336 PSYCHOLOGY. 



conceptions for the same tiling. But many objects of daily 

 use — as paper, ink, butter, horse-car — have properties of 

 such constant unwavering importance, and have such stereo- 

 typed names, that we end by believing that to conceive 

 them in those ways is to conceive them in the only true 

 way. Those are no truer ways of conceiving them than any 

 others ; they are only more important ways, more fre- 

 quently serviceable ways.* 



quality of most worth is strictly true ; but Ueberweg has failed to note 

 that the worth is wholly relative to the temporary interests of the conceiver. 

 And, even, when his interest is distinctly defined in his own mind, the 

 discrimination of the quality in the object w^hich has the closest connection 

 with it is a thing which no rules can teach. The only a priori advice that 

 can be given to a man embarking on life with a certain purpose is the 

 somewhat barren counsel : Be sure that in the circumstances that meet 

 you, you attend to the right ones for your purpose. To pick out the right 

 ones is the measure of the man. ' JNIillions,' says Hartmaiiu, ' stare at the 

 phenomenon before a genialer Kojyf \w\u\ce?, on the concept.' The genius 

 is simply he to whom, when he opens his eyes upon the world, the ' right ' 

 characters are the prominent ones. The fool is he who, with the same 

 purposes as the genius, infallibly gets his attention tangled amid the 

 accidents." 



* Only if one of our purposes were itself truer than another, could one 

 of our conceptions become the truer conception. To be a truer purpose, 

 however, our purpose must conform more to some absolute standard of 

 purpose in things to which our purposes ought to conform. This shows 

 that the whole doctrine of essential characters is intimately bound up 

 with a teleological view of the world. Materialism becomes self-contra- 

 dictory when it denies teleology, and yet in the same breath calls atoms, etc., 

 ihe essential facts. The world contains consciousness as well as atoms — and 

 the one must be written down as just as essential as the other, in the ab- 

 sence of any declared purpose regarding them on the creator's part, or in 

 the absence of any creator. As far as we ourselves go, the atoms are worth 

 more for purposes of deduction, the consciousness for purposes of inspira- 

 tion. We may fairly write the Universe in either way, thus : Atoms- 

 producing-consciousuess ; or CoNSCiousNESS-produced-by-atoms. Atoms 

 alone, or consciousness alone, are precisely equal mutilations of the truth. 

 If, without believing in a God, I still continue to talk of what the world 

 ' es.sentially is,' I am ju.st as much entitled to define it as a place in which 

 my nose itches, or as a place where at a certain corner I can get a mess 

 of oysters for twenty cents, as to call it an evolving nebula differentiating 

 and integrating itself. It is hard to say which of the three abstractions is 

 the more rotten or miserable substitute for the world's concrete fulness. 

 To conceive it merely as ' God's work ' Avould be a similar mutilation of 

 it, so long as we said not what God, or what kind of work. The only real 

 truth txbout the world, apart from particular purposes, is the total truth. 



