Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/72

Rh declaring the reality of objects certain forms of speech whose notable feature lies in their telling us that their object is to be seen, or is at hand, or can be found, or is marked, or is plain, or stands out, or is there, or, as the Germans also say, is vorhanden; while the unreal has no standing, or is not at hand, or is not to be found, or is not there. These expressions bring the real being of an object into close relations with the sharpness, nearness, clearness, or mere presence, of our experience of this object. They accordingly often imply that the object seems more or less accidental. It haps, it chances, — these are phrases thus frequently employed as the means of telling that an object is. “You may think that there is no hereafter, but there happens to be one,” — so a preacher may say to a scoffer. The common feature of these popular expressions is that they lay stress upon what the philosophers call the immediacy of real facts, as the most marked sign of their reality. For the immediate, such as light or sound or pain, just happens to be found, or is given as a fact.

A second class of expressions, however, in very strong contrast to the first class, declares that an object is real, not by virtue of its mere presence or obviousness, but in so far as it is deeper than what is visible, or in so far as it has foundation, solidity, permanence, interior constitution, profundity of meaning. Much of the language here in question takes the form of metaphors. What merely seems is a rind or husk; what is real is the core or kernel of things. “These but seem,” says Hamlet, “for these are tokens that a man might feign, but I have that within which passeth show.” Other metaphors, in ancient tongues of our Indo-European family, indentify to be with