vi THE EMPIRICAL ORDER 95 



ment such ideas though not defined are clear, and except 

 for a certain raggedness about the edges, distinct from one 

 another. Each embodies and expresses a certain mass of 

 experience and that only. The achievement of such ideas 

 represents a distinct onward stage in human thought, for 

 one of the first points that we discern in the lower strata 

 of the mind is the relative absence of such distinctness. 

 But we must carry the matter a little further. Obscurity 

 and clarity are relative terms. Throughout the history of 

 thought new distinctions are constantly being drawn, and 

 what appeared clear and definite is shown to have concealed 

 ambiguities and obscurities. Thought does not rise out 

 of the mists once and for all. What then are the kind of 

 obscurities that beset childish and primitive thought ? The 

 answer may be found by returning to the categories of 

 common sense. For common sense this is a world of sub- 

 stantial things possessing attributes, entering into* relations 

 with one another, acting causally on one another so as to 

 produce changes- which are events occurring in time and 

 space, and so forth. Common sense does not qualify these 

 varying aspects of reality in abstract terms. When it does 

 so it begins to be metaphysics or science, but its concepts 

 do follow the lines of distinction prescribed by these several 

 sides or aspects of experience, and in its maturity it does 

 not confuse one sort of concept with another. Its sub- 

 stances are substances and its relations are relations. The 

 characteristic of earlier formless thought is that it does 

 make confusions of this kind and in particular it confounds 

 the category of substance with the others. Thus the vital 

 functions of men, animals or plants become a quasi-material 

 essence, identified perhaps with the shadow, perhaps with 

 the breath, capable of being caught, confined and trans- 

 ferred. A word or a thought may be a living force, and 

 if charged with emotion like a curse, may be washed off 

 a person or purged out of him. A pain is a stone that 

 may be extracted, a quality like courage or timidity is an 

 entity that may be transferred. In some of these cases we 

 may say that a quality is hypostatised into something 

 rerembling substance, in others that a function or relation 

 is treated like an inherent quality belonging to the sub- 



