side 207

(fortsat fra side 206)

 

ample, when we discover (by a round-about means) that a presenta-

tion has been made to consciousness we also get directly (subjectively)

an affirmation of attribute. This is an ultimate of experience. It

does not make an external world. 'Light is,' and that is all there is

about it. But when I, psychologically, accumulate a lot of data and

construct the concept of substance, this is a matter of relation. The

brightness, heat, weight, etc. are made to cohere in the substance,

'candle,' a thing projected out of self and, by implication at least,

contrasted to self, as an object. All these relations of activities are

true to the extent that they cohere in one system or organism. When

the question arises in our metaphysics as to the truth of the objective

world as a whole, as it will when we become aware of the subjec-

tivity of all knowledge, there is but one answer the one already

used. The objective world is true because it is in one organism with

the subjective mind. Just as our partial judgments are true or false as

they prove to be founded on relations in one whole, organically, not to

say causally, connected, so the larger judgment 'there is a true exter-

nal world apart from the mere act of perceiving it ' is true only if the

percipient or perceiving force be organically part of the same universe.

No other criterion is possible.

 

The feeling of reality comes from the immediateness of the ele-

ments of experience(1). It defies analysis and requires no definition and

yet is implicit in all practical life. The judgment of truth, on the

other hand, is a fluctuating evaluation based on relations which are

known rather than felt. The weight of evidence forces me to believe

what is true, I require no evidence to cause an experience to be real

nor will any amount of evidence lessen its reality.

 

The old illustration of the inability of the blind to realize visual

data though they may weave about them all sorts of relations, of the

truth of which they are fully convinced, may not be realizable by the

non-blind. To this end let us take another example.

 

A friend of mine who is expert in both physics and physiology,

informs me seriously and in detail that he has discovered that by using

the radium waves , and passing them through a set of refracting ap-

pliances, he is able to produce a series of irritants which, when ap-

plied to the sensitive nerve plexus in the hollow of the human foot,

give rise to sensations unlike any other. They possess a great keenness

and penetrating force and seem to vibrate throughout the organism by

a process of excessive irradiation. Each of these sensations has the

 

(1) Cf. Baldwin's explicit treatment of 'Reality-feeling' in distinction from

'Belief' in his Feeling and Will, Chap. VII.

 

(fortsættes på side 208)

 
 
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