PHILOSOPHIC ANTS 185 



plained that she felt so happy that particular morn- 

 ing that she had been sure it was a fine day. 



If the weather can affect one's statements of fact, 

 and one's emotions can aflfect the apparent course 

 of meteorological events, where is the line to be 

 drawn? What is real? The only things of which 

 we have immediate cognizance are, of course, hap- 

 penings in our minds: and the precise nature and 

 quality of each of these happenings depends on two 

 things — on the constitution and state of our mind 

 and its train on the one hand; on the other hand 

 upon events or relations between events outside that 

 system. That sounds very grand; but all it means 

 after all is that you need a cause to produce an effect, 

 a machine to register as well as a something to be 

 registered. 



As further consequence, since this particular ma- 

 chine (if I may be permitted to use the odious word 

 in a purely metaphorical sense), this mind of ours, 

 is never the same for two succeeding instants, but 

 continually varies both in the quantity of its activity 

 and the quality of its state, it follows that variations 

 in mental happenings depend very largely on varia- 

 tions in the machine that registers, not by any 

 means solely upon variations in what is to be 

 registered. 



Few (at least among Englishmen) would dispute 

 the thesis that food, properly cooked and served, and 

 of course adapted to the hour, is attractive four 



