Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/283

No. 3.] ," the admission is made with the consciousness that the phrase is an oxymoron.

II. Of objective reality we have a further test than coherence in our own experience: and that is the experience of other persons. If A seems to himself to see a mouse run across the floor, but if B, C, D, E, and F, being all present, having good eyesight, and looking in the same direction, maintain truly that they saw nothing, A may well doubt the reality of that mouse, though no one need doubt, if A be a trustworthy person, that he really had the perception of a mouse, i.e. some affection of the nerves of sight plus a judgment. To settle the question it might be convenient to obtain the opinion of a sane and fairly hungry cat, whose sense of smell would confirm or contradict the visual perception of A. Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost; but nobody else does. Banquo's ghost, therefore, has no objective reality.

The objectively real is not that which stands outside everybody's mind (if that phrase could have any meaning), but that which has a validity or possible validity for the minds of several persons who can agree as to the content of their mental experience. The agreement between the inferences drawn from the experience of our different senses, the agreement between the judgments of different persons, and the harmony of present experience with the results of our and their previous experience, constitute between them the test of reality. In all practical affairs of life we consider ourselves justified in regarding any alleged reality with suspicion, if it cannot be shown to harmonize with the experience of sane, healthy, and normal persons. What does not so harmonize can claim, at the most, only subjective reality, i.e. reality for the persons having such abnormal experiences.

The opposition between the "real" and the "imaginary" is very often supposed to correspond to the opposition between "sensation" and "mere thinking." Mere thinking may of course mean imagining, and then the opposition is to some extent the same; but only to some extent even then. Because there may be sensations (in the psychological sense) or feelings