i 9 4 HUMANISM xi 



its sciences are many and its purposes are various ; so 

 there will be a multitude of such higher realities con 

 flicting with each other and competing for our allegiance. 

 And, superficially, they will look very different. Never 

 theless, the ultimate realities of the physicist, whether 

 they be atoms or ions or vortex-rings or electrons, have 

 reached their proud position by no other process than 

 that by which the savage has devised the crudities of his 

 Happy Hunting Grounds or the old-fashioned theologian 

 the atrocities of his Hell. They remain on the same 

 plane of interpretation, and all alike are attempts, more 

 or less successful, to supplement some unsatisfactory 

 feature or other in our primary experience. 



It is easy to see how from this point we may reach 

 the conception of an Ultimate Reality. The higher 

 realities are conceived differently for the purposes of 

 our various sciences and various pursuits, and so there 

 will arise a need for an adjustment of their rival claims, 

 and a question as to which (if any) of them is to be 

 accepted as the final reality. Is the real world, e.g., the 

 cosmic conception postulated by geometry, or by physics, 

 or by psychology, or by ethics ? Is it a whirl of self- 

 moving matter, or a chaos of mental processes, or must 

 we assume a Prime Mover and a Self? Again, it is 

 obvious that a higher reality may afford very imperfect 

 satisfaction from some points of view and may have to 

 be transcended by one still higher, and that this process 

 cannot cease until we arrive at the conception of an 

 Ultimate Reality capable of including and harmonizing 

 all the lower realities. And this, of course, would con 

 tain the final explanation of our whole experience, the 

 final solution of our every perplexity. 



IV 



Thus the struggle to attain a glimpse of such an 

 Ultimate Reality forms the perennial content of the 

 drama of Philosophy. But that struggle is foredoomed 



