If we take a cricket-ball in the hand and turn it round we shall
perceive a series of discs. Only one of these can be seen at a time,
but if we perceive and remember the whole series we shall be able to
infer all from the perception of one in a similar object. The same
occurs with other cubical or solid objects. This is a form of ideal
construction different from any we have yet considered. It differs
from inherence in that the object which we conceptually put together
is never objectively perceived as a whole. It is an imaginary whole
constructed in the intellect out of fragmentary experience. It differs
from association on the same grounds; the latter can be all perceived
at once in forming the judgment. It differs from perspection in that
the imperfection of experience is due to curtailment, not to general
deterioration. What we actually see may be perspectively perfect. It
differs also from the next category in that the series of perceptions
can occur in various orders of succession.
_The 'backs' of Things._ We talk of the back of a thing, but nobody
has ever seen a back. Things have no backs in the popular sense of the
word. When we turn round a back to perceive it, it is then a front.
Everything is a flat upright surface, and its appearance of solidity
can be imitated on a surface known to be flat, and with nearly the
same illusive completeness as in the original object. In turning
things round we merely change the surface; we are exercising our power
to alter primary consciousness.
When two persons perceive the 'same' object from contrary directions,
the sameness means that the two objects proceed from the same cause,
or can be reduced to the same general idea. But the objects are
numerically distinct. By a similar turn of speech we say that A
and _a_ are the same _letter_, but they are evidently distinct and
dissimilar objects. If we hold a thing before a mirror and see what is
termed its back, we produce a new object resembling the first in some
respects but without its resistance.
Resistance is a negative term signifying the limit of our power to
alter primary experience. Where our power ceases resistance is said to
begin, and we meet with resistance when we apply a power inadequate to
the desired effect.
Dr. Johnson's solitary experiment in idealistic philosophy has been
often related. He struck a post, and because it did not disappear he
thought he had disproved Berkeley's statement that material objects
exist only in the perceiving mind. The experiment merely showed that
all means are not adequate to change all primary experience. Had he
shut his eyes, or turned a corner, or occupied his attention with
other matters, the post would have vanished. He chose improper means
and therefore met with 'resistance.' No idealist believes we can
change our primary experience by any capricious and frivolous
means[15].
_Geographical Concretion._ The knowledge of large geographical areas
is an artificial construction without objective reality.
Our experience is, literally and exactly, a series or sequence--a flux
or stream. It is composed of objects or of groups, according to the
width of our attention. If we travel over a large tract of country
the experience is a train of objects or views, which follow each other
continuously but for interruptions in attention. If we were bound to
think of things in the order in which they were experienced, we should
have to imagine our topographical consciousness as a long ribbon of
views, like the pictures of a panorama. Supposing we travelled hither
and thither over one county, it would appear to us as a straight
strip of land which might be several hundred miles long. If we again
traversed the ground, but in another order, we should have another
strip resembling the first, but also differing from it, and it would
be necessary to keep the two from being confused in our mind. If
several persons traversed the same ground but in divers directions,
they would each retain a different recollection of it, and it would
be extremely hard for any two of them to agree as to the order in
succession of any portion of the ground traversed.
Our experience of the natural group suggests a mode of treating our
geographical experience which overcomes many of these inconveniences.
We find that we can traverse (either bodily or by the eye) a single
landscape in a thousand directions, and retain a memory of it without
any reference to these directions. What we remember is the mutual
positions of the objects, not the order in which they were observed.
As this greatly facilitates the memory of one group, we apply the
same principle of synthesis to the succession of groups composing
our geographical experience. We dismiss from our minds the order of
observation, and construct instead an imaginary group of associated
objects or places having mutual positions. It is imaginary, for no one
has ever seen as a co-existent synthesis the objects of a county,
not to speak of a country or continent. Substituting for memory of
succession, a memory of position, there grows up in our mind a large
co-existent image of a country on the model of a single group, which
affords all the advantages as regards economy of energy which we
enjoy by virtue of comprehending a natural group in one act of
consciousness.
Take an instance of this economy. Suppose a man travelled from London
to Oxford, then to Exeter, then to Portsmouth, then to Brighton, and
afterwards desired to return to London. If he, acting on a mistaken
conception of truth and disdaining instruction from others, persisted
in remembering the objects perceived on his journey as--what they
no doubt literally were--a continuous series, he would be unable to
imagine any way of returning to London except by reversing the order
of his journey. If on the other hand he carried in his mind an image
of the ground in question, with the mutual position of the places,
it would enable him to _foresee_ that London was to be reached by
journeying northward from Brighton, in far less time and at far less
cost than by returning the way he came. Thus does conceptual position,
when it is correctly imagined, prove its superiority to the order of
experience. And we say that the ideal picture is truer than the crude
memory,--not that it is really so if natural order is a test of truth,
but because it is the least onerous, which is our practical standard
of truth. The only object of knowledge being the wise management of
energy, that sort of knowledge must be considered truest that enables
us to have the feelings we desire at the least cost. In one sense
truth means the quickest and easiest way of passing from one state of
consciousness to another preconceived state.
It may be objected to the above example as a valid deduction from an
imaginary synthesis, that the relation of London to Brighton is now a
certainty, whereas an inference can be no more than a probability. The
reply is, that if a man has already traversed the route in question,
it is to him an actual experience and his idea of it is ever
afterwards a memory, not an inference. But until it is actually
perceived it must be imaginary, and therefore slightly problematical.
Although a man is convinced that others are not deceiving him in
saying a place is to be reached in a certain way, he cannot be
absolutely sure that he fully understands the directions given,
in other words, that his image of the route corresponds to their
perception of it. There probably never is exact similarity between one
man's primary experience and another man's idea of it. It may even
be doubted whether there is ever exact similarity between a man's own
primary experience and his subsequent idea of it.
The geographical synthesis is founded on actual exploration
supplemented by inference. The mutual position of some important
places are determined and serve as precedents for a multitude of minor
positional deductions. _A_ is twenty miles north of London, _B_ is
ten miles south of London, hence _A_ is thirty miles north of _B_.
The mileage is determined by imagining the synthesis developed into
natural groups and measured laterally. Other scales are the time
spent in travelling between the places, or the money it costs, or the
distance delineated on a map.
Though the geographical concretion may be modelled on the association,
we cannot treat it perspectively, for the places being purely
ideal (except the one we are at), the ideal image is not liable to
deterioration by weakened perception. It may suffer degradation by
forgetfulness, but that has nothing to do with perspection.
_Sphericity of the Earth._ The geographical synthesis is not always
formed on the pattern of a natural association. That is the first and
most obvious shape to give it, and for thousands of years it
appears to have answered the topographical needs of mankind. But as
exploration extended it was found that the associative theory did not
in some cases afford true preconception. If we travel far enough
in any fixed direction we shall return to the point from which we
started. This could not have been predicted from a synthesis formed
on the model of a landscape. Such a return however takes place in the
objects denominated spheres, and so the spherical instead of the flat
form has been conceptually given to the geographical concretion. That
is all that is meant by saying that the world is round. There is
no world, as the mystical realist--projecting outwards his mental
synthesis--imagines. There is only a scheme of spherical positions
in the intellect, which facilitates the recollection of places and
enables us to foresee the shortest and easiest way of reaching--_i.e._
experiencing places. The concretion is true inasmuch as the prediction
is found to coincide with real experience. But that by no means
implies that the places exist except when perceived in minds.