THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 293 



(6) The various worlds of individual opinion, as numer- 

 ous as men are. 



(7) Tlie worlds of sheer madness and vagary, also in- 

 definitely numerous. 



Every object loe think of gets at last referred to one tvorld or 

 another of this or of some similar list. It settles into our be= 

 lief as a common-sense object, a scientific object, an abstract 

 object, a mythological object, an object of some one's mis- 

 taken conception, or a madman's object ; and it reaches 

 this state sometimes immediately, but often only after be- 

 ing hustled and bandied about amongst other objects until 

 it finds some which will tolerate its jjresence and stand in 

 relations to it which nothing contradicts. The molecules 

 and ether-waves of the scientific world, for example, simply 

 kick the object's warmth and color out, they refuse to 

 have any relations with them. But the world of 'idols of 

 the tribe ' stands ready to take them in. Just so the world 

 of classic myth takes up the winged horse ; the world of 

 individual hallucination, the vision of the candle ; the 

 world of abstract truth, the proposition that justice is 

 kingly, though no actual king be just. The various worlds 

 themselves, however, appear (as aforesaid) to most men's 

 minds in no very definitely conceived relation to each 

 other, and our attention, when it turns to one, is apt to 

 drop the others for the time being out of its account. Pro- 

 positions concerning the different worlds are made from 

 * different points of view'; and in this more or less chaotic 

 state the consciousness of most thinkers remains to the 

 end. Each world whilst it is attended to is real after its own 

 fashion ; only the reality lapses with the attention. 



THE "WORLD OP 'PRACTICAL REALITIES.* 



Each thinker, however, has dominant habits of atten- 

 tion ; and these practically elect from among the various 

 worlds some one to he for him the ivorld of ultimate realities. 

 From this world's objects he does not appeal. Whatever 



worlds, and, for the time, the Ivanhoe-world remains our absolute reality. 

 When we wake from the spell, however, we find a still more real world, 

 which reduces Ivanhoe, and all things connected with him, to the Active 

 status, and relegates them tc one of the sub-universes grouped under No. 5. 



