Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/335

THE NEW EEALISM AND THE OLD IDEALISM. 321 difficult to discover. I give meaning to weight by the help of my ideas of pressure, strain, and possibly some other sense experiences. But what again are we to say of these ? Does the idea of pressure press ? This also, I think, would hardly be quite true ; but there is assuredly a sense element contained in it which forms the basis for what I mean by pressure. Something of the same sort may be said about extension. The idea of space does not seem to me to be extended ; but I think we arrive at it by the help of the element of extensity which is contained in our tactual ex- periences ; and I do not see how we could ever reach it without this element. Now, if we follow out the line of thought that is suggested by these illustrations, it seems to me that we shall be led, in the first instance, to a view that may be expressed by means of the previous figure. Our world of meaning may, rightly enough, be compared to a vast credit system, that carries us far beyond any gold reserve that we can call upon within the world of our direct experience ; yet it is supported, in the end, by means of that reserve. Or, to drop this figure, which is not altogether a good one, we may say that the world of meaning would be quite unmeaning if it did not start from and return to a world of conscious experience. But what exactly does this mean, and what does it imply ? We may perhaps arrive at an answer to this by asking, What are the different ways in which the world of meaning may be interpreted ? One way of course is that of Hume. We may say that it is entirely illusory, so far as it is not a direct reproduction of some fact of immediate experience. But I think it has been found and, indeed, it was clearly enough seen by Hume himself that this view not only makes knowledge impossible, but even makes it impossible to see how there can be any illusion of Knowledge. Another way is to say that we are driven by a natural impulse to affirm a world that we mean, as distinguished from one that we directly experience ; and that we affirm it simply on the basis of our volition. This seems to be essentially the posi- tion of Pragmatism. But certainly the facts that we are concerned with, when we speak of meaning, carry us far beyond the region of actual volition. We surely do not will to apprehend weight and colour ; and, indeed, it is difficult to see how we can will anything that we have not first ex- perienced. Nor is it easy to understand how our volitions could arise without any ground, or be continued without any support. A third view is to say that in the world of meaning we apprehend a reality quite distinct from the