WHAT

WHAT IS REALITY?

HAT constitutes reality is a question very difficult of answer, as most questions are which lie at the threshold of knowledge. Let us begin by saying what does not ? The evidence of the senses, even when each corroborates the other, does not constitute reality. But here we must at the outset distinguish. In one sense of the term every sense-impression is an unquestionable reality. Of what am I certain if not of the impressions that break in upon me through the senses, of the sights and sounds that affect my eye and ear, of the savours and odours that delight or disgust me? These are primary facts. They may often be what we call hallucinations, but that does not affect the certainty of my knowledge of them, nor, consequently, in one sense, their reality. To say that a certain impression on the senses is an hallucination, is to say that it occurs without those marks of external reality which it is the object of the present article to investigate. There are other things of which I am as certain as of my sensations, namely, the thoughts which pass through my mind, the passions which agitate my soul, the determinations of my will—and these, unlike sensations, are never declared to be hallucinations, because there is no external reality of which they are the recognized indications. In one sense of the word then, all states of mind, all that may be summed up under the head of consciousness, is real, but mere consciousness gives us only subjective and not objective reality; and it is the latter kind of which we are in search; the former is mentioned in order to be excluded.

The philosophy of hallucination offers a vast field of inquiry which has yet to be patiently cultivated. To say that a thing is a delusion is a very easy way of shelving pyschological anomalies. But delusion must have its laws no less stringent than those of real perception. Sometimes, no doubt, the cause of what we call a delusion lies in a diseased state of the organs of the percipient. But it would be rash to lay down that this is always the case. Some delusions have an external cause, though not the same kind of cause that operates when we are cognizant of a reality. Delusions differ in degree in many ways, more particularly in the number of senses that combine to impose upon us. There are hallucinations of one, two, or three dimensions, according as one sense only, or two, or even all three are called into operation. I say I say "all three," for taste and smell, as modifications of touch, may be roughly classed under the same head with it. You may hear a voice address you in the daytime, and though you were certain that the sound was real, you may still consent to call the experience an hallucination, if the testimony of sight fails to corroborate that of hearing. Or you may at the same time see a figure from which the voice issues, life-like, mobile, distinct in the light of day; but if your hand passes through this figure when you thrust it out, you will not resent the dictum of the doctor who pronounces you the victim of hallucination; and this, notwithstanding that each sensation was in itself perfectly real. But if the figure resists the touch, then we seem to have all the certainty of external reality that it is possible for the isolated judgment of the individual to obtain. Under such circumstances a man would practically believe in the reality of his experience, and by most people it would be theoretically admitted that he is right. It is true he may be the victim of an hallucination of three dimensions, but he must run the chance of that. I am speaking of course of a case in which verification by means of the senses of other witnesses is impracticable. If we will

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not believe "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled," then is our scepticism incurable, and we are shut out for ever from all hope of knowledge. But then, where possible, it must in a strict sense be "our eyes" which see, and "our hands" which handle. For the possibility of an hallucination of three dimensions is proved, if it need the proof, from mesmerism. subject" under the control of the operator will not only see and hear, but feel to order, and will deride the idea of his being under a delusion. The subjective reality is complete, though we know that he is deluded. It is plain, therefore, that the sense-impressions of the individual are not in all cases a safe criterion of reality. If Swedenborg walk arm-in-arm with St. Paul through the streets of London, it may be a full reality to him, but we must pronounce his state a delusion, so long as the passers-by see only Swedenborg.

But what if, under certain unascertained conditions of brain or nerve, hallucination be contagious? I have had personally a slight experience pointing in this direction, which I trust I may be pardoned for relating. Once, when an undergraduate at college, I was walking, towards dark, with a friend in the quadrangle. A passing impression occurred to me that I saw a man named H. leaning with his back against the common-room window. The impression was a momentary and very slight one, and I would never have thought twice of it only for what followed. My friend gave a start, and made an exclamation, and when I asked what was the matter, was silent. My curiosity being roused, I pressed him to tell me the reason of his exclamation, and he then said, "Oh, I thought I saw H. standing with his back against the common-room window." Now, this certainly took place, and to ascribe it to mere coincidence would, I think, be meaningless. Either the impression passed from one mind into another, probably from mine to his, as it seems to have occurred to me first, or else the same cause

produced both impressions. Shall we then say, with the believers in a "double," that the psychical, astral, or fluidic body of H. was at that moment "on the loose," and veritably presented itself to the minds of both of us ? Or shall we adopt a less ponderous hypothesis, and say that some temporary effect of light or shadow being sufficient to raise the idea of H. in one mind might without great wonder be sufficient also to raise it in the other? This is perhaps the common-sense view of the case. But, however that may be, the following story, if true and I had it on good authority-would establish the possibility of simultaneous hallucination. I may

not perhaps give the details of the story with perfect accuracy, but the following was the substance of it. An Indian juggler was exhibiting his powers under the shade of a tall palm-tree, amid whose leaves an English officer had previously ensconced himself. The juggler took a baby, hacked it to pieces with a sword, and handed the portions round to the company. He then collected them, and restored the baby whole as before. The company had the corroborated testimony of their several senses to the facts of the existence, dismemberment, and reconstitution of the baby; but the officer up in the tree, unaffected, we may presume, by the psychological influence of the juggler (not on account of distance, but because unperceived) saw that the fancied baby was only a pumpkin! Now, if this story be true, every one will allow, that was the reality which was seen by the one, and that the hallucination which was seen by the many. How is this? Why should we prefer one witness to a multitude? Because a vast amount of experience, which is prior sense-testimony, is in favour of the one and against the many.

We have left out of count one element in St. John's criterion of certainty. "That which was from the beginning." (This is my own meaning of the words, I daresay, but in preferring my own meaning to the author's, I am only following the example of respectable

commentators.) But it is necessary to distinguish carefully between the reality of a thing and our belief in its reality. A thing is either real or it is not. No amount of analogies can make the real more real, or add being to that which is; as no amount of counter evidence can make the real less real, or take its being from that which is. The degree of belief we entertain of the reality of a thing is what constitutes its "probability." We are obliged to judge by means of probability; it is the "guide of life" and a safe guide in the main, though necessarily misleading in particular cases, from being calculated only for averages. In the above story we unhesitatingly pronounce that the reality lay with the perception of the one, because the probability is all on his side. We have seen that that is not necessarily real which is vouched for by the united testimony of the several senses of an individual; nor even that which has in its favour the united sense-testimony of a number of witnesses. Neither will it do to say that those impressions are real, which have a cause external to ourselves; and those hallucinations, whose cause is internal. For the will of the mesmerist is a cause external, in a certain sense, to the patient; and for aught we know the reality of the world around us may lie in the powerful will of some superior being. We may all be subjects of the Divine Mesmerist, as Berkeley declares we are. In order then to be safe from objections we must say that a reality, be it object or event, is what would affect with like impressions all witnesses who have the ordinary complement of senses in good working order. This may, perhaps, be let pass as a definition of mundane reality. We have unfolded (to use logical phraseology) the intention of the term. to its extension, namely, what objects and events are to be considered real, that is quite a different question, which resolves itself into an estimate of the value of evidence. It has formed no part of the scope of this paper to discuss the canons of credibility.

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