Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/363

 ON PEESERVING APPEARANCES. 349 secondary order: they rest. upon inferences from our im- mediate experience which have been found to work. 1 And the process of reaching them is everywhere the same : we experiment with notions which are suggested to our intelli- gence by our immediate experience, until we hit upon one which seems to be serviceable for some purpose which engrosses us. And then we declare real the conception which serves our purpose, nay more real, because more potent, than the immediate experience for the satisfaction of our desire. Only, as life is complex, its sciences are many and its purposes are various ; so there will be a multitude of such higher realities conflicting with each other and competing for our allegiance. And, superficially, they will look very different. Nevertheless the ultimate realities of the physicist, whether they be atoms or ions or vortex-rings, have reached their proud position by no other process than that by which the savage has devised the crudities of his Happy Hunting Grounds or the old-fashioned theologian the atrocities of his. Hell. They remain on the same plane of interpretation, and all alike are attempts, more or less successful, to supple- ment some unsatisfactory feature or other in our primary experience. It is easy to see how from this point we may reach the conception of an Ultimate Reality. The ' higher realities ' are conceived differently for the purposes of our various sciences and various pursuits, and so there will arise a need for an adjustment of their rival claims, and a question as to- which (if any) of them is to be accepted as the final reality. Is the ' real world/ e.g., the cosmic conception postulated by geometry, or by physics, or by psychology, or by ethics ? Is it a whirl of self-moving "matter," or a chaos of mental pro- cesses, or must we assume a Prime Mover and a Self? Again it is obvious that a higher reality may afford very imperfect satisfaction from some points of view and may have to be transcended by one still higher, and that this process cannot cease until we arrive at the conception of an Ultimate Reality capable of including and harmonising all the lower realities. And this, of course, would contain the final explanation of our whole experience, the final solution of our every perplexity. 1 Of course I do not deny, and indeed in a different context I should even insist, that the assumption of these higher realities alters our im- mediate experience for us. That indeed is the chief proof of their value : assumptions which make no difference are otiose and so invalid. And we should hardly get where we want, if we could not each day start a little higher up.