FACT AND IDEA. 1095 
Here we reach the question—How certain things can be more 
real to consciousness, apart from their reality to mere awareness, or 
reflection, in answer to what demands they are more real? Simply, 
the human procedure with regard to reality. Why do we choose 
and reject—on what authority ! 
Ts it not plain that the authority must lie in consciousness, be 
other than mere awareness (Wahrnehmung) ? 
Consider a moment our judgment with regard to error—hallu- 
cination. Reality—on what else does it depend except on our 
awareness, on itS presence in our consciousness? Not on its 
duration in our consciousness ; for how many fleeting things do we 
hold for real? and how indeed can five minutes more or less 
affect reality where duration is infinite? We simply reverse the 
verdict of plain consciousness. 
Have we not here an indication that man shapes his reality for 
himself out of some inditferent brutum? Do we not find reason 
to suspect that he is led thereto by his longing for stability ? 
The existence of error in the world is indeed a suggestive 
question. Why error? Is it that reality depends on man and 
his search for it? Or is it that the unreal, the misleading, the 
erroneous, which we gradually set aside, are the only actual 
world ; that man never comes into touch with the true reality ; 
that he must seek another real——or another error—which will 
better suit him—his interests ? 
§ Yes, the human procedure is a modification of reality—say, 
rather, a substitution of humanity for reality. 
The Fact is not the object alone—to make the mere object the 
fact is already a human feeling 
as awareness, but feeling as emotion; for an emotion is the 
subjective aspect of the object, and there is no object in the 
universe which does not excite, invariably, some emotion. The 
fact is one: we break it up. 
The first action of direct consciousness is to separate conscious- 
ness, and more particularly emotion, from its object; and our every- 
day habit is to look upon this latter residue as the fact, whilst 
ignoring the subjective side, and, above all, never dreaming that 
the emotions form an indispensable aspect of the phenomenon. 
Perhaps, in this, we are belying the motive which led to the 
separation of Mind and Matter as empirical objects: which separa- 
tion, following the discovery of Feeling in reflection, was surely 
nohomage to the solidity of the outer world—rather, say, the pulling 
of itself together by consciousness in face of the object: whereupon 
follows the ordinary world-view, since consciousness finds itself 
united to a body which is to it a matter of great interest. 
