5^94 PSYCHOLOGY. 



positively contradicts tliem must get into another world or 

 die. The horse, e.g., may have wings to its heart's content, 

 so long as it does not pretend to be the real world's horse — 

 that horse is absolutely wingless. For most men, as we shall 

 immediately see, the ' things of sense ' hold this prerogative 

 position, and are the absolutely real world's nucleus. Other 

 things, to be sure, may be real for this man or for that — 

 things of science, abstract moral relations, things of the 

 Christian theology, or what not. But even for the special 

 man, these things are usually real with a less real reality 

 than that of the things of sense. They are taken less 

 seriously ; and the very utmost that can be said for any- 

 one's belief in them is that it is as strong as his ' belief in 

 his own senses.' * 



In all this the everlasting partiality of our nature shows 

 itself, our inveterate propensity to choice. For, in the 

 strict and ultimate sense of the word existence, everything 

 which can be thought of at all exists as some sort of object, 

 whether mythical object, individual thinker's object, or ob- 

 ject in outer space and for intelligence at large. Errors, 

 fictions, tribal beliefs, are parts of the whole great Universe 

 which God has made, and He must have meant all these 

 things to be in it, each in its respective place. But for us 

 finite creatures, " 'tis to consider too curiously to consider 



* The world of dreams is our real world whilst we are sleeping, because 

 our attention theu lapses from the sensible world. Converselj^ when we 

 wake the attention usually lapses from the dream-world and that becomes 

 unreal. But if a dream haunts us and compels our attention during the 

 day it is very apt to remain figuring in our consciousness as a sort of sub- 

 universe alongside of the waking world. Most people have probably had 

 dreams which it is hard to imagine not to have been glimpses into an 

 actually existing region of being, perhaps a corner of the ' spiritual world.' 

 And dreams have accordingly in all ages been regarded as revelations, and 

 have played a large part in furnishing forth mythologies and creating 

 themes for faith to lay hold upon. The 'larger universe,' here, which 

 helps us to believe both in the dream and in the waking reality which is 

 its immediate reductive, is the total universe, of Nature plus the Super- 

 natural. The dream holds true, namely, in one half of that universe ; the 

 waking perceptions in the other half. Even to-day dream-objects figure 

 among the realities in which some ' psychic- researchers ' are seeking to rouse 

 our belief. All our theories, not only those about the supernatural, but 

 our philosophic and scientific theories as well, are like our dreams in rous- 

 ing such different degrees of belief in different minds. 



