Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/87

THE DISTINCTION OF INNER AND OUTER EXPERIENCE. 73 not exist outside its attributes. But this objection does not apply when we conceive the ' support of qualities ' after the analogy of the self, and construe the qualities themselves as representations in consciousness of the interaction between spiritual substances. 1 In a similar spirit it is said that to advocate the reality of things is to champion a mere fiction 'of the mind. For the so-called thing is " ruined by thought " : it goes to pieces under the touch of the speculative inquirer. Popular thought is certainly arbitrary in the way in which it applies the name ; and we do not deny that things are sometimes mental fictions. A bag of grain might be called a ' thing,' while the name would not be given to the contents spread out upon the floor. But popular terminology does not concern us here ; and we prefer to speak of individual reals which have a being for themselves. These are not due to ideal construction, but are presupposed by it, for without them thought would not have data on which to work. Obviously it will not be possible for us, with our present knowledge, to distinguish what is individual at levels of development far distant from our own. But even in this sense, it is contended, the existence of individual reals cannot be maintained. The more we reflect the better we shall see that the significance of every predicate involves relations which force us to go beyond the individual itself ; and the further we carry the process, the more unreal becomes the abstraction which remains. The fact is, as we learn, that an individual, or monad, is a fiction ; it is re- ducible to a mere adjective which falls within the only true individual, the universe as a whole the one ultimate reality. As a result of this drastic argument not only ' things ' but conscious selves are ' ruined,' or at least they should be. For the reasoning employed, if valid, ought also to undermine the individuality and identity of the human self by dissolving it into a changing tissue of relations. The logical conse- quence of this argument must be to discredit any theory of reality which the human ego can form. Experience, on the contrary, testifies to a self which distinguishes itself from its states and maintains its unity in them. And it is after the analogy of the self that we conceive the individual reals which are the ground of the external world as perceived. It will still be urged that the test of the truth of any theory is its coherency; in other words, if we can "think 1 It will be said that this is tacitly to admit that the individual is only qualified in virtue of its relations. I do not think so, for the qualities which become explicit through interaction point to positive differences in the monads themselves.