REALITY AND TRUTH zn 



EEALITY AND TEUTH 



Bx Peofessoh T. D. A. COCKERELL 



UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO 



REALITY may be conceived of as having three aspects, the know- 

 able or scientific, the imaginable or metaphysic, and the 

 unimaginable or metapsychic. These three elements of being are not 

 in themselves distinct, but depend for their separation on the condition 

 of the perceiving mind. They are so closely interwoven that every part 

 of reality may be said to contain them all ; every circle of thought being 

 partly distinct, partly faint, partly broken. 



The discussion of the metapsychic appears at first sight to be im- 

 possible. Since it is postulated that the content can not be material 

 for thought, how can it be discussed? ISTo creature, indeed, can con- 

 template its own metapsychic field, but it may contemplate that of 

 others. Our best established science is metapsychic for many animals 

 higher in the scale than the jelly fish. Were man the only living being, 

 he might still afford variation enough for the study of metapsychics on 

 a comparative basis; but with the great field of comparative psychol- 

 ogy open before us, the material is more than abundant. 



In all this, however, the reality which is described as metapsychic for 

 the one being, is psychic for some other. There can be no doubt that 

 some animals operate in part of our metapsychic field, having, for in- 

 stance, sensations of smell altogether beyond us. We believe, however, 

 that there is a vast field of reality unrealizable to any living being, and 

 to complete the psychological scheme at the ultra-human end we postu- 

 late an all-knowing God. It is a curious question, what must be the 

 psychology of one whose thought circles are all complete, in whose 

 mind there are no attenuated ends of things, fading into the unknown 

 and unknowable. Such a question may be raised, but can hardly be 

 answered by us. 



Intellectual progress consists in winning ground from the meta- 

 physic for the scientific, from the metapsychic to the metaphysic. 

 The transition from the third to the first must always be through 

 the second, though its duration therein may be of the shortest. 

 This statement denies, as I think we must deny, the immediacy of 

 knowledge, though not of experience. Knowledge has structure, is 

 built up of varieties of experience, is an organized thing. A single 

 absolutely uniform and monotonous experience, no matter how long 

 continued, could not be a basis for knowledge. 



