8 WAR & STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



The extended world is a filtrate of the real through 

 our faculties ; it is the nearest to metaphysical or 

 absolute reality that we can reach, and forms the 

 practical reality of daily life, the stone that Dr. 

 Johnson kicked to confute Berkeley. In all the 

 further mental work that we do, arranging, syste- 

 matizing, generalizing, making scientific laws and 

 theories and hypotheses, the human faculties are 

 more and more involved, and the results move 

 further and further away, both from ultimate 

 reality and from the reality of daily life. Man is 

 recreating the universe in the categories of his own 

 mind. Science is a salient instance of this transfor- 

 mation of reality. 



We are all familiar with a practical side of the 

 distinction between science and reality. An in- 

 vention, to take an example, may be a correct and 

 ingenious deduction from the laws of chemical com- 

 bination and the physical properties of water, and 

 may work very well in the laboratory. But the ex- 

 perienced capitalist, after due tribute to the in- 

 ventor, is apt to say " quite pretty, but we must 

 now try it on a little larger scale and under manu- 

 facturing conditions." Then the difficulties begin. 

 For water in nature is not to be found in clean 

 stoppered bottles, convenient to handle, but as 

 rivers and streams, as seas and lakes, subject to 

 rising and falling, to evaporation and freezing. And 

 in the whole world outside the laboratory there is 

 probably not a single drop of pure water, but hard 

 water and soft water, bubbling water and flat water, 

 water with varying mineral impurities and with 

 organisms that breed and multiply and die. The 



