V84 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



point them out to our fellow-men and make them 

 the objects of a common knowledge and understanding. 

 In fact, externality has become the criterion of reality, 

 of that most impressive reality which we have learnt to 

 superimpose upon the original reality of sensations or 

 experiences contained in the field of our primordial 

 consciousness. 



The firmament of our soul, out of which the complex 

 of definite physical sensations has been selected or 

 abstracted and externalised, contains many other ex- 

 periences which are to us quite as important as the 

 former, and we are continually haunted by the desire 



44. to gain for them the same, or even a higher, degree of 



From the ^ o ' & 



less definite reality than that which attaches to the external world 



region the •' 



woridTs or visible universe. Out of this desire arises, in some 

 minds, the conviction that this less definite region of 

 our mental firmament has no lesser but rather a greater 

 reality than the other ; and this conviction, when forced 



45. to find expression, constructs what we may term the 

 physical larger or spiritual universe of which the physical uni- 



universe is o -i^ ir j 



po^rtion^ verse is merely, as it were, one portion or aspect. 



To use the terminology of Lotze, we may say that the 

 human mind in the course of its mental development 

 constructs in every individual person, with the assistance 

 of others, in the beginning of life, the outer World of 

 Things, and that subsequently, through the co-operation 

 and successive labours of the more highly gifted minds, 

 the World of Values, of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, is 

 constructed, giving support not only to the data of this 

 work-a-day world but likewise to the conceptions of 

 what we term the Ideal World. How either of these 



