126 STONEY—UNIVERSE OF REAL EXISTENCES.  [April3, 
Men and dogs and other animals, and among men different indi- 
viduals, are able to make this synthesis with more or less success. 
It is made with most success when the conceived perceptions, which 
are so large a part of the syntheton, are correct pictures in the mind 
of what they would prove to be if the proper measures were taken 
to make them in succession actual perceptions. Accordingly, the 
‘objects of nature’ about us may appear to one man somewhat 
different to what they do to another. In the present chapter we 
have dealt with them as ‘sensible objects,’ z.e., as the objects of 
nature, such as they present themselves to ‘the man in the street.’ 
In subsequent chapters we shall deal with them as they present 
themselves to scientific men; and it will then become apparent 
why the scientific objects of nature are to be regarded as con- 
structed with more success than the mere sensible objects of unin- 
structed men. 
It may also be noted that, while we are what is popularly described 
as ‘looking at’ or ‘touching’ or in other ways ‘ exercising our 
senses upon’ the objects about us, these syntheta of perceptions are 
made up of perceptions a very small part of which are in autic 
existence, while the bulk of them have only an’ objective, 7.e., a 
supposed, existence. Thus, while I am looking at a chair or table, 
the sensible object is made up of my actual visual perception at 
that time, and of a great body of conceived perceptions which have 
to be joined to it to make up the whole syntheton: there is, as it 
were, a veneer of auto with a hinterland of hypotheta; forming, 
when combined, a syntheton which, viewed as a whole, is a 
hypotheton. 
CHAPTER 12. OF THE PHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS. 
It will be well to treat of the Physical Hypothesis next, as it is a 
hypothesis which is entertained and made use of, with more or less 
success, by all men, and not by scientific men only. 
Natural science may be defined as the investigation of how nature 
[works]’, of how and why events in nature [occur]’. In this defi- 
nition we have to use the verbs work and occur in their objective 
sense, since what have [really] done the work have been, not the 
hypotheta which people the objective world, but their antitheta in 
the universe of real existences. The relation between what goes on 
in the autic universe and the events which as a consequence appear 
in the objective world may be likened to the relation between the 
