THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 291 



attributes, and the existence disregarded an existence in 

 no man's land, in the limbo * where footless fancies dwell.' 

 The real things are, in M. Taine's terminology, the reduc- 

 tives of the things judged unreal. 



THE MA]?nr "WORLDS. 



Habitually and practically we do not count these disre- 

 garded things as existents at all. For them Vce victis is the 

 law in the popular philosophy ; they are not even treated as 

 appearances ; they are treated as if they were mere waste, 

 equivalent to nothing at all. To the genuinely philosophic 

 mind, however, they still have existence, though not the 

 same existence, as the real things. As objects of fancy, as 

 errors, as occupants of dreamland, etc., they are in their 

 way as indefeasible parts of life, as undeniable features of 

 the Universe, as the realities are in their way. The total 

 world of which the philosophers must take account is thus 

 composed of the realities plus the fancies and illusions. 



Two sub-universes, at least, connected by relations 

 which philosophy tries to ascertain ! Really there are more 

 than two sub-universes of which we take account, some of 

 us of this one, and others of that. For there are various 

 categories both of illusion and of reality, and alongside of 

 the world of absolute error (i.e., error confined to single 

 individuals) but still within the world of absolute reality 

 (i.e., reality believed by the complete philosopher) there is 

 the world of collective error, there are the worlds of abstract 

 reality, of relative or practical reality, of ideal relations, 

 and there is the supernatural world. The popular mind 

 conceives of all these sub-worlds more or less discon- 

 nectedly ; and when dealing with one of them, forgets for 

 the time being its relations to the rest. The complete phi- 

 losopher is he who seeks not only to assign to every given 

 object of his thought its right place in one or other of these 

 sub-worlds, but he also seeks to determine the relation of 

 each sub-world to the others in the total world which is. 



The most important sub-universes commonly discrimi- 

 nated from each other and recognized by most of us as 

 existing, each with its own special and separate style of 

 existence, are the following : 



