THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 89 



records of diverse presentations that have occurred to the same 

 or to different observers under identical external conditions, 

 their diversity cannot properly be compared with the results of 

 imperfect muscular or instrumental adjustments such as those 

 which produce (to use an illustration much favoured in this 

 connection) the distribution of hits around the bull's-eye of a 

 target. What we have maintained to be true of the diverse 

 perceived hotnesses may be true of the diverse perceived 

 positions of an index. They may have reference not to a " real " 

 position of the index which the actual perceptions aim at with 

 only imperfect success, but to an Objective relational nexus 

 which contains them. The fact that these presentations form a 

 .series between the extreme terms of which there is (in the 

 terminology of 8) only a small distance, may render the 

 ordinary assumption of the theory of errors "pragmatically" 

 valid; just as Hooke's Law is pragmatically valid for small 

 deformations of any solid body. 



In conclusion attention should be drawn to the fact that in 

 the view defended in this section and in the first chapter, the 

 various perceptions of hotness round a body are not regarded as 

 "effects" of a thing-in-itself lying beyond perception. There 

 .are Objective relations of implication between the several 

 hotnesses at a given moment of time, and in this sense alone 

 can it be admitted that " the principle of causality underlies the 

 whole procedure "* by which changes of hotness at a given 

 place are regarded as due to changes in the thing itself this 

 " thing itself" being no more than the whole body of perceived 

 -qualities plus the nexus of Objective relations by which they 

 are connected. This interpretation of the facts seems capable 

 of satisfying the demand of common-sense for a "thing" that 

 .shall be more than a mere bundle of " possibilities of sensation" ; 

 while at the same time it avoids the serious difficulties that ensue 

 when a thing-in-itself, inaccessible to observation, is made the 



* Stout, Froc. Arist. Soc., N.S., IV, p. 145. 



