Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/282

266 dream, undoubtedly our dream-life would be as real as our waking life. But these are two pretty big "ifs": and, consequently, all sane and normal persons are able to distinguish between the merely temporary and subjective reality of dream-events and the objective reality of what are commonly called real events. It must be noted that subjective reality is equally predicable of all feelings and thoughts which we actually have, whether or not the content or objective reference of these feelings and thoughts turn out to be valid or not. A distinction, however, must be made: (a) I may form a mental image of a dragon, while fully aware that no such creature exists and that it is a mythical animal; but (b) people who believed in the actual existence of dragons would, in forming the mental picture of a dragon, add the idea of its reality. Its essence would for them involve existence: to us it involves fabulous existence. Now subjective reality would, I fancy, be generally limited to (b), the actual occurrence of a thought with the added suggestion of its objective reference. When we know that we are dreaming, we are near waking. When we know that our hallucinations are hallucinations, we are on the way to get rid of them. It is said, correctly I believe, that if a person sees a ghost sitting in a chair, but can be induced to sit down boldly as if the ghost were not there, the ghost will take offence and go away. I am not personally acquainted with the habits of ghosts: so I speak under correction. With regard to feelings, I do not think we can make the same distinctions as with regard to mental images or general conceptions, which imply some sort of image or picture to help them out. I cannot have a feeling of pain, unless that feeling is subjectively real to me. I may have a memory or an image of myself as having pain ; but that cannot be described as a feeling of pain. In ordinary language more is meant by the reality of a pain, than the fact that a person has a feeling of pain: it is implied that the feeling has causes or grounds such as other persons would regard as sufficient to produce the feeling of pain in them. Thus, when any one is induced to admit that "imaginary pains are, after all, real pains," or that "sentimental grievances are, after all, real