SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 121 



sure to embody confusions such as logical analysis will 

 reveal. 



Let us begin with the word " real/' There certainiy are 

 objects of perception, and therefore, if the question 

 whether these objects are real is to be a substantial 

 question, there must be in the world two sorts of objects, 

 namely, the real and the unreal, and yet the unreal is 

 supposed to be essentially what there is not. The question 

 what properties must belong to an object in order to 

 make it real is one to which an adequate answer is seldom 

 if ever forthcoming. There is of course the Hegelian 

 answer, that the real is the self-consistent and that noth- 

 ing is self-consistent except the Whole ; but this answer, 

 true or false, is not relevant in our present discussion, 

 which moves on a lower plane and is concerned with the 

 status of objects of perception among other objects of 

 equal fragmentariness. Objects of perception are con- 

 trasted, in the discussions concerning realism, rather with 

 psychical states on the one hand and matter on the other 

 hand than with the all-inclusive whole of things. The 

 question we have therefore to consider is the question 

 as to what can be meant by assigning " reality " to some 

 but not all of the entities that make up the world. Two 

 elements, I think, make up what is felt rather than thought 

 when the word " reality " is used in this sense. A thing 

 is real if it persists at times when it is not perceived ; or 

 again, a thing is real when it is correlated with other things 

 in a way which experience has led us to expect. It will 

 be seen that reality in either of these senses is by no 

 means necessary to a thing, and that in fact there might 

 be a whole world in which nothing was real in either of 

 these senses. It might turn out that the objects of per- 

 ception failed of reality in one or both of these respects, 

 without its being in any way deducible that they are 



