256 HUMANISM xiv 



interests of the selecter. The facet of reality which is 

 affirmed cannot have been selected by itself. For alike 

 in active and in passive experiencing reality is always 

 present as a whole. Hence the mere perceiving of any 

 particular reality already implies an immense adjustment 

 or cutting down of reality to subjective interests, which if 

 unchecked may easily develop into Solipsism. 



(4) Being of a trustful and dogmatic character, the 

 New Realism does not expect to be deceived and misled 

 into error. It is consequently ill-equipped to deal with 

 the deceitfulness of nature in a world in which everything 

 genuine is mimicked, protectively or aggressively, and even 

 a childlike faith in absolute truth is no guarantee of in 

 fallibility. Hence so long as the New Realist refuses to 

 be critical and to study this whole apparatus of deception, 

 he will accept all its results as real just as they appear to 

 him, and once more glides into an unwitting Solipsism. 



But it is high time to illustrate these generalities by 

 their application to three selected cases of New Realism. 

 All of these appear to be psychogenetically joint products 

 of incapacity to reply to Mr. G. E. Moore s refutation of 

 Idealism, and of unwillingness to carry Kantian principles 

 out completely into a consistent account of mental activity, 

 for fear of lapsing into subjectivism ; but as two of 

 these have not yet appeared in the philosophic arena, 

 they must be described anonymously as secret doctrines 

 endemic in two of our leading colleges. 



(a) The first of them is the more lively, or less stable, 

 form, and varies perceptibly from year to year. It is 

 convinced that the troubles of dogmatic philosophy began 

 when Locke introduced ideas into it, and that if ideas 

 are abolished all will be well. It has no ideas, therefore, 

 in its theory of knowledge. It starts from a definition of 

 knowledge as an immediate apprehension of what is. It 

 perceives realities, and not copies of them. There is, 

 therefore, no gap between subject and object, and no 

 need to interpose ideas between the mind and reality and 

 to puzzle oneself vainly about their correspondence. 

 The mind is caught fast in the embrace of that which is, 



