BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 175 



derness of mere phenomena, is an attempt, which, 

 as long as &quot; our interest s on the dangerous edge 

 of things,&quot; will attract an admiring, even if sus 

 picious, audience. Moreover, we may admit that 

 the attempt to catch the universe of immediate 

 experience, of action and passion, coming and 

 going, to damn it in its present body in order ex 

 pressly to glorify its spirit to all eternity, to vali 

 date the meaning of beliefs by discrediting their 

 natural existence, to attribute absolute worth to 

 the intent of human convictions just because of 

 the absolute worthlessness of their content that 

 the performance of this feat of virtuosity has 

 developed philosophy to its present wondrous, if 

 formidable, technique. 



But can we claim more than a succes (Testime? 

 Consider again the nature of the effort. The 

 world of immediate meanings, of the world em 

 pirically sustained in beliefs, is to be sorted out 

 into two portions, metaphysically discontinuous, 

 one of which shall alone be good and true &quot; Real 

 ity,&quot; the fit material of passionless, beliefless knowl 

 edge ; while the other part, that which is excluded, 

 shall be referred exclusively to belief and treated 

 as mere appearance, purely subjective, impressions 

 or effects in consciousness, or as that ludicrously 

 abject modern discovery an epiphenomenon. 

 And this division into the real and the unreal is 

 accomplished by the very individual whom his own 



