Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/179

SOME REMARKS ON MEMORY AND INFERENCE. 165 subject, it is obvious, cannot properly be discussed in passing, and what follows, though not new, is offered merely in the way of invitation to further enquiry. " Matter of fact " seems a highly ambiguous phrase, and for our present purpose we may distinguish three different senses, or three aspects of one sense. (1) The word may stand for that which is merely felt or is simply experienced, something which therefore excludes, so far, anything like judgment, truth, or falsehood. In this meaning of the word, imagination, memory and observation all alike are above, or if you please are below, matter of fact, for their connexions are all more or less analytic and abstract. (2) On the other side, these connexions will be matter of fact in varying degrees in proportion as they are external and apparently devoid of any intrinsic reason. (3) And again, they may be matter of fact as belonging to and as dependent on a certain point in our "real" series. It is on these two later shades of meaning that I am about to make some very brief remarks. 1 The "merely imaginary" marks the farthest extreme of matter of fact in the second of our senses. It is not an affair of mere sense, since it qualifies a subject by an ideal pre- dicate ; but its bond of connexion, on the other side, is bare matter of fact. This connexion or conjunction on the one hand is actually there, but on the other hand it seems entirely irrational, since there is no more reason for it than for its diametrical opposite. The connexion therefore is, but it is true and real only by virtue of unknown conditions, and therefore in an unknown form. You pass from subject to predicate not on any ground which appears as intrinsic, not because of anything which seems comprised in your content, but on the strength of what falls outside. This unknown bond is for you no more than the nature of the universe at large, and you may call it matter of fact in general. In this sense of matter of fact memory and observation possess less of it than does mere imagination. But if we pass from the second to the third sense of our term, and understand matter of fact not as general but as special and individual, the case is altered, and observation and memory must now be admitted to stand above mere imagination. For in them the predicate is not attached to the subject by a merely unknown cause, but is taken as con- nected with it by the nature of what appears at a certain 1 A man is, I presume, called for good or evil a " matter of fact " person, according as he confines himself to the actual events of what we call "our real world," in opposition either to the "imaginary" or again to wide general principles of truth and conduct.