THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 313 



to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate 

 with our most intimate powers as to deny them all relevancy in univer- 

 sal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one blow, will be even more 

 unpopular than pessimism. Better face the enemy than the eternal 

 Void ! This is why materialism will always fail of universal adoption, 

 however well it may fuse things into an atomistic unity, however 

 clearly it may prophesy the future eternity. For materialism denies 

 reality to the objects of almost all the impulses which we most cherish. 

 The real meaning of the impulses, it says, is something which has no 

 emotional interest for us whatever. But what is called extradition is 

 quite as characteristic of our emotions as of our sense. Both point to an 

 Object as the cause of the present feeling. What an intensely objective 

 reference lies in fear ! In like manner an enraptured man, a dreary- 

 feeling man, are not simply aware of their subjective states ; if they 

 were, the force of their feelings would evaporate. Both believe there 

 is outward cause why they should feel as they do : either ' It is a glad 

 world ! how good is life ! ' or ' What a loathsome tedium is existence ! ' 

 Any philosophy which annihilates the validity of the reference by ex- 

 plaining away its objects or translating them into terms of no emo- 

 tional pertinency leaves the mind with little to care or act for. This 

 is the opposite condition from that of nightmare, but when acutely 

 brought home to consciousness it produces a kindred horror. In night- 

 mare we have motives to act, but no power ; here we have powers, but 

 no motives. A nameless Unheimlichkeit comes over us at the thought 

 of there being nothing eternal in our final purposes, in the objects of 

 those loves and aspirations which are our deepest energies. The mon- 

 strously lopsided equation of the universe and its knower, which we 

 postulate as the ideal of cognition, is perfectly paralleled by the no less 

 lopsided equation of the universe and the doer. We demand in it a 

 character for which our emotions and active propensities shall be a 

 match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which the Cosmos 

 impinges upon each one of us, each one desires to feel that his reaction 

 at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast whole, that he 

 balances the latter, so to speak, and is able to do what it expects of 

 him. But as his abilities to ' do ' lie wholly in the line of his natural 

 propensities ; as he enjoys reaction with such emotions as fortitude, 

 hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the like ; and as he very 

 unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt, —a philosophy 

 which should legitimate only emotions of the latter sort would be sure 

 to leave the mind a prey to discontent and craving. 



" It is far too little recognized how entirely the intellect is built up 

 of practical interests. The theory of Evolution is beginning to do very 

 good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. 

 Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a cross-section at a 

 certain point of what in its totality is a motor phenomenon. In the 

 lower forms of life no one will pretend that cognition is anything more 

 than a guide to appropriate action. The germinal question concerniag 



