help enquiring also what is the good of it all, 
 That is a practical enquiry, and philosophy, 
 therefore, is practical : philosophy does not, 
 like science, deal with abstractions, but seeks 
 a living truth, that is, a truth you can live by 
 and act on. When a man acts, he has an end 
 in view, which he wishes to accomplish, be- 
 cause it seems good to him to do so. At 
 every moment of our lives, and all through 
 our lives, we are engaged on something which 
 is as yet not done, but only in the process of 
 being done. That is the fundamental fact 
 about our experience; and consequently the 
 most important question that can be raised is 
 whether we are engaged on the right thing. 
 
 Thus, once more we are brought up against 
 the question, what does our experience mean 
 what is the good of it all? Hitherto we 
 have likened experience to the two sides of 
 a curve; and now, even if we assume that 
 material things, on the outside of the curve, 
 form one system, and that the countless minds, 
 on the inside of it, are or might be united 
 
ioo THE FUNDAMENTAL REALITY 
 
 into one system by the bond of love, we still 
 have on our hands two systems, and not one 
 whole. 
 
 But if we are to adhere to our original 
 assumption that experience forms one whole, 
 then that whole, the one ultimate and funda- 
 mental reality, must be God. That is a further 
 supposition implied by our original assumption. 
 If, however, it is to be more than a mere ab- 
 straction, if it is to be a reality felt and acted 
 on, then the man who is to feel it and to realise 
 it must have access in his heart to God. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 PERSONALITY AND THE WHOLE 
 
 THE moment a man begins to reflect on his 
 experience and to ask himself, what it all 
 comes to, he becomes a philosopher : when he 
 enquires what it all means, he assumes that 
 experience is a whole. When we say of God 
 that " in Him we live and move and have our 
 being," we make a further philosophical 
 assumption, viz., that the whole is a personality. 
 But this, which, from the point of view of 
 philosophy, is an assumption, is, from the point 
 of view of the man who feels and knows that 
 in his heart he has access to God, no assumption 
 but the living truth. 
 
 Treating it, however, from the point of view 
 of philosophy, as an assumption, and as an 
 assumption made for the purpose of explaining 
 experience, we have to enquire what conse- 
 quences flow from it and whether they also 
 help to explain experience. 
 
 If, as we assume, experience is a whole, then 
 
 101 
 
102 THE CHARIOT 
 
 its parts are not independent either of each 
 other or of the whole : they have no separate, 
 independent existence. On the contrary, they 
 are interdependent. 
 
 An illustration will perhaps make this clearer, 
 and we may borrow one from a Hindu philo- 
 sopher. A chariot is made up of the wheels, 
 pole and body ; so long as the chariot exists, 
 they are its parts. But, take the chariot to 
 pieces, cast the pole down in one place, the 
 body in another, the wheels somewhere else, 
 and there is no longer any chariot. If, then, 
 no chariot exists, it has of course no parts ; and 
 the pole, body, and wheels, consequently, are 
 no longer parts of the chariot, for there is no 
 chariot for them to be parts of. If you went 
 to a watch-maker for a watch, and he offered 
 you a trayful of wheels, levers, and so on, and 
 tried to pass them off as being a watch, you 
 would say that you wanted a watch, not a heap 
 of wheels and levers. You would say and 
 feel that they were by no means the same thing 
 as a watch. 
 
 Now, we may put this in general terms and 
 say that the parts of anything are by no means 
 the same as the whole. And, consequently, a 
 whole is by no means the same thing as the 
 parts. We can go further, indeed, and say 
 that the parts have no existence separate from 
 
THE WHOLE AND ITS PARTS 103 
 
 the whole ; for, if the whole is taken to pieces, 
 the whole ceases to exist ; and, if there is no 
 whole, it can have no parts ; and, only where 
 there is a whole, can there be any parts. 
 
 But now, having gone thus far, can we say 
 that the chariot is a whole ? Obviously with- 
 out horses the chariot is not a chariot in the 
 full sense of being able to fulfil its function of 
 carrying the driver about ; it is just as useless 
 as the watch-maker's tray of levers and wheels. 
 Without horses, the chariot is not a chariot, for 
 without them it won't go, just as without wheels 
 it can't go. But, further, the driver is just as 
 necessary as the wheels or the horses. And 
 unless there were ground for the chariot to 
 go on, and places for it to travel to and from, 
 the chariot would not be a chariot 
 
 Plainly, then, the chariot is part of the 
 world. And, speaking again in general terms, 
 we may say that everything which has size or 
 extension, and occupies space, is part of the 
 spatial world or whole. And evidently the 
 parts cannot exist without the whole ; nor can 
 there be any whole without the parts. Thus 
 we come round to our starting-point, which 
 was that parts are not independent of each 
 other, or of the whole to which they belong, 
 and of which they are parts : they have no 
 separate, independent existence. 
 
io 4 THE TIME PROCESS 
 
 But, if this is true of the world regarded 
 from the point of view of space, perhaps it 
 may be true of the world regarded from other 
 points of view. But from what other point 
 of view can it be regarded ? Well, we can 
 regard it from the point of view of time. We 
 say that " things take time to do," meaning 
 that the process of doing them takes time. 
 And a process is something that is going on 
 and is not yet complete. It is not the whole, 
 but part of the whole. Naturally, however, 
 we are tempted to say that, when the thing 
 is done, it is done whole and complete. But, 
 so too, we were tempted to say that when the 
 pole, wheels, and body were put together, then 
 we had a chariot, whole and complete. But, 
 when we came to think of it, we recognised 
 that the horses were just as necessary as the 
 wheels; and that without the horses the 
 chariot was not whole and complete. Well, 
 so too it is with things that take time : no 
 sooner is one done than another is begun. 
 Indeed, we do one thing which takes time for 
 the sake of the next, which also takes time: 
 we eat for the sake of being strengthened by 
 the food, we sleep for the sake of being re- 
 freshed for the next day's work. Eating and 
 sleeping, like everything else that we do, are 
 processes through which we go. And pro- 
 
THE WORLD-PROCESS A WHOLE 105 
 
 cesses are going on all around us, also ; and 
 one process leads on to another always. That 
 is to say, each process is but a part. And 
 parts, as we have seen, cannot exist save in 
 the whole, to which they belong, and of which 
 they are parts. The various processes both 
 those in which we are engaged and those 
 which we watch going on are parts of the 
 world-process as a whqle, and cannot be con- 
 ceived as having any existence without it. 
 There can be no parts, unless there is a 
 whole. Thus, when we consider time, we 
 come to the same conclusion as we arrived at 
 when we were considering space, viz., that 
 parts in this case moments of time are not, 
 after all, independent of each other, or of the 
 whole to which they belong and of which they 
 are parts. 
 
 The world, then, regarded from the point 
 of view of space, is a whole, and none of its 
 parts has any existence separate from, or inde- 
 pendent of the whole. And, regarded from 
 the point of view of time, as a process, the 
 world-process is a whole, whose parts or 
 moments imply the whole, and cannot be 
 separated from it. 
 
 Then, is there any other point of view from 
 which the world can be regarded? For if 
 there is, then we ought to consider whether 
 
io6 WORLD OF WILL AND ACTION 
 
 the world, when regarded from it, presents the 
 appearance of a whole. / 
 
 There is another point of view from which 
 we can regard the world. We can regard it 
 from the point of view of will and action. 
 And when we come to examine it from that 
 point of view, we shall find that it is a 
 whole, the parts of which are not detached 
 from one another or independent either of 
 one another, or of the whole of which they 
 are parts. 
 
 Here, too, in the world of will and action, 
 at first we find ourselves in the same attitude 
 of mind as we were when we considered the 
 chariot. We are engaged on doing some- 
 thing ; we do it ; and we regard what we 
 have done, the action that we willed, as a 
 whole, complete in itself. So, too, at first, 
 we regarded the chariot as being complete in 
 itself, a whole ; but we soon saw, that without 
 horses it was not really complete, nor without 
 a driver. In exactly the same way, when we 
 come to look at any action, willed and per- 
 formed, we shall see that it was willed and 
 performed with some purpose and for the 
 sake of some end. If we had had no purpose 
 or object in view, we should not have done it : 
 as the chariot without a driver would not be 
 complete, so an action without a purpose 
 
ACTION AND PURPOSE 107 
 
 would not be a rational action or an action 
 willed. 
 
 We are, therefore, in the world of will and 
 action, always doing something, for the sake 
 of something else. Our actions are always 
 parts of our purpose ; and, being parts, they 
 imply a whole. In that respect, it is the 
 same with them as we saw it to be with the 
 parts of space : everything that has size and 
 occupies space is part of the spatial world or 
 whole ; and the whole cannot exist without 
 any of its parts. The whole implies its parts ; 
 and the parts imply the whole. And it is, as 
 we saw, the same with time as with space : all 
 the various processes that are going on, in us 
 and around us, are parts of the world-process 
 as a whole, and cannot be conceived as existing 
 without it. 
 
 The world of will and action then forms a 
 whole, just as the world of space may be 
 regarded as a whole or the world of time. 
 We may regard the world-process, and the 
 time it takes, as forming a whole, in one sense 
 and from one point of view; and we may 
 regard the world of space as similarly forming 
 a whole. Each of them forms a whole in the 
 sense that its parts are not independent of 
 each other, and are not independent of the 
 whole. No part of space, that is to say, can 
 
io8 TIME AND SPACE 
 
 be cut out of the whole and taken away from 
 it : the parts exist only in the whole. No 
 moment can be really cut out of time and 
 taken away from it: we distinguish, or pre- 
 tend to distinguish, separate moments, but 
 they do not exist ; they are not to be found 
 scattered about anywhere. In time the 
 moments, that is to say the parts, exist only 
 in the whole. 
 
 But, though time may be regarded as a 
 whole in this way, and though space may be 
 regarded as a whole in the same way, it is clear 
 that time and space are not altogether indepen- 
 dent of one another : to move from one point 
 in space to another takes time and implies time. 
 We can measure space by the time which it 
 takes to go from one place to another; and 
 we measure time by means of the clock-hands 
 which travel round the dial, or by the ap- 
 parent motion of the sun. 
 
 Now, if, as some philosophers suppose, 
 matter in motion is the one ultimate reality, 
 then the space in which particles of matter 
 move, and the time they take to perform their 
 movements, may be distinguished from one 
 another by us, but they do not exist separately 
 and apart from one another. Motion, if it is 
 to take place, requires both space and time ; 
 and in motion you cannot have the one with- 
 
PRE-DETERMINATION 1 09 
 
 out the other. They are not two separate 
 and independent wholes: each implies the 
 other. 
 
 Further, if matter in motion that is, matter 
 moving in space and requiring time to do so 
 is, as is supposed by one school of philos- 
 ophers, the ultimate reality, then one move- 
 ment of matter, or one set of movements, 
 produces another. One movement is the 
 outcome of another, and is its inevitable 
 outcome : from beginning to end, the whole 
 course of matter in motion is inevitable, for 
 each movement is determined, or rather pre- 
 determined, by the previous movement. The 
 whole course, indeed, was pre-determined from 
 the start, or rather by the start : once set 
 going, it had to go the way it was started. 
 At the present time, not only is the past 
 unalterable, but the future is fixed and pre- 
 determined. And, if matter in motion is the 
 one ultimate reality, then we are matter in 
 motion, and our movements are all pre- 
 determined, and our future is fixed, as fixed 
 and unalterable as our past. 
 
 All this follows logically, consistently, 
 inevitably, from the assumption which some 
 philosophers make, when they ask you to 
 suppose that matter in motion alone exists. 
 They have every right to make that suppos- 
 
no ACTION AND AGENT 
 
 ition, if they think that by making it they can 
 explain experience. If, however, their sup- 
 position fails to explain experience, then their 
 supposition, that matter in motion alone exists, 
 breaks down ; and, if we want to explain and 
 understand experience, we must try some 
 other supposition. 
 
 Then, is there anything else in our experi- 
 ence besides matter in motion? and, if there 
 is, is it something which is pre-determined ? or 
 is it something which is not matter in 
 motion and which is not pre-determined ? 
 
 There is something else, as we have already 
 seen. There is not only the matter in motion 
 which is studied in its many various forms by 
 the man of science : there is also the student 
 who studies it and manipulates it and experi- 
 ments with it. There is his knowledge of it, 
 as he studies it ; and there is his action, as he 
 experiments on it. 
 
 It is to his action we now turn. Or, rather, 
 it is to the action of any one of us, for we are 
 all students of life, and making our experi- 
 ments upon it even if they are boggling 
 ones. 
 
 We are always doing something, or rather 
 we are always in process of doing something. 
 Consequently, we are always looking forwards 
 to what will happen, if we do what we are 
 
POSSIBLE FUTURES in 
 
 thinking of, or to what will be the con- 
 sequences, if we don't. Our eyes are fixed on 
 the future, we say. But strictly speaking, our 
 eyes travel to and fro from the consequences 
 of doing the thing, to the consequences 
 which will follow, if we don't. The fact is, 
 that the alternative consequences are, both of 
 them, possible futures. And so long as both 
 of them are possible futures, there is no future 
 which is fixed. And if there is none that is 
 fixed as yet, there is none that we can see. 
 We only see, and only can see, possible 
 futures. 
 
 But, eventually, that is, after considering the 
 consequences on the one hand of doing the 
 thing, and on the other of abstaining from 
 the thing, we act that is to say, we choose 
 one of the possibilities, and realise it. And 
 then it may turn out that we did foresee did 
 indeed actually foresee the future. 
 
 We are, as already said, always in process 
 of doing something. Life is a process of doing 
 something, of action. The process of life is 
 being continually realised and realised pre- 
 cisely because we choose a possibility and 
 make it a reality. If we had not chosen the 
 possibility we did, the other possibility would 
 have become the reality. The future, then, is 
 continually becoming what we (and others) 
 
112 ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 make it. It is perpetually being shaped. The 
 future is never finished : it is never finally and 
 unalterably fixed by our action. There always 
 and forever are alternative possibilities the 
 possibilities of acting or not acting between 
 which we choose. It is by our choice we 
 make, or help to make, the future : the future 
 is not predetermined, independently of us. 
 
 Thus, we arrive at a conclusion quite 
 different from that reached by the Materialist. 
 And the difference follows very naturally from 
 the fact that we started from different pre- 
 misses from his. He started from the as- 
 sumption that nothing exists really but matter 
 in motion matter moving in space, and requir- 
 ing time to do so. We started from the 
 assumption that matter in motion could not be 
 known, to begin with, unless there were some 
 person to know it; and that we, being 
 persons, are always in process of doing 
 something. 
 
 It is, however, not the difference in our 
 premisses that need be insisted on here. The 
 question is rather as to the difference in our 
 conclusions. The Materialist's conclusion is 
 that the future is already made, because 
 matter in motion which, according to him, 
 alone exists has all its movements pre-deter- 
 mined. Our conclusion is that it is the active, 
 
CHOICE 113 
 
 conscious person who is always making the 
 future and that he is always making it because 
 he is always in process of doing something. 
 We have no use in our system for ready-made 
 futures. We allow a choice between alterna- 
 tives, none of which is already made-up; and 
 all of which are possible until one of them 
 becomes actual. 
 
 It is, then, because the Materialist starts 
 from the assumption of matter in motion as 
 the one reality, that he comes to the conclusion 
 that the future is pre-determined and ready- 
 made. Whereas, if we start from the assump- 
 tion that nothing not even matter in motion 
 can be known to exist unless there is some 
 one to know it, and that no action can be 
 performed unless there is some one who does 
 it, we come to the conclusion that the future 
 is not pre-determined and ready made, but is 
 continually being made by beings who choose 
 between alternative possibilities. 
 
 Let us, then, trace the consequences of this 
 assumption of ours, for the interesting question 
 is whether it is an assumption which is capable 
 of explaining experience as a whole. An as- 
 sumption which fails to do so fails to do what 
 it undertakes to do, and is philosophically 
 untenable. 
 
 Suppose, then, that the future is not fixed 
 
ii4 MATTER AN ASBTRACTION 
 
 and pre-determined, but is incessantly created 
 by the free choice of conscious, active, beings 
 choosing between alternative possibilities. 
 Then, the notion of pre-determination is an 
 erroneous notion. But it is one which log- 
 ically and necessarily follows from supposing 
 that matter in motion is the sole reality, that 
 matter in motion alone exists. Therefore, the 
 supposition that matter in motion alone exists 
 must be erroneous. Matter is, in fact, an 
 abstraction, reached by concentrating our 
 attention on one part of our experience. 
 And being an abstraction it is not a reality. 
 
 Matter, then, regarded as the sole reality, 
 is an abstraction and a falsity. The behaviour 
 of matter, so regarded, however, is consistently 
 and necessarily regarded as pre-determined. 
 But, if matter, so regarded, is a false concep- 
 tion, its pre-determination or the pre-deter- 
 mination of its movements, is part of the 
 falsity of the conception. Matter, then, as an 
 independent reality, existing by itself, we will 
 put aside, as being, with its pre-determined 
 movements, an abstraction and a falsity. 
 
 After matter let us take space, for the 
 notion of matter is closely bound up with the 
 notion of space. Matter is in space, and 
 space is that in which matter is and moves. 
 Our position, that is to say our assumption or 
 
SPACE NO WHOLE 115 
 
 supposition, is that experience is a whole, and 
 that its parts, though they may be dis- 
 tinguished, have no existence independent of 
 the whole, or apart from it. And we have 
 seen that space has no independent parts : 
 you cannot cut a piece out of space and take 
 it away somewhere else, and you cannot 
 separate one piece of space from another. 
 Regarded in this way, as having no parts that 
 are independent of one another, space bears a 
 resemblance to a whole. And yet neither those 
 who believe the space, in which matter is, to be 
 a reality, nor we, regard it as being a whole. 
 
 Those who believe space to have a reality 
 of its own believe also that space is infinite. 
 And if we conceive it to be infinite, we cannot 
 conceive it as a whole there is always some of 
 it left over. That is due to the simple fact 
 that the notion of infinite space is evidently a 
 self-contradictory notion. It is the notion of 
 a whole that is never a whole. It is a night- 
 mare the night-mare of trying to pack up your 
 box, and finding that the more things you pack 
 in, the more there are that you can't get in. 
 You can't get any whole which will include 
 infinite space. 
 
 Thus, though space, as having no parts 
 that are independent of one another, bears a 
 resemblance to a whole, not even those who 
 
n6 SPACE AN ABSTRACTION 
 
 believe in the reality of the space in which 
 matter is, can believe, or do believe, it to be 
 a whole. Much less can we, who believe ex- 
 perience to be a whole and the only whole- 
 much less can we believe that space is that 
 whole. If it were the whole, there would be 
 nothing else but space and the matter it 
 contains. But what we are supposing is that 
 in experience we find much more than space 
 and matter : we find, for instance, as a matter 
 of experience, that we have knowledge and 
 perform actions. Space, then, is but part of 
 the experience we have, an element in the 
 whole : it is not the whole of experience, nor 
 is space itself a whole. Whatever view we 
 take of the ultimate nature of reality, there 
 can in the last resort only be one whole : if 
 we suppose there are two, we make a self- 
 contradictory supposition, for if we suppose 
 that there are two, we thereby suppose that 
 neither is the whole. 
 
 The simple fact is that space, by itself, like 
 matter by itself, is an abstraction, and not a 
 reality. And every abstraction proves self- 
 contradictory if it is supposed to be not an 
 abstraction but a reality. 
 
 Space, then, on our supposition that experi- 
 ence is a whole, and the whole space we 
 will put aside, as being, together with the 
 
TIME AN ABSTRACTION 117 
 
 matter it contains, an abstraction from experi- 
 ence, and so a falsity. 
 
 The infinity of space is a self-contradictory 
 notion, due simply to the mistake of forgetting 
 that space is an abstraction, and mistaking it 
 for an independent reality. 
 
 But, matter, moving in space, requires time 
 for its movements. The question, then, is at 
 once suggested whether time also is an abstrac- 
 tion, just as we have seen that matter and space 
 are abstractions, and even that matter moving 
 in space is an abstraction from experience, and 
 not the whole of our experience. 
 
 That is a most interesting question. And 
 for this reason : so long as we were only talk- 
 ing about particles of matter, moving in space, 
 we were talking about abstractions, which did 
 not include our conscious selves, and so did 
 not seem to affect us. But, when we come 
 to time, we can no longer pretend that it does 
 not affect us. Even if we were to dismiss 
 matter and space as mere figments of the 
 philosophic imagination, and to say that the 
 one and only reality is the experience of con- 
 scious, active selves, still we should be confronted 
 with the fact that it is in time that thoughts 
 succeed each other and that actions take place. 
 
 We ask, then, with some interest, whether 
 time, like matter and space, is an abstraction. 
 
n8 INFINITE TIME 
 
 First, we cannot help noticing that time 
 bears some resemblances to space ; and, like 
 space, bears some affinity to a whole. Thus, 
 the parts of a whole, though they may be 
 distinguished from it and from one another, 
 have no existence independent of the whole 
 and apart from it. And it is clear that time, 
 like space, has no independent parts, for you 
 cannot cut a period out of time, and move it 
 backwards or forwards to some other point 
 in time ; you cannot disintegrate time into 
 moments, and separate a present moment from 
 the preceding or the following moment, for 
 the present glides into the past, and the 
 future into the present, without any break or 
 interval between the two. Regarded in this 
 way, then, as having no moments or parts 
 that are separate and independent of one 
 another, time bears a resemblance to a whole, 
 as we saw that space does. 
 
 Time resembles space, again, in yet another 
 respect. Those who conceive either time or 
 space to have a reality of its own, believe that 
 time like space is infinite. Stretch out time 
 as far as you like, backwards and forwards, 
 and yet, when you have stretched it out as 
 far as you can, what there is, before it and 
 after it, is more time. If it is infinite, it is 
 infinite, and has no end either way. We 
 
TIME AN ABSTRACTION 119 
 
 cannot conceive it contained in any whole 
 whatever. 
 
 Once more, as in the case of space, the 
 reason for this is that the notion of infinite 
 time is a self-contradictory notion ; and to ask 
 us to imagine it is the same thing as asking us 
 to conceive a whole that is not a whole. 
 When we try to do so, we are moving, once 
 more, in the region of nightmares : the more 
 we try to pack up infinite time, the more 
 there is that won't go in. 
 
 We, then, who suppose that there is only 
 one whole the whole of experience cannot 
 suppose that time is a whole, any more than 
 we could suppose that space was a whole, for 
 there can, in the last resort, only be one 
 whole. Time may be an element in the 
 whole, as we suggested that space might be. 
 But the simple fact is that time by itself, like 
 space by itself, is an abstraction, and not a 
 reality. And every abstraction proves self- 
 contradictory, when it is supposed to be not 
 an abstraction but a reality. 
 
 But though time, regarded apart from the 
 experience of conscious, active selves, is not a 
 reality but an abstraction, still, we may say, 
 for all that, it is a reality in their experience, 
 and as they experience it. It is, we may say, 
 just like any other abstraction, for instance 
 
120 MOMENTS NON-EXISTENT 
 
 weight. Weight, as an abstraction, as some- 
 thing all by itself, is something which has 
 no existence ; yet, as it is found in our 
 experience, it is real enough. We cannot say 
 that no things are heavy. In the same way, 
 moments of time are an abstraction. If 
 moments are conceived as abstractions, if, that 
 is to say, each is regarded as something 
 standing by itself, and is supposed to be 
 separated, somehow, both from the moment 
 which precedes it and from the moment which 
 follows it ; if moments are conceived to be, as 
 it were, so many separate dots, and time is 
 understood to be the whole row of dots, then 
 both the dots and the row are simply things 
 which have no existence in our experience. 
 Moments are not experienced by us as 
 independent realities ; and the conception of 
 time as made up by adding these non-existent 
 moments together is a false conception. A 
 moment by itself, independent of what precedes 
 and what follows it, is non-existent, is nought ; 
 and as by adding nought to nought you can 
 only get nought, so by adding one non- 
 existent moment to another you can only get 
 what is non-existent you can only get a 
 non-existent time. 
 
 Thus time, space, and matter are not 
 experienced by us as independent realities ; 
 
ACTION CONTINUOUS PROCESS 
 
 and, if conceived as independent realities, they 
 lead to false conclusions : matter leads to 
 the false conclusion that everything is pre- 
 determined ; space leads to the denial of the 
 reality of any whole ; time leads to the notion 
 of events as abstractions, unrelated dots, which 
 are supposed to be independent of the whole 
 and yet to be parts of it. 
 
 Let us now turn from moments of time, 
 which are not real, and of which we have no 
 experience, to our actions, which are real and 
 of which we have experience. When we act, 
 we act with a purpose, for the sake of some 
 object, with an end in view. Our actions are 
 never independent of the end they are directed 
 to, future though it be. Our actions are 
 never separate, independent dots ; they are a 
 continuous process, which is always going on : 
 we are always engaged on something; life's 
 work is never done. An action has no 
 meaning, except as being directed towards an 
 end, which is conceived and intended. And 
 the end to which actions are directed is implied 
 in them, that is to say, they would not be per- 
 formed at all but for the fact that they are aimed 
 at some end and directed by some purpose. Our 
 actions, therefore, are a process by which, or in 
 which, an end is being attained. 
 
 If, now, we regard the actions which are 
 
122 A WHOLE IN PROCESS 
 
 being performed by us, and the actions which 
 we see going on everywhere around us, as 
 making up the whole of reality, that is, of our 
 experience, we shall have to say that every- 
 where there is activity, action ; that the whole 
 of reality is in activity, that is to say, is in 
 process; and that reality is the whole which 
 is in process. 
 
 The moment, however, we say this that 
 reality is the whole which is in process we 
 shall find ourselves in difficulties ; and being in 
 difficulties we shall have alternative courses 
 open to us. We may, that is to say, be 
 frightened by the difficulties, and decide to 
 retrace our steps, to give up the supposition 
 that has led us into all this difficulty or not. 
 The supposition was that experience is a whole, 
 and that none of its parts can exist independ- 
 ently of the whole and separate from it ; and, 
 accordingly, that the notions of time, space, and 
 matter as having existence independent of the 
 whole must be abstractions and therefore 
 falsities. 
 
 On the other hand, if we are not inclined 
 to be frightened because difficulties threaten 
 to loom up, we shall stick to our original 
 assumption which was to suppose that ex- 
 perience is a whole and we shall go forward 
 to meet the difficulties. 
 
EXPERIENCE A PROCESS 123 
 
 The difficulty that now confronts our 
 supposition, that experience is a whole, 
 is that we ourselves have said that 
 experience or reality is a whole which is in 
 process. And, in saying so, \ve seem to have 
 landed ourselves in a self-contradiction of 
 exactly the same kind as \ve said that the 
 notions of time, space and matter led to ; for, 
 surely, to speak of a whole as being in 
 process is to contradict ourselves. If we 
 assume that experience or reality is a whole, 
 we cannot go further than that. Beyond the 
 whole there cannot be anything. If, on the 
 other hand, we assume that experience or 
 reality is in process, then, as long as it is in 
 process, it is not the whole. 
 
 Thus, we seem to have landed ourselves in 
 a difficulty, and to be saying that a whole is 
 both a whole and not a whole. And the only 
 way of escape would seem to be to give up 
 one or the other of these self-contradictory 
 assertions. But that is the counsel of fear. 
 So, instead of following it, let us look at the 
 difficulty and see whether we are really 
 compelled to suppose that a whole cannot be 
 both a whole and not a whole. 
 
 If there were anything exceptional or un- 
 usual about saying that a thing call it A 
 both is A and is not A, then perhaps we might 
 
124 A IS B 
 
 feel rather apprehensive. But there is nothing 
 unusual or exceptional about statements of 
 this kind ; you are constantly making, or 
 implying, them about everything. If you say, 
 of the thing A, simply that it is A that a 
 man is a man you may be saying something 
 that it is very necessary to remind your hearers 
 of; but you are not adding to knowledge. 
 If you wish to make a statement that conveys 
 any further information about A, beyond the 
 fact that it is A, you must say that A is B ; 
 and B must not be simply A over again. 
 B must be something different from A. It 
 must, that is to say, be not A. Then you 
 have indeed given us information and told us 
 something new. You have told us not only 
 that A is A, but also that it is B. In short, 
 you have said, what you are constantly saying 
 in effect that A both is A and is not A, 
 that is to say is B. 
 
 If, now, A stands for " the whole," and 
 B stands for " in process," there is obviously 
 nothing exceptional or unusual in saying that 
 the whole, both is the whole that A is A 
 and that the whole is in process that A is B. 
 
 If it is felt that it must be merely a verbal 
 quibble to say that A both is A and is not A, 
 that is to say is B, the only way to dispel the 
 feeling will be to turn away from symbols and 
 
ONLY ONE UNIVERSE 125 
 
 words to facts. Let us, then, turn to what 
 even the Materialist will admit to be facts; 
 and we shall discover that there, too, we find 
 this to be no verbal quibble, out a simple 
 statement of the facts. According to the 
 Materialist, the material world, or the material 
 universe, being matter in motion, is in constant 
 change, and its condition at any given moment 
 is the outcome of its condition at the previous 
 moment. And its condition at the one 
 moment is different from its condition at the 
 next. But, we must point out, it is the same 
 universe all the time. So the same universe, 
 A, both is A and is not A. 
 
 If we are to deny that, we shall have to say 
 that there are as many different universes as 
 there are successive moments. And that is 
 plainly absurd ; there cannot be more than 
 one universe, because "universe" includes 
 everything if it does not include everything 
 whatever, it would not be the universe. 
 
 Perhaps this may be made clearer if we 
 take an illustration from chemistry. At the 
 beginning of a chemical experiment the 
 chemical constituents are enumerated ; and, at 
 the end of it, precisely the same chemical 
 constituents are found to be there. You start 
 with two molecules of hydrogen and one of 
 oxygen; you pass an electric spark through 
 
126 THE PERFECT PERSONALITY 
 
 them, and you still have H 2 O, though now 
 you have them in the form of a drop of water. 
 You have the same three molecules all the 
 time; the only difference is that at one 
 moment they are water, that is A ; and at 
 another they are not A not a liquid but 
 a gas. 
 
 As a simple fact, then, every whole, or 
 anything that we choose to regard for the 
 moment as a whole, is in process. 
 
 The solution of any difficulty that may yet 
 be felt lies in the fact that the difference 
 between saying that A is A, and that A is B, 
 is not a difference in A but in the point of 
 view from which you look at it, or apprehend 
 it. If we look at A from the point of view of 
 B, if, that is to say, we look at the whole as 
 being in process, we say accordingly that the 
 whole is in process. And that is, as a matter 
 of fact, the only way in which we human 
 beings can actually apprehend the whole. 
 But we can also suppose that there is a point 
 of view from which the whole is seen as a 
 whole, as a reality, as a being, not a becoming. 
 Now, each of us human beings can only say 
 "I am becoming." There is only one being 
 who can say I AM. In that, the full and 
 perfect sense of the word, there is only one 
 perfect personality ; and that is God. j 
 
THE PERFECT PERSONALITY 127 
 
 But this conclusion is really the supposition 
 which was implied in the assumption which 
 we made at the very beginning, when we 
 enquired what our experience all came to, and 
 \vhat it all meant. In asking that question, 
 we assumed that experience was a whole and 
 had a meaning. And now it turns out that 
 that assumption requires a previous supposi- 
 tion, the supposition of the existence of a 
 perfect Personality, and the belief that "in 
 Him we live and move and have our being." 
 
 On the assumption, which we now see that 
 we have made from the beginning, that 
 experience is a whole and has a meaning, and 
 that the reality of the whole is a perfect 
 Personality, it will follow that our human 
 personalities are but feeble copies of it, if for 
 no other reason, than for the reason that none 
 of us can say that we are not in process, not 
 becoming, that as yet we are. We are copies, 
 made in the image of God. As copies, we 
 have free-will, given to us by Him who made 
 us. Because we have free-will, the future is 
 not pre-determined but will be what we help 
 to make it. Because we have free-will we are 
 helping to determine for better or for worse 
 what the future will be. The whole, that 
 is to say, is in process, and we can help 
 to advance it or retard it. Process, or activity 
 
128 THE GOOD 
 
 in process, implies an end a good which is 
 being realised and an end which is yet to 
 be attained. That good is expressed in the 
 words : " thou shalt love thy God with all thy 
 heart and with all thy soul, and thy neighbour 
 as thyself." And that love is in our power 
 to give or to withhold ; we are free to do so 
 or not to do so. 
 
 To sum up then. If we assume that there 
 is an answer to the question which we put, 
 when we enquire what our experience all 
 comes to, we assume that experience is a 
 whole ; and thereby we assume that its parts 
 are not self-existent and not independent either 
 of each other or of the whole. 
 
 In the case of things occupying space, such 
 as the chariot, we saw that none were self- 
 existent or independent of each other. We 
 saw it also to be equally true of processes 
 which occupy time, and of the moments into 
 which we suppose time to be divided. And 
 in the case of actions, which we will and per- 
 form, we found that none are separate and 
 independent; but that, in all our actions, we 
 are doing something with a purpose, that is 
 for the sake of something else. 
 
 Next, we saw that, although we distinguish 
 between space and time, yet the idea of matter 
 in motion implies both time and space: we 
 
READY-MADE FUTURES 129 
 
 can suppose no movements of matter, unless 
 we suppose that they take place in space and 
 occupy time. Neither space nor time is self- 
 existent, for movement requires both. 
 
 But matter in motion, or the movement of 
 matter, if taken by itself, requires us to be- 
 lieve that one movement is determined by a 
 previous movement, that is to say, is pre- 
 determined. And, if matter in motion alone 
 existed and were self-existent, there would be 
 no more to be said. But we exist and we 
 act ; and, when we act, we choose between 
 alternative courses, both of which are possible ; 
 and, as both are equally possible, neither is 
 pre-determined. We do not deal in ready- 
 made futures. 
 
 The next point is that if the future is not 
 ready-made and pre-determined, the idea which 
 leads to the belief that it is pre-determined 
 must be a false idea. And the false idea is 
 the notion that matter, with its pre-determined 
 movements, is an independent and self-existent 
 reality. In truth, on our assumption, matter 
 in motion is an abstraction from reality; and 
 the idea that it is not an abstraction from 
 reality, but is the whole of reality, is a false 
 idea. 
 
 Its falsity is shown by the fact that it re- 
 quires us to believe that space is infinite ; and, 
 i 
 
1 30 ABSTRACTIONS AND THE WHOLE 
 
 if space is infinite, it cannot be a whole. But 
 infinite space is an abstraction from reality, and 
 is neither a whole nor the whole. Similarly 
 time, and especially time regarded as infinite, 
 is an abstraction from the whole of experience, 
 and is obviously not the whole of reality. 
 
 Thus time, space, and matter are not ex- 
 perienced by us as independent realities. As 
 experienced, they are elements in our experi- 
 ence as a whole. It is only when they are 
 abstracted from experience that they are con- 
 sidered to be independent realities ; and then, 
 because they are abstractions, they are not 
 realities. 
 
 Turning, then, from these abstractions time, 
 space, and matter we find that our experience 
 is the experience of activity ; and that activity 
 is a process. But it is part of our original 
 assumption that experience is a whole. To 
 us, human beings, and from our human point 
 of view, reality must present itself as a pro- 
 cess. Only to God can it present itself as a 
 whole. 
 
 The conviction, therefore, with which we 
 started, that experience, as a whole, must have 
 some meaning and some purpose, is the con- 
 viction, it turns out, that there is a perfect 
 Personality, and that "in Him we live and 
 move and have our being." And our actions 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 131 
 
 are not pre-determined. We can, if we will) 
 do His will, and draw near to Him both in our 
 hearts and in our actions. But, to draw near 
 to Him, we must love Him, with all our heart 
 and with all our soul, and must love our neigh- 
 bour as ourself. So far as we do that, we 
 are acting up to our philosophy, are putting 
 our philosophy in practice, and are practical 
 philosophers. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABSTRACTIONS, 13-15, 17, 20, 22, 
 54, 56, 79, 80, 90, 114, 116, 
 120, 129 
 
 Action, 78, 85, 88, 98, 106, 107, 
 no, in ff, 128 
 
 Analysis, 22 
 
 Appearance and reality, 96 fF. 
 
 Apple, 41, 42 
 
 Assumption, see Hypothesis 
 
 Atoms, 97 
 
 Attention, 18, 19 
 
 BELL, 40, 41 
 
 CAUSATION, universal, 29 ff. 
 Causes, 30 ff. 
 
 Chariot, the, 102 ff., 106, 128 
 Circle, expanding, 10, 24 
 Clapper, 40, 41 
 Common sense, 76 
 Conceptions, 98 
 Consciousness, 38, 73 
 Consequences, in 
 Constructive philosophy, 28 
 Curve, the, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25- 
 
 28, 38-40, 48-50, 65, 67, 71, 
 
 72, 75, 86, 87 
 
 DESTRUCTIVE philosophy, 28 
 Digging-stick, 89 
 Dogmatism, 5, 6, 7, 9, 24 
 Dots, 120 
 Doubt, 3 
 
 EARTH, 34 
 Effects, 31 ff. 
 Egg, the, 22 
 Electrons, 97 
 End, the, 81 ff. 
 Ends, 23, 128 
 Epistemology, 80 
 Evolution, 31, 50 
 Existence, 38, 85, 87 
 Existence and knowledge, 25 
 Expectation, 68, 69 
 Experience, 2, 6, 7, 24, 47, 49, 
 
 5> 53 6 5>7 I , 83-88,90, 101, 
 
 123 
 
 Experiment, 16, 24 
 Explanation, 34 
 External world, 49 
 
 FEELINGS, 39, 42 
 Finality, 6, 10 
 Freedom, 32 
 Free-will, 127 
 Future, the, 8, in 
 
 GOD, 88, 90, 93, 95, 98, 100, 
 101, 126, 127, 128, 130 
 
 Good, the, 2, 7, n, 12,33, 34, 
 78, 79, 8 1 ff, 90, 99 
 
 HABIT, 69 
 
 " Here," 92 
 
 Hume, 62 ff, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71 
 
 Hydrogen, 125 
 
 Hypothesis, n, 24, 52 
 
134 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hypothesis, of matter in motion 
 33 35 
 
 IDEALISM, 17-52 
 Ideas, 48 
 Ignorance, 89 
 Infinity, 117, 118, 119 
 
 KNOWER and known, 23 
 Knowledge, 85, 87, no 
 Knowledge and existence, 25, 
 26 
 
 LAWS, 29 ff., 50 
 Life, 2, 80 ff. 
 Love, 99 
 
 MATERIALISM, 27-51, 98, 112 
 Material things, 86, 91 
 Matter, 20, 21, 26, 27, 33-35, 
 
 40, 42 ff., 51, 61, 62, 73, 114 
 in motion, 54, 108, 109, 
 
 119 
 
 Meaning, 1,1,3,23,37,79,83 
 Mind, 20, 26, 27, 73 
 Mind and matter, 11 
 Molecules, 29, 97, 125 
 Moments, 108, 118, 120, 118 
 Moon, 32 
 Motion, 21, 29 
 
 NATURE, uniformity of, 30 ff. 
 Night-mare, 115, 119 
 "Now," 94 
 
 OBJECT, and subject, 10 
 
 20, 23, 28, 29, 39, 67, 71, 
 
 73 
 
 Ontology, 80 
 Orange, 40, 41, 43, 57, 74 
 Organism, 10 
 Oxygen, 125 
 
 PARTS, 101 ff., 1 18, 121 
 
 Past, the, 8 
 
 Person, 48 
 
 Personality, 101 ff., 117, 130 
 
 Philosophy, i, 50, 53, 64, 84, 
 
 88, 89 
 
 in practice, 77 ff. 
 
 and science, 24 
 
 Plough, 89 
 
 Possibilities, alternative, 113 
 Possibility, in 
 Pre-determination, 32 ff, 109, 
 
 no, 113, 114, 129 
 Process, 105, in, no, 130 
 Psychology, 54 
 Purpose, 86, in, 130 
 
 QUALITIES, 13, 14, 15, 16 
 
 READY-MADE futures, 113, 129 
 Real things, and real persons, 
 
 5 8 ff. 
 Reality, 28, 33, 34, 36, 57, 123, 
 
 130 
 Reflection, 4 
 
 SCEPTICISM, 5, 6, 9, 24, 53 ff., 
 
 77; ?8 
 Science, 4, 11, 12, 13, 54, 72, 97 
 
 abstract, 14, 15, i ?> 24 
 
 Sciences, the separate, 13 
 Self, 62, 63, 66, 74 
 Sensationalism, 54, 55, 56, 98 
 Sensationalists, 46 ff. 
 Sensations, 36, 40 ff, 55 ff, 60- 
 
 63, 74, 86 
 loose and separate, 65, 68, 
 
 70, 71 
 
 Senses, the, 29 
 Sight, 41 
 Solipsism, 59 
 Space, 92 ff, 103, 105 ff., 114 ff., 
 
 c I3 - 
 Species, 31 
 
INDEX 
 
 135 
 
 Stick, the, 23, 26 
 Student, the, 16, 17, no 
 Subject, the, 18, 19, 20, 23, 38, 
 
 48, 65-67, 71, 75 
 
 and object, 10 
 
 Suppositions, 47, 48, 64, 77, 
 
 89-91, 95, 101 
 Synthesis, 22 
 
 TASTE, 40, 41 
 " Then," 94 
 "There," 92 
 Things, 36, 37, 42, 75 
 
 in the abstract, 17, 1 8 
 
 material, 29, 49 
 
 Thoughts, 36, 39, 86 
 Time, 8, 81, 94 ff., 104, 117 ff., 
 130 
 
 Toothache, 65 
 Truth, 8 1 
 
 UNIFORMITY of nature, 30 ff., 50 
 Universal causation, 50 
 Universe, 125 
 
 WATCH, the, 22 
 Watchmaker, 102 
 Weight, 13, 15, 16, 18, 22, 120 
 Whole, the, 2, 4, 9, 10, 12, 28, 
 
 87, 98, 101 ff., 115, 116, 121, 
 
 123, 124, 130 
 Will, 78, 88, 98, 106, 107 
 World, the, 2 
 World-process, 105 
 
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