192 HUMANISM 



XI 



grasping a higher reality we were abandoning the reality 

 of the lower. In the ascent to Truth we can never lose 

 touch with a continuous reality. I should liken the 

 advance of knowledge to a severe rock-climb on which we 

 must secure our handhold and our foothold at every step. 

 Rightly used, the rope of metaphysical speculation is an 

 added safeguard which unites the workers at their different 

 posts ; it must not be made into an instrument to juggle 

 with. Mr. Bradley, on the other hand, seems to tell us 

 that we can never reach the summit of our ambitions 

 unless we can throw our rope up into the air and climb 

 up after it into the hypercosmic void. 



We must begin therefore with reality as well as end 

 with it, and cling to it all the way as closely as we can. 

 We must not argue, if appearance, not reality, but 

 though appearance, yet reality. Unless we do this any 

 ultimate Reality we may vainly imagine will effect no 

 contact with our knowledge and our life, but float off into 

 the Empyrean beyond our ken. 



Now the only reality we can start with is our own 

 personal, immediate experience. We may lay it down 

 therefore that all immediate experience is as such real, 

 and that no ultimate reality can be reached except from 

 this basis and upon the stimulation of such immediate 

 experience. From this we start ; to this, sooner or 

 later, we must in some way return, under penalty of 

 finding all our explanations shattered, like bubbles, into 

 emptiness. 



In other words, the distinction of appearance and 

 reality is not one which transcends our experience, but 

 one which arises in it. It does not constitute a relation 

 between our world and another, nor tempt us to an im- 

 possible excursion into a realm inexorably reserved for the 

 supreme delectation of the Absolute. It always remains 

 relative to our knowledge of our world. 1 And it in no 

 wise warrants any disparagement of mere appearances. 

 The most transparent of appearances, so long as it exists 



1 If I am quibbled with I will even say that for me it remains relative to 

 my knowledge of my world. And I will deny that this means solipsism. 





