246 HUMANISM xm 



For it would be a great delusion to imagine that the 

 conceptions of the physical sciences can escape from the 

 general debacle of the products of the human intelligence. 

 Their fundamental conceptions, when they are analysed, 

 always, sooner or later, imply ineradicable references to 

 human experiences which have been declared illusory. 

 Thus matter ultimately refers to our feelings of resistance. 

 So does force. Motion involves place, and place 

 human experience of the difference between here and 

 there and of voluntary change of place, in default of 

 which we should have no ground for ascribing the changing 

 appearances to the motion of unchanging bodies in space 

 rather than to alterations in the appearances themselves. 

 Energy involves both the motion and the work 

 experience. And so forth. The physical realities, 

 therefore, being dependent on what have become psychical 

 illusions, are themselves rendered illusory. In no place 

 and in no sense have we a right to use any of the tabooed 

 illusions. 



The only mystery which apparently remains over is 

 one which the theory disdains to notice, viz. how all 

 these incriminated terms have come into being at all, and 

 why, if they signify nothing and are not true, they are so 

 useful and indispensable. Can it be that some demon, 

 more humorous than Hume himself, is compelling us to 

 believe, or at least to behave as if we believed, what we 

 know is not true ? This difficulty, however, may be 

 respectfully left for intellectualism to contemplate with 

 care. Our Humanism, by the simple expedient of 

 starting from our immediate experience, and declining to 

 admit that it is deceptive and invalid, merely because 

 Hume has exercised his ingenuity to make it appear so, 

 dissolves the whole mirage of Humian magic. 1 



If only rationalists would follow our example, what a 

 relief it would be to students of philosophy ! For what 

 ever the more than Spartan fortitude with which we 

 endure the difficulties of our subject, do we not all suffer 

 from the paradoxes which its concessions to Hume have 



See James on The Experience of Activity, in A Pluralistic Universe. 



