vn REALITY AND IDEALISM 117 



always, or even normally, tend in the same direction ? 

 And even if they did, that would establish, not the 

 collective theoretic certainty of criteria, each of which was 

 individually fallible, much less a necessary basis for meta 

 physical inferences, but only a sort of practical probability, 

 which it might be convenient to act upon. Thus the 

 boasted rationality of the real reduces itself to this : upon 

 Mr. Ritchie s own showing rationality is not an ultimate 

 test, but resolvable into the three criteria he mentions, 

 and in the end their value turns out to be practical ! 



Yet it may be that humbling the pretensions of this 

 pseudo-rationality does good service in drawing attention 

 to the commonest and most influential of the practical 

 tests of reality, which may be said to have underlain and 

 guided the development of all the rest. It lies in the 

 fact emphasised by Professor James in his wonderful 

 chapter on the perception of reality l that that is ad 

 judged real which has intimate &quot;relation to our emotional 

 and active life,&quot; i.e. practical value. It is this criterion 

 which has constituted the objective world of ordinary 

 men, by excluding from it the world of dreams, hallucina 

 tions, and the transient though normal illusions of the 

 senses. It is this which accounts for the superior reality 

 so often ascribed to feelings, especially to pleasure and 

 pain, which Mr. Ritchie mentions. 2 It is this which 

 absorbs into it Mr. Ritchie s fifth, or ethical, sense of 

 reality. It is this, lastly, which has moulded the whole 

 development of the intellect, and so pervades all Mr. 

 Ritchie s criteria and reduces them to dependence upon it. 

 Hence if we are to speak of any main (derivative) sense 

 of reality at all, it must certainly be conceded to 

 Professor James that &quot; whatever things have intimate and 

 continuous connexion with my life, are things of whose 

 reality I cannot doubt.&quot; 



But though there can be no doubt of the practical 

 importance of this criterion, there may be much about its 

 speculative value. The history of the practical struggle 

 which has evolved us and our minds seems to offer but 



1 Pnnc. of Psych, ii. 295. 2 Darwin and Hegel, pp. 82-83. 



