RECORDS OF MEETINGS 407 



makes of it a perception of such and such objects at such and such dis- 

 tances. The point of view urged in opposition to this is that while these 

 factors are significant, they are so in almost a reverse order of values. 

 Complex sensory perceptions are so much more psychological that the 

 habit of mind is to jump to an interpretation on the very slightest data 

 and then use the physiological adjustments merely to corroborate the 

 psychological anticipation. The proof for this view is found in the un- 

 willingness of the eyes and indeed their inability, when deprived of a 

 psychological clue and thrown wholly upon physiological support, to ob- 

 tain any satisfactory judgments at all. In judging the distance of spots 

 of light in a dark room, the greatest diversity appears ; and there appears 

 also, just as soon as the least glimmer of light gives any clue to the real 

 situation, the tendency to guess the result and then merely use the physio- 

 logical processes to check it. Two corollaries from this principle may be 

 said to support it. The one indicates the importance of extreme care in 

 avoiding suggestion, and the other explains why, in complex sensory judg- 

 ments, we are so prone to illusion. As a working hypothesis for complex 

 judgments, this restatement of the physiological support is not only in 

 itself suggestive but unites a variety of experimental data in a consistent 

 interpretation. 



Dr. Bush said in abstract : The study of philosophy is still hampered 

 by the claims of problems which are the products of presuppositions 

 which no candid observer is obliged to make but which are remnants from 

 a long tradition. The tradition had its origin in natural conditions char- 

 acteristic of primitive culture. The resulting metaphysical concepts, 

 since they are not required in order to describe observable facts, but since 

 they do still play a great role in philosophy, particularly in the philosophy 

 of religion, are most readily explained as survivals from prehistoric cul- 

 ture. The problems which depend upon taking for granted the authority 

 of these survival-concepts are, accordingly, entirely artificial, and the 

 philosophy whose stock in trade is arguments about these problems is an 

 artificial philosophy. The philosophy which operates with these survival- 

 concepts is monistic idealism, and its two determining ideas are the abso- 

 lute and consciousness, but systems of philosophy that operate with un- 

 verifiable survivals are not the only artificial systems. Systems which 

 exist only to oppose the former derive all their vitality from the existence 

 of their artificial opponent. Accordingly, the various realisms which get 

 their problems from dialectical situations developed by idealism have a 

 subject-matter that is equally unreal. Mythology has been, in the past, 

 an instrument for maintaining very important social relations, but if 

 social progress continues, the time should come when misrepresentations 



