THE LATEST STAGE 269 



those objects as revealed by the limited number of 

 wires which enter the office, and by the kind of message 

 which can come over the wires. He can hear, but he 

 cannot see or feel. It is safe to predict that his 

 mental picture of the world would be incomplete, and 

 different from that which would be disclosed to him 

 could be unlock his door and pass outside into the 

 glory of the sunshine. How many more senses may 

 be possible than our poor five, and what picture of our 

 world would they reveal ? But still it would be a 

 phenomenal world, we could but obtain the record 

 of our senses, never could we apprehend directly the 

 " thing-in-inself." 



Similar caution is needed in dealing with what are 

 called laws of nature or natural laws. The word law 

 in the legal sense has a meaning different from that 

 which it ought to bear in science, where it should mean 

 simply a shortened or convenient way of describing 

 general routines in sense-impressions, or general 

 relations between different mental concepts. When 

 we say that the sun's visible rays are accompanied by 

 warmth, we mean that we always find one sense- 

 impression followed regularly by the other. When 

 we say that two similar electric charges repel each 

 other in the inverse ratio of the square of the distance, 

 we assert a certain relation between our mental con- 

 cepts of electricity, of force and of distance concepts 

 which have been developed by our minds out of the 

 material of sense-impressions. The relation is sug- 

 gested by experiment, that is, by sense-perception, 

 but, once apprehended, it is used to develop a mathe- 

 matical theory of electric forces and their effects in 

 a purely mental or conceptual sphere. How far this 



