THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 299 



THE PARAMOUNT REALITY OF SENSATIONS. 



But BOW we are met by questions of detail. AVliat does 

 this siirrmg. tins exciting power, this interest, consist in, 

 which some objects have ? which are those ' intimate rela- 

 tions ' with our life which give reality ? And what things 

 stand in these relations immediately, and what others are 

 so closely connected with the former that (in Hume's lan- 

 guage) we ' carry our disposition ' also on to them ? 



In a simple and direct way these questions cannot be 

 answered at all. The whole history of human thought is 

 but an unfinished attempt to answer them. For what have 

 men been trying to find out, since men were men, but just 

 those things : " Where do our true interests lie — which re- 

 lations shall we call the intimate and real ones — which 

 things shall we call living realities and which not ?" A few 

 psychological points can, however, be made clear. 



Any relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronger 

 relation, suffices to make an object real. The barest appeal 

 to our attention is enough for that. Revert to the begin- 

 ning of the chapter, and take the candle entering the vacant 

 mind. The mind was waiting for just some such object to 

 make its spring upon. It makes its spring and the candle 

 is believed. But when the candle appears at the same time 

 with other objects, it must run the gauntlet of their rivalry, 

 and then it becomes a question which of the various candi- 

 dates for attention shall compel belief. As a rule we be- 

 lieve as much as we can. We would believe everything if 

 we only could. When objects are represented by us quite 

 unsystematically they conflict but little wdth each other, 

 and the number of them which in this chaotic manner we 

 can believe is limitless. The primitive savage's mind is a 

 jungle in which hallucinations, dreams, superstitions, con- 

 ceptions, and sensible objects all flourish alongside of each 

 other, unregulated except by the attention turning in this 

 way or in that. The child's mind is the same. It is only 

 as objects become permanent and their relations fixed that 



hear, that an experience ' gives us a realizing sense ' of the truth of some 

 proposition or other, illustrates the dependence of the sense of reality upon 

 excitement. Only what stirs us is ' realized.' 



