2 70 The Origin of a ' Thing ' and its Nature 



philosophy of to-day is pretty well agreed to start analysis 

 of a thing inside of the behaviour of the thing. A ' thing ' 

 is first of all so much observed behaviour. Idealists pass 

 quickly over the behaviour, it is true ; it is too concrete, 

 too single, for them ; it is not to them a thing, but a ' mere 

 thing.' But yet they do not any longer allow this * mere- 

 ness ' to offend them to the extent of drawing them off to 

 other fields of exploration altogether. They try to over- 

 come the ' mereness ' by making it an incident of a larger 

 fulness ; and the * implications ' of the thing, the * mean- 

 ing ' of it * in a system ' — this ' shows up ' the mereness, 

 both in its own insignificance and in its fruitful connection 

 with what is universal. 



So we may safely say of the idealist, that if he have a 

 doctrine of a 'thing,' it must, he will himself admit, not be 

 of such a thing that it cannot take on the particular form 

 of behaviour which the one ' mere thing ' under examination 

 is showing at the moment. There must, in short, be no 

 contradiction between the * real thing ' and the special 

 instance of it which is found in the * mere thing.* 



He, the idealist, therefore, is first of all a phenomenist 

 in constructing his doctrine of the real ; the ' what ' must 

 be, when empirically considered, in some way an outburst 

 of behaviour. 



Now the idealist is the only man, I think, of whom 

 there is any doubt in the matter of this doctrine of be- 

 haviour, except the natural realist, who comes up later. 

 Others hold it as a postulate since Lotze, and later Brad- 

 ley, did so conclusively show the absurdity of the older 

 uncritical view which held, in some form or another, what 

 we may call the ' lump ' theory of reality. A thing cannot 

 be simply a lump. Even in matter — so we are now 



