46 



CHAPTER II. 



14. 



In attempting to exhibit the main outline of the Objective 

 as it appears to the "plain man" before the advent of 

 scientific interpretations, one runs the risk of an accusation 

 of merely adding to the inhabitants of the shadowy land, 

 where the " economic man " and the " natural man " who 

 enters into " social contracts " already dwell. At the least 

 one may be met by the objection that many or all of the plain 

 man's " views " are, after all, interpretations interpretations 

 which themselves at one time represented the high water mark 

 of "scientific" investigation. The objection undoubtedly has 

 force and we must return to it later,* but the accusation may 

 , be evaded by the admission that the plain man as such is a 

 fiction in so far as he is an Abstraction from within the wider 

 self of each of us. Much as the total outlook of mankind 

 upon the world varies from China to Peru, there seems to 

 be a solid core of agreement everywhere which alone truly 

 answers to the description which we have given of the 

 Objective. The scientific traveller on a high plateau of the 

 Andes and his native guides view in different ways the im- 

 possibility of getting their potatoes to cook.f To the latter 

 the impossibility is due to the simple fact that " the cursed pot," 

 doubftess owing to the devil in it, " did not wish to cook 

 potatoes " ; to the former it is an interesting example of the 

 dependence of the boiling point upon the pressure. But 

 although the whole " situation " may be very different in the 

 two cases, there is yet a common basis of inevitable fact upon 



* Vide infra, p. 138. 



t Darwin, The Voyage of the "Beagle." 



