Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/47

28 attempt to correspond to them. From such a point of view, our ideas seemed destined to perform a task which is externally set for them by the real world. I count, but I count, in ordinary life, what I take to be real objects, existent quite apart from my counting. Suppose that I count ships seen from the shore. There, says common sense, are the ships, sailing by themselves, and quite indifferent to whether anybody counts them or not. In advance of the counting, the ships, in so far as they are a real collection, have their number. This common sense also presupposes. Let there be seen, yonder, on the sea, nine ships or ten; this number of the real ships is in itself determinate. It does not result from my counting, but is the standard for the latter to follow. The numerical ideas of anybody who counts the ships must either repeat the preexistent facts, or else fail to report those facts accurately. That alternative seems absolute and final. The question how anybody ever comes to count ships at all, is a question for psychology. But there remains for the seeker after metaphysical truth, just as much as for the man of common sense, the apparently sharp alternative: Either actual ships, whose multitude is just what it happens to be, whose number preexists, in advance of any counting, are correctly represented by the ideas of one who happens to be able to count, or else these ships are incorrectly counted. In the latter case we seem to be forced to say that the counting process misses its external aim. In the former case we say that the ideas expressed by the one who counts are true. But in both cases alike the ideas in question thus appear to be true or false by virtue of their external meaning, by virtue of the