SIGNIFICANCE AND VALUES 329 



with the truth whenever we admire the gorgeous bow 

 of colour, and should strive to reduce our minds to such 

 a state that we receive the same impression from the 

 rainbow as from a table of wave-lengths. But although 

 that is how the rainbow impresses itself on an impersonal 

 spectroscope, we are not giving the whole truth and 

 significance of experience — the starting-point of the 

 problem — if we suppress the factors wherein we our- 

 selves differ from a spectroscope. We cannot say that 

 the rainbow, as part of the world, was meant to convey 

 the vivid effects of colour; but we can perhaps say that 

 the human mind as part of the world was meant to 

 perceive it that way. 



Significance and Values. When we think of the sparkling 

 waves as moved with laughter we are evidently attri- 

 buting a significance to the scene which was not there. 

 The physical elements of the water — the scurrying 

 electric charges — were guiltless of any intention to 

 convey the impression that they were happy. But so 

 also were they guiltless of any intention to convey the 

 impression of substance, of colour, or of geometrical 

 form of the waves. If they can be held to have had any 

 intention at all it was to satisfy certain differential 

 equations — and that was because they are the creatures 

 of the mathematician who has a partiality for differential 

 equations. The physical no less than the mystical 

 significance of the scene is not there; it is here — in the 

 mind. 



What we make of the world must be largely de- 

 pendent on the sense-organs that we happen to possess. 

 How the world must have changed since man came to 

 rely on his eyes rather than his nose ! You are alone on 

 the mountains wrapt in a great silence ; but equip yourself 



