158 THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY. 



currence of vivid manifestations are often not to be found. 

 We also continually learn that vivid manifestations which 

 have no perceivable antecedents among the vivid manifesta- 

 tions, are like certain preceding ones which had perceivable 

 antecedents among -the vivid manifestations. Joining these 

 two experiences together, there results the irresistible con- 

 ception that some vivid manifestations have conditions of 

 occurrence existing out of the current of vivid manifesta- 

 tions — existing as potential vivid manifestations capable of 

 becoming actual. And so we are made vaguely conscious 

 of an indefinitely-extended region of power or being, not 

 merely separate from the current of faint manifestations 

 constituting the ego, but lying beyond the current of vivid 

 manifestations constituting the immediately-present portion 

 of the ?ion-ego. 



§ 45. In a very imperfect way, passing over objections 

 and omitting needful explanations, I have thus, in the 

 narrow space that could properly be devoted to it, indicated 

 the essential nature and justification of that primordial 

 proposition which Philosophy requires as a datum. I might, 

 indeed, safely have assumed this ultimate truth; which 

 Common Sense asserts, which every step in Science takes 

 for granted, and which no metaphysician ever for a moment 

 succeeded in expelling from consciousness. Setting out 

 with the postulate that the manifestations of the Unknow- 

 able fall into the two separate aggregates constituting the 

 world of consciousness and the world beyond consciousness, 

 I might have let the justification of this postulate depend on 

 its subsequently-proved congruity with every result of ex- 

 perience, direct and indirect. But as all that follows pro- 

 ceeds upon this postulate, it seemed desirable briefly to indi- 

 cate its warrant, with the view of shutting out criticisms that 

 might else be made. It seemed desirable to show that this 

 fundamental cognition is neither, as the idealist asserts, an 

 illusion, nor as the sceptic thinks, of doubtful worth, nor as 



