THE WORLD VERSUS MATTER 279 



Such is the indubitable testimony of all common experience and of 

 almost all scientific experience. Right here is one of the strategic points 

 of the whole situation. How trustworthy is the testimony of common 

 experience and of so much of science as supports it in this matter? 



Some physicists, how many I do not know, but seemingly a consid- 

 erable number, do not feel themselves compelled to admit that there are 

 no real objects in the world possessing but a single attribute. As I 

 understand the conception of the electron as a corpuscle (" a little body" 

 you note) of pure, negative electricity — of just electricity and nothing 

 else — of "electricity with no material support" as some writers say, is 

 virtually, though perhaps not admittedly, a natural body with but a single 

 attribute. All ordinary experience is certainly to the effect that elec- 

 tricity is an attribute of natural bodies rather than a wholly independent 

 body. The innumerable mechanisms all about us, batteries, dynamos, 

 conducting wires, transformers, etc., for producing and handling it, are 

 unequivocal witnesses to the truth of this assertion. 



Before it can be admitted that electricity or the " ether of space " or 

 any single entity with but a single attribute under any name whatever, 

 is the real essence and explanation of the whole visible world, we must 

 examine intently what would be involved in such an admission, and 

 also the positive evidence advanced in support of the hypothesis. 



First look at the matter for a moment historically or racially as one 

 might say. One of the most significant results of modern anthropo- 

 logical research is the clear demonstration that the mind of primitive 

 man is not clearly differentiated as to the way it recognizes objects in the 

 world by which it is surrounded; that what is subjective and what is 

 objective are very imperfectly separated in the primitive mind as com- 

 pared with what they are in the mind of civilized man. Indeed the 

 process of becoming civilized may be well characterized by saying that it 

 consists in the gradual sifting out in consciousness of objective, sensible 

 experiences from purely subjective experiences. The chief interest to us 

 about this disentanglement of the human mind from the external world 

 is that it consists, in large part at least, in discovering that what civilized 

 men unquestionably recognize as attributes of natural objects, are held 

 by primitive men to be independent entities on a footing with actual 

 objects, that is, with objects composed of numerous attributes properly 

 combined. The roar of the waterfall, the hoot of the owl, the destroying 

 force of the storm, disease, hunger and the thousand and one other inci- 

 dents of common life universally recognized by men under civilization 

 as states or conditions of their appropriate objects, are conceived by 

 savages to be independent beings. And it is clear that something of the 

 same sort marks the development of each individual civilized man from 

 earliest childhood to the full consciousness of mature life. In the 

 terminology of biological evolution we have here an instance of the law 



