THE SCIENTIFIC LAW loi 



are referring to a class which in the normal civilised 

 condition have perceptive and reflective faculties nearly- 

 akin. It is therefore not surprising that normal human 

 beings perceive the same world of phenomena, and reflect 

 upon it in much the same manner. The " universality " 

 of natural law, the " absolute validity " of the scientific 

 method, depends on the resemblance between the percep- 

 tive and reflective faculties of one human mind and those 

 of a second. Human minds, are, within limits, all receiving 

 and sifting -machines of one type. They accept only 

 particular classes of sense-impressions — being like auto- 

 matic sweetmeat-boxes which if well constructed refuse to 

 act for any coin but a penny — and having received their 

 material they arrange and analyse it, provided they are 

 in working order, in practically the same manner. If 

 they do not arrange and analyse it in this manner, we 

 say that the mind is disordered, the reason wanting, the 

 person mad. The sense-impressions of a madman may 

 be as much reality for him as our sense-impressions are 

 for us, but his mind does not sift them in the normal 

 human fashion, and for him, therefore, our laws of nature 

 are without meaning. 



§ 12. — The Routine of Perceptions is possibly a Prodtict 

 of the Perceptive Faculty 



The idea of the human mind as a sorting-machine is 

 not without suggestion with regard to another important 

 matter, namely, the routine nature of our sense-impressions. 

 How far does this routine of sense-impressions depend 

 upon the perceptive faculty ? How far does it lie outside 

 that faculty in the unknown and unknowable beyond of 

 sensation (p. 68) ? The question is one to which at 

 present no definite answer can be given, and perhaps one 

 to which no answer can ever be found. If, with the 

 materialists, we make matter the thing-in-itself, we throw 

 the routine back on something behind sense-impressions, 

 and, therefore, unknowable. Precisely the same happens 

 if, with Berkeley, we attribute the routine to the imme- 



