Page:Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect.pdf/33

Rh poor thinker, made a mistake by reason of an erroneous symbolic reference from presentational immediacy to causal efficacy. In short, truth and error dwell in the world by reason of synthesis: every actual thing is synthetic: and symbolic reference is one primitive form of synthetic activity whereby what is actual arises from its given phases.

12. Rôles of Sense-data and Space in Presentational Immediacy.

By ‘presentational immediacy’ I mean what is usually termed ‘sense-perception.’ But I am using the former term under limitations and extensions which are foreign to the common use of the latter term.

Presentational immediacy is our immediate perception of the contemporary external world, appearing as an element constitutive of our own experience. In this appearance the world discloses itself to be a community of actual things, which are actual in the same sense as we are.

This appearance is effected by the mediation of qualities, such as colours, sounds, tastes, etc., which can with equal truth be described as our sensations or as the qualities of the actual things