Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/86

 72 G-EOBGE GALLOWAY : time as an independent real, nor does it reduce them to subjective mental fictions which cut us off from reality. They are representations in the subject, but they are also valid forms under which he interprets what is real. From the standpoint of the historic development of experi- ence the universal point of view is late. To the merely perceptual consciousness space and time would not be dis- tinguished. The " selective interest " or the practical need which turns the attention of the animal to space and time is concerned with the fact of movement which involves both. I refer to the temporal and spatial adjustments which are necessary to secure food, to seize prey, and to escape a foe. And it is from the association in man of active movement with the capacity of generalising that the differentiation and development of the ideas of space and time are due. The stages of this progress are however matter for psychological discussion. The final result is that space is hypostatised as a comprehensive whole which exists for itself, and which contains within it all that generalised experience treats as an independent reality. And language has given universal currency to the habit of speaking of what is believed to belong to the mind as in it and of what does not belong to it as outside it. Philosophic reflexion forces us to correct this abstraction. Both the spatial image and the object it con- tains are shown to belong to the mind as ideal constructions. Yet the common-sense point of view has a certain justifica- tion. For ideal construction is at root interpretation ; and in the existence and activity of transsubjective realities lies the possibility of our representing to ourselves the world of objects extended in space. In the remainder of this paper I shall try to answer certain objections which may be made to the theory of reality we have accepted. You have admitted, it will be said, the presence of ideal construction in experience, why should you infer that so-called things are anything more than such constructions? A thing, however seemingly solid, is only the meeting-point of universal qualities or relations. In reply it may be asked, What is meant by a meeting-point ? Evidently something which serves as a ground of identity and a bond of connexion between the qualities. These can- not fly loose and unclaimed in the world of experience. For if in a sense they belong to reality as a whole, yet they definitely pertain to particular determinations of reality and ftot to others. No doubt if we suppose that qualities are somehow attached as adjectives to isolated fragments of reality, we shall be proved inconsistent : the substance does