Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/319

No. 3.] objects undreamt of the moment before. It seems hardly necessary to add that this complete incoherence of the contents of consciousness as such is recognized by modern psychologists as irresistibly impelling us to the hypothesis of a world of trans-subjective realities. It requires, in fact, a strong effort of abstraction to realize at all what the state of affairs would be without such a supposition; for we involuntarily read a trans-subjective meaning into these apparitions of our perceptive consciousness. An intruding percept, which has no causal connection with what preceded it in my consciousness, we yet accredit as a messenger from a world beyond – the sign of a fact whose appearance just at this particular time and place is perfectly determined by the real causal connections of the trans-subjective world to which it belongs. It is only as thus correlated with an orderly trans-subjective world that I can possibly bring order and connection into my psychological experiences. Without this reference they are fitly compared to "a feverish dream, which constantly breaks off and tacks on afresh, without any indication how the individual pieces are connected with one another, or whether they are connected at all." To talk of immanent causality as existing in such a world is an abuse of language. Nobody asserts a causal connection between his idea o the sun and his idea of the warmed stone. The percept of the sun may often undoubtedly precede the percept of the stone, but just as often I may see the stone first and the sun second. Moreover I often have the percept of the sun without that of the stone, and, similarly, I may perceive the stone and a multitude of things may intervene to prevent my perceiving, or even thinking of, the sun. Between the one idea and the other there is no regular connection, and indeed no man thinks of asserting a causal relation between them. The causal relation is between the real facts which are the condition of these two ideas – between the trans-subjective sun and the trans-subjective stone. In this sense all our causal judgments