Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/329

304 terror of all revolutionary suggestions, the fright or the anger of a man at finding some metaphysician trying to question what seem to be the foundations upon which one’s bread winning depends, — all these lesser motives are appealed to, and the one ultimate motive is neglected. The ultimate motive with the man of every-day life is the will to have an external world. Whatever consciousness contains, reason will persist in spontaneously adding the thought: “But there shall ba something beyond this.” The external reality as such (e.g. the space beyond the farthest star, any space not accessible, even whatever is not at any moment given in so far as it is viewed from that moment, in particular every past event) is never a datum. We construct but do not receive the external reality. The “immovable certainty” is not such a dead passive certainty as that with which we receive a pain or an electric shock. The popular assurance of an external world is the fixed determination to make one, now and henceforth.

In the general popular conceptions of reality we find then the first use of postulates. We have as yet no justification for them. But even thus we get no adequate idea of their use and of their number. We must look at the facts of every-day mental life a little more closely. For there is a curious tendency of many to make these postulates appear something else than what they are. Often they are interpreted as if they were no postulates at all, but data of sense. Often, again, their active nature is disregarded in yet another way, and they appear as blind passive faith. Such in fact they must appear if we