258 HUMANISM xiv 



called the same if they know it differently, rushes back 

 upon us. 



For Humanism indeed the coast remains clear and the 

 answer simple. It merely bids us complete the work of 

 Kant (most infelicitously called by him Copernican) by 

 describing the psychical functioning to which our data are 

 conformed in their integrity, i.e. without mutilating, 

 depersonalizing and sublimating them by fictions of a 

 Bewusstsein ilberhaupt. The subjectivity which was 

 thought to vitiate cognition and refused to be eliminated, 

 is a blessing not a curse ; for it is really that which gives 

 the needful cue to the objective ordering of the initial 

 mess of crude experience. It is the importance of some 

 of its contents for the purposes of human life which 

 confers upon them a superior reality ; it is the usefulness 

 of some ideas which leads to their (intersubjective) re 

 cognition as true and objectively valid, and effectively 

 discriminates them from the vagrant fancies that are 

 rejected as worthless and therefore remain merely sub 

 jective. For a mind, however, which has become replete 

 with fixed ideas that the thinker s personality must at all 

 costs be ignored, that the study of psychical fact is 

 incompatible with that of physical order, that the genesis 

 of knowledge has no relation to its nature, and that once 

 science condescends to take note of the individual it is for 

 ever debarred from noticing anything else, this Humanist 

 way of producing objectivity will seem to demand far 

 too radical a rethinking of old prejudices. It will be 

 rejected doubtless ; but what will be done about the 

 problem ? 



It may be suggested to the New Realist that the 

 simplest way of maintaining his original position and 

 escaping from the difficulties of this whole criticism is to 

 turn solipsist. He cannot find room for the objects of 

 other minds, but he can get rid of the other minds. If 

 he will systematically refuse to recognize the other minds 

 that seem to disagree with him, he avoids the complication 

 which such recognition inevitably introduces. He is left 

 alone with his objects, and no one can question the right- 



