1 86 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



demned the belief as wholly irrational. The pragmatists have 

 affirmed a sort of converse of this or perhaps we should rather 

 say, the same doctrine expressed in objective instead of subjective 

 terms with the sceptical afterthoughts omitted. If the percept 

 and the object are identical, what difference is there between 

 saying that the percept (i. e., the impression of sensation) exists 

 while it is not perceived, and saying that the object is directly 

 present in the perceptive consciousness. In a former chapter 

 we mentioned one inconvenience of Hume s theory, which at 

 taches with equal force to the pragmatist restatement: namely, 

 that a supposedly unchanged object must be successively identi 

 fied with very different percepts. In the preceding pages we 

 have given an account of the difficulties raised by John Stuart 

 Mill difficulties which seem to us to be wholly fatal to the 

 theory. Here we wish to point out that the percept may be 

 quite as truly representative as the idea, and representative in 

 substantially the same fashion. 



Just a word as to resemblance. It is true that an idea may 

 resemble a certain percept, but only as one percept may resemble 

 another as the aria heard in the gallery resembles the aria 

 heard in the front rows of the pit, or as the landscape at dusk 

 resembles the landscape at midday. Moreover, upon the score 

 of resemblance, an idea is no more open to qualification as false 

 or true than a percept ; for, if the idea may (by later reflection) 

 be subjected to comparison with the percept, so also may the 

 percept be subjected to comparison with a percept (or idea) 

 regarded as a yet better standard. 



We say that if the pragmatist theory of meaning applies to 

 the idea, it must equally apply to the percept. A fortiori it 

 must. For on the lower levels of animal life the conscious control 

 of conduct must be almost entirely vested in the sense-impressions 

 of the moment, imagination reaching no farther forward than to 

 the immediate consequences of the act to be performed. And 

 when, with the progress of intelligence, the control exerted by 

 perception is more and more largely supplemented by centrally 



