TKESIDKNTIAL ADDRICSS SKCTIOX V. 1 33 



action and action as applying knowledge — are the inseparable 

 factors in the development of concrete experience itself. Lastly, 

 this principle means that the ultimate nature or reality of what 

 we are wont to call things must be analogous to what we know 

 in ourselves as experience. ]^Jore generally, everything that is 

 real must have some kind of inner hfe of its own. I shall con- 

 clude with a word or two on this last point. 



If it is asked what there is in our actual experience to sug- 

 gest this conception, the answer is that, in a true analysis of 

 experience, things are known to us not merely as facts of which 

 we may l)ecome aware, but as entities of which we have to take 

 account in our practical life, and therefore as related to our 

 efforts and purposes. When we regard things in this way, 

 we find it impossible to think of them only as objects of know- 

 ledge, and not in some degree as subjects or centres of experience. 

 Things respond in different ways to different modes of treat- 

 ment on our part, and they exhihit differences oif quality through 

 adaptation or facilitation. They have their own ways and habits 

 and tendencies, their own attitude or point of view, their owai 

 conatus in suo esse perseverarc, as Spinoza put it. There is a 

 passage in F. C. S. Schiller's " Studies in Humanism "' ^' that ex- 

 presses this point in a quaint but suggestive way : " A stone, no 

 doubt, does not apprehend us as spiritual beings, and to preach 

 to it would be as fruitless (though not as dangerous) as preach- 

 ing to deaf ears. But does this amount to saying that it does 

 not apprehend us at all, anfl takes no note whatever of our 

 existence ? Not at all ; it is aware of us and affected by us on 

 the plane on which its own existence is passed, and quite capable 

 of making us effectively aware of its existence in our transactions 

 with it. The " common world " shared by us and the stone is 

 not, perhaps, on the level o:f ultimate reality. It is only a phy- 

 sical world of " bodies," and " awareness " in it can apparently 

 be shown only by being hard and hea\y and coloured and space- 

 filling, and so forth. And all these things the stone is, and 

 recognises in other " bodies." It faithfully exercises all the 

 physical functions, and influences us by sO' doing. It gravitates 

 and resists pressure, and obstructs ether vibrations, etc., and 

 makes itself respected as such a body. And it treats us as of a 

 like nature with itself, on the level of its understanding, i.e., as 

 bodies, to which it is attracted inversely as the square of the 

 distance, moderately hard, and capable of being hit. That we 

 may also be hurt it does not know or care. But in the kind of 

 cognitive operation Avhich interests it, viz., that which issues in 

 a physical manipulation of the stone, e.g., its use in house- 

 building, it ])lays its part and responds according to the measure 

 of its capacity." 



Philosophy stands, therefore, for the recognition of the 

 suggestions or indications as to the nature of things which spring 

 from immediate experience — not only (from sense-impressions, 



"P. 442 ~~ " 



