Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/362

 348 F. C. S. SCHILLEE I We must begin therefore with reality as well as end with it, and cling to it all the way as closely as we can. Unless we do this any ultimate Keality we may vainly imagine will effect no contact with our knowledge and our life, but float off into the Empyrean beyond our ken. Now the only reality we can start with is our own personal, immediate experience. We may lay it down there- fore that all immediate experience is as such real, and that no ultimate reality can be reached except from this basis and upon the stimulation of such immediate experience. From this we start ; to this, sooner or later, we must in some way return, under penalty of finding all our explanations shattered, like bubbles, into emptiness. In other words the distinction of "appearance and reality" is not one which transcends our experience, but one which arises in it. It does not constitute a relation between our world and another, nor tempt us to an impossible excursion into a realm inexorably reserved for the supreme delectation of the Absolute. It always remains relative to our know- ledge of our world. 1 And it in no wise warrants any dis- paragement of " mere appearances ". The most transparent of appearances, so long as it exists at all, retains its modicum of reality, and remains, from one important point of view, fundamentally real. For let us consider how we proceed to ascertain the higher realities which are rashly thought to abrogate the lower. We start, indubitably, with an immediate experience of some sort. But we do not rest therein. If we could, there would be no further question. Our immediate experience would suffice ; it would be the sole and complete reality. Appearances would be the reality and reality would truly appear. In heaven, no doubt, such would be the case. But our case, as yet, is different : our experience is woefully dis- cordant and inadequate. In other words our experience is not that of a perfect world. We are neither disposed, there- fore, nor able, to accept it as it appears to be. Its surface- value will not enable us to meet our obligations : we are compelled therefore to discount our immediate experience, to treat it as an appearance of something ulterior which will supplement its deficiency. We move on, therefore, from our starting point, taking our immediate experience as the symbol which transmits to us the glad tidings of a higher reality, whereof it partly manifests the nature. The ' realities ' of ordinary life and science are all of this 1 If I am quibbled with I will even say " my knowledge of m ,y world ".