776 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
encounter from moment to moment. considered merely as 
sensations, present the appearance of being abrupt, *un- 
disciplined, chaotic; to use Hegel’s expression, they are, as 
it were, fired at us out of a pistol. As J. 8. Mill says in one 
passage—‘‘ The order of Nature, as perceived at a first 
glance, presents at every instant a chaos followed by another 
chaos.” Even Herbert Spencer speaks of external 
phenomena as “ mixed in the most heterogeneous manner, 
and presented to the moving organism in combimations never 
twice. alike.” Yet he regards all psychical relations, includ- 
ing every necessity of thought, as resulting from experiences 
of external relations, on the principles that frequent external 
sequences must produce corresponding mental sequences, | 
and that the effects of these are transmitted to descendants 
through the nervous organism. Is it not clear that we 
should never be able to discern a cosmos if we were wholly 
dependent for our knowledge on the ever-varying impres- 
sions pelting in upon us from all sides through every avenue 
of sense? Nothing could be more ignorant or more helpless 
than a mind doomed thus only to reflect the environment. 
It is only by neglecting some of the materials given to us 
in sense, selecting others, and adding to them from the store 
of our past experience, that we can even perceive material 
objects, and, on a higher plane, it is by a similar selection 
of attributes that we become aware of classes and of laws.* 
It is a mistake to suppose that what we have gained by 
our explorations has been before us all the while, and that 
we have only received its impress, deepened by repetition 
and by heredity. The ordered world which we have won 
from the inane implies on our part discrimination, assimila- 
tion, and a desire to possess the environment for our own 
uses. Instead of laying ourselves open indiscrimmately to 
every sensation, we have adventured in quest of a world 
which will suit our needs and accommodate itself to our 
* As Professor James has said—‘‘ |he world’s contents are given to 
each of us in an order so foreign to our subjective interests, that we can 
hardly by an effort of the imagination picture to ourselves what it is like. 
We have to break that order altogether, and by picking out from it the 
items which concern us, and connecting them with others far away, which 
we say ‘belong’ with them, we are able to make out definite threads of 
sequence and of tendency ; to foresee particular liabilities and get ready 
for them ; and to enjoy simplicity and harmony in place of what was chaos. 
Is not thesum of your actual experience taken at this moment and impar- 
tially added together an utter chaos? It is an order with which we have 
nothing to do, but to get away from it as fast as possible. As I said; we 
break it: we break it into histories, and we break it into arts, and we 
bre:k it inso sciences; and then we begin to feel at home.”’—T7he Will to 
Believe and other, Essays, pp. 118, 119. 
