THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 11 



pursued here farther than is necessary to make it clear to what 

 precise extent they are, in my view, to be accepted as having 

 Objective reference. 



5. 



It will be most profitable to pay attention first to the 

 qualities of things, simply because subsequent criticism has 

 tampered here so constantly and for so long a time with the 

 unsophisticated deliverances of the " plain man's " conscious- 

 ness that it is not easy to ascertain precisely what those 

 deliverances are. This criticism has not merely erected a 

 distinction between the " primary " and " secondary " qualities 

 of things but has gone on to regard it as evident to all who 

 take the trouble to avoid " a natural fallacy of ordinary 

 thinking " that the former alone really belong to things, while 

 ithe latter are, strictly, qualities of the sensations which things 

 produce in us. In opposition to this I wish to maintain that 

 the view actually held by the enlightened plain man is sub- 

 stantially the one presented and vindicated by Professor 

 Stout.* Eedness, sweetness, hotness, &c., belong to the body 

 that " has " them in the same sense as extension, hardness and 

 the other primary qualities belong to it. A hot piece of iron 

 \ remains as hot even if I move away from it, just as it remains 

 of the same length in spite of the diminution in the space 

 which' its image covers on my retina. It becomes hotter or 

 colder only if it yields a different sensation under the same 

 conditions of perception. In fact the plain man makes here 

 implicitly of course the same distinction between changes of 

 sensible appearance which have "representative value"! and 

 those which have not, as he does in the case of changes which 

 he interprets as changes either in the " position " or in the 

 41 form " of the object according as he is able or unable to 



* Stout, "Primary and Secondary Qualities," Proc. Arist. Soc., N.S., 

 IV, pp. 141 et seq. 



t Stout, op. cit., p. 145. 



