n6 HUMANISM V n 



of others, such as is at present lacking. We act quite 

 inconsistently in sometimes submitting to the superior 

 delicacy of the expert s senses, and sometimes rejecting 

 it. A room full of unmusical or inartistic people would 

 hardly dispute about tones or colours with a single 

 musician or painter, but an assembly of non-sensitives 

 would probably deny that Macbeth saw a ghost (though 

 who more qualified than Macbeth to see the ghost of 

 Banquo ?). The colour-blind, perhaps because they are 

 in a minority, do not dispute the objectivity of colours 

 they cannot see, but upon what logical principle should 

 we be less forbearing towards those who claim to see 

 the ultra-violet and infra-red rays of the spectrum, or the 

 luminosity of a magnetic field ? In short, just as the ex 

 cluding value of non-conformity was impaired in the 

 first case by the possibility of genuine hyperaesthesia in 

 the individual, so in the second it is impaired by the 

 possibility of collective hyperaesthesia. And just as in 

 the first case conformity did not exclude error, owing to 

 the possibility of complex hallucination, so it fails in the 

 second, owing to the possibility of collective hallucina 

 tion. 



(3) The third criterion at first seems more valuable 

 until we recollect that every new fact and every new 

 experience is in some degree out of harmony with and 

 contradictory of our previous experience. 1 Would it not 

 be strange, then, to allow our own inexperience, and the 

 stupidity of our ancestors to exercise an absolute censor 

 ship over the growth of knowledge? Besides, it so 

 happens that in most cases when universal experience * 

 is appealed to, its voice is self-contradictory. (What 

 right have we, e.g. to reject countless traditions in order 

 to prove that miracles are contrary to experience ?) 



But perhaps Mr. Ritchie does not contend that any 

 one of his criteria is singly sufficient as a test of reality 

 and proposes to employ them collectively. But if so, 

 should he not show some probability that they will 



1 As &quot; Herakleitos&quot; says (in Mind I p. 28), &quot; is not the new of two things 

 one, either itself false, or what renders all else false ? &quot; 



