THE OBJECTS OF SCIENCE 49

each other in different directions as ordinary people think

they do ? Who that hears the pleasant voices of his children

as they are playing in the garden, or even when silence

succeeds to their audible merriment, can doubt their

independent objectivity entirely apart from his own feelings ?

Should shrill cries break that silence, and the father, rushing

out, find that one of his children has met with a serious

mischance, not only his feelings and his actions, but his

inmost thoughts, however determined an Idealist he may

be, will be in full accord with those of any other man

similarly circumstanced. We are persuaded the more the

reader examines into the dictates of his own mind during

his actual experiences from day to day, the more profoundly

he will be impressed by a conviction that real external

bodies things in themselves exist and act independently

of his feelings, wishes, thoughts, or perceptions, and that

he has full and valid ground to be absolutely certain about

it. This will be brought home to anyone with special

vividness while undergoing a surgical operation without the

use of anaesthetics.

But it is physical science which specially vouches for the

reality of an external independent world.

The advocates of Idealism generally content themselves

with explaining, according to their system, some of our

simple perceptions an apple, a landscape, the furniture of

a room, trees in a park, books in a library, etc. Such things

may plausibly be represented as made up of bundles of

feelings, because bundles of feelings are the means by

which we perceive them, and because we have but to gaze

on and contemplate a quiet scene devoid of conspicuous

interactions between its parts. But what we learn through

science is something very different : it is a systematic in-

vestigation as to what are the causes of different phenomena

and their various modes of action on one another. It has,

E

each other in different directions as ordinary people think

they do ? Who that hears the pleasant voices of his children

as they are playing in the garden, or even when silence

succeeds to their audible merriment, can doubt their

independent objectivity entirely apart from his own feelings ?

Should shrill cries break that silence, and the father, rushing

out, find that one of his children has met with a serious

mischance, not only his feelings and his actions, but his

inmost thoughts, however determined an Idealist he may

be, will be in full accord with those of any other man

similarly circumstanced. We are persuaded the more the

reader examines into the dictates of his own mind during

his actual experiences from day to day, the more profoundly

he will be impressed by a conviction that real external

bodies things in themselves exist and act independently

of his feelings, wishes, thoughts, or perceptions, and that

he has full and valid ground to be absolutely certain about

it. This will be brought home to anyone with special

vividness while undergoing a surgical operation without the

use of anaesthetics.

But it is physical science which specially vouches for the

reality of an external independent world.

The advocates of Idealism generally content themselves

with explaining, according to their system, some of our

simple perceptions an apple, a landscape, the furniture of

a room, trees in a park, books in a library, etc. Such things

may plausibly be represented as made up of bundles of

feelings, because bundles of feelings are the means by

which we perceive them, and because we have but to gaze

on and contemplate a quiet scene devoid of conspicuous

interactions between its parts. But what we learn through

science is something very different : it is a systematic in-

vestigation as to what are the causes of different phenomena

and their various modes of action on one another. It has,

E