Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/200

 characters; are more permanent than apparent characters; and depend almost entirely on the event itself, involving other events only (in general) as passive conditions providing the necessary background of a whole continuum of nature. The climb from the sense-object to the perceptual object, and from the perceptual object to the scientific object, and from the complex scientific object (such as the molecule) to the (temporally, in a stage of science) ultimate scientific object (such as the electron) is a steady pursuit of simplicity, permanence, and self-sufficiency, combined with the essential attribute of adequacy for the purpose of defining the apparent characters.

61.4 The relations of sense-objects to their situations are complex in the extreme, requiring reference to percipient events and transmitting events. Apart from some discovery of laws of nature regulating the associations of sense-objects, it is impossible by unintelligent unsorted perception to form any concept of the character of an event from the sense-objects which might be situated there for percipients suffering from any normal or abnormal perceptions.

The first stage is the discovery of perceptual objects. These objects are first known by the instinctive ‘conveyance’ of abnormal perceptions of sense-objects associated with normally perceived sense-objects. The test of alternative possibilities of normal perception and the discovery of a permanent character in the association which can be expressed independently of any particular percipient event decides between delusive perceptual objects and physical objects.

61.5 The introduction of physical objects enables us in considering the characters of events to sweep