Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/248

 234 CRITICAL NOTICES : are fragmentary and intermittent. The physical world is constant and complete. Just as we ignored the difference between imagina- tion and sense, we build up our concepcion of the external world by ignoring the distinction between sensations that are, and sensa- tions that under due conditions might be ; we abstract from the situation of the percipient ; we make a huge mosaic of our frag- ments ; we see in the total body of sensuous content a single systematic whole. In this construction in our consciousness the question of " setting " or context, the relation of one experience to another as its accompaniment or condition, is all-important. The actual sensations of any one occasion are of inferior import- ance. Just as in our imaginal ideas of things physical it is the content that matters and not the imaginal quality, so in our sensa- tions it is still the content that is of the essence of " the physical world" and not the particular actual embodiment of that content. We must experience the world in particular sensations, or picture it in particular imaginations, but it is the sensuous pattern, the mutual arrangement of experience, the "ideal system," on which we base thought and act. As our imaginal ideas of phases of the external world turned out to be representative, so our sensations turn out to be representative. But there is a difference in the two cases. Our imaginations are supernumeraries, mere copies ; our sensations are representative as specimens of a manufactured fabric may represent a pattern that runs through all the lot. The sensa- tions are a standard for reference, the imaginations not. Thus objects are immediately present in our consciousness, and yet the same objects may be immediately present in the consciousness of others. It is the kind that matters, not the psychological speci- men. In a word, physical identity and psychological identity are not the same kind of identity. The identity of an object is fixed by its relations in the pattern. And we conceive of the world of objects as of a great standard content. All this undertakes to be an analysis both of the external world as it actually is, and of " naive realism," our instinctive conception of that world. " Naive realism " is not blindly accepted, but at each stage the experiences are pointed out upon which its tenets are based. The discussion, as we have said, takes the form of an analysis of what is meant by the expression, "a real thing". Prof. Fullerton distinguishes in this connexion two senses of the word "real," namely (1) actual in conscious experience, and (2) belonging to the physical system. In the latter sense, " when we recognise anything as real, we are never confining our attention to the thing itself, but are always keeping in view its relation to other elements in our experience ". It is in the second sense that we say that what we experience in hallucination is not " real ". It is indeed actual in experience, but it does not belong to the physical system. In this second sense, which is that appropriate to our discourse about the physical world, it would be incorrect to say that an unperceived object is non-existent or a mere possibility, for