I30 ]'KESlDliNTlAL ADDRKSS SECTION F. 



causal connexion, which is ])recisely the sort of definition which 

 modern philosophy in general tends to give, and he indicates 

 how points and instants may be defined in a similar way." What 

 this implies is that there is no inconsistency but rather reciprocity 

 between the philosophical or psychological account of the actual 

 nature of sense-experience, so long as it is not combined with 

 uncritical assumptions, and the mathematical treatment of the 

 very same experience in terms of particles, points, and instants, 

 in spite of the non-existence of such entities; and that their 

 definition in terms of actual experience, i.e., as logical functions 

 of sense-data, is what is required to ])r()ve their applicability to 

 reality as a thorough-going exi^eriential i)hilosophy must con- 

 ceive it. 



Tn a similar strain Russell's collaborator, Whitehead, in bis 

 little " Introduction to Mathematics," seeks to relate the funda- 

 mental ideas of mathematics to individual sense-experience. For 

 example, wdien dealing with co-ordinate geometry and speaking 

 of the origin O and the two axes OX, OY. he says : " From an 

 abstract mathematical point of view the idea of an arbitrary 

 origin may appear artificial and clumsy, and similarly for the 

 arbitrarily drawn axes. But in relation to the application of 

 matbematics to the events of the universe we are here symbolizing 

 with direct simplicity the most fundamental fact respecting the 

 outlook on the world afl^orded to us b}- our senses. We each of 

 us refer our sen>ible ])erce])tions of things to an origin which 

 we call " here "" : our location in a particular part of .space round 

 which we group the whole universe is the essential fact of our 

 ])odily existence. We can imagine beings who observe all 

 phenomena in all space with an e(jual eye, unbiassed in favour 

 of any part. With us it is otherwise, a cat at our feet claims 

 more attention than an earthquake at Cape Horn, or than the 

 destruction of a world in the Milky Way. It is true that in 

 making a common stock of our knowledge with our fellowmen, 

 we have to waive something of the strict egoism of our own 

 individual ' here.' We substitute ' nearly here ' for ' here " ; 

 thus we measure miles from the town hall o:f the nearest town, 

 or from the capital of the country. In measuring the earth, 

 men of science will put the origin at the earth's centre; astrono- 

 mers even rise to the extreme altruism of putting their origin 

 inside the sun. But, far as this last origin may be, and even if 

 we go further to some convenient point amid the nearer fixed 

 stars, yet, compared to the immeasurable infinities of space, it 

 remains true that our first i)rocedure in ex])loring the universe 

 is to fix upon an origin ' nearly here." "''' 



" O/' cif., lect. iv; cf. Poincare, pp. S5-7. 



"A. X. Whitehead: " Iiitrodvctiuii to Matliciihitu\< ft-. ^^5-6. Com- 

 pare with this the reflexion characteristic of the ideas advanced hj' Clerk 

 Maxwell, which have hecomc familiar ones today, viz., that "a line is 

 not originally a mark on the hlackboard, whicli can equally he called BA as 

 AB, hut is the locus of a motion from A to B." Quoted from lloffding, 

 Modern Philosophers, p. iti. 



