PHILOSOPHIC ANTS 185 



What is real ? The only things of which we have 

 immediate cognizance are, of course, happenings in 

 our minds : and the precise nature and quality of 

 each of these happenings depends on two things — 

 on the constitution and state of our mind and its 

 brain on the one hand ; on the other hand upon 

 events or relations between events outside that system. 

 That sounds very grand ; but all it means after all is 

 that you need a cause to produce an effect, a machine 

 to register as well as a something to be registered. 



As further consequence, since this particular 

 machine (if I may be permitted to use the odious 

 word in a purely metaphorical sense), this mind of 

 ours, is never the same for two succeeding instants, 

 but continually varies both in the quantity of its 

 activity and the quality of its state, it follows that 

 variations in mental happenings depend very largely 

 on variations in the machine that registers, not by any 

 means solely upon variations in what is to be registered. 



Few (at least among Englishmen) would dispute 

 the thesis that food, properly cooked and served, 

 and of course adapted to the hour, is attractive four 

 times in the day. But to a large proportion among 

 us, even sausages and marmalade at nine, or roast 

 beef and potatoes on a Sabbath noon, would prove 

 not only not attractive but positively repellent if 

 offered us on a small steamer on a rough day. I 

 will not labour the point. 



We all know how the size of sums of money appears 



