Mind and Reality

The present writer attempted a criticism of certain modern hypotheses concerning Reality. Destructive work being much easier than constructive, this second study attempts with some dread the task of considering the whole subject from another point of view. Yet the comfort for the writer lies in the fact that the thoughts here to be set forth are in the main not new. The need seems to be just now that certain ideas known, but in our age too much neglected, should be, not simply revivified, but rather reformed, to bring them into closer connection with modern progress. This study will fall into two parts. In the first we shall suppose our whole task to be the suggestion of a plausible, i.e., of a simple, adequate, and consistent hypothesis about the nature of external reality. In the second part we shall consider more critically the nature of such hypotheses. In this first part, then, we shall suppose that, by a perfect theory of knowledge, the following result has been reached : Human beings are able to form ideas that correspond in some way with a real world, outside of themselves. That is, the sequence of human ideas corresponds to sequences of external events, or to relations of coexistence among external things. The necessary or uniform connections of human ideas correspond to regular or to universal connections among external things.