chapters in this book; an article in the British Journal of Psychology dealt in advance with some of the problems of the second chapter; the concluding pages of the sixth chapter are tinged with the remembrance of an article I wrote for The Monist; and the general argument of the book has a certain affinity with the contentions I put forward in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. In writing the eighth chapter I had to deal, in part, with the subject-matter of a former book; and I hope I have learned from my critics. I am most grateful to my father for the pains he has taken in reading the book in proof, and for advising me of many of my mistakes. And, like so many others, I have the pleasant privilege of thanking the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for the honour they have done me in publishing the book, and of expressing my gratitude to all who may be concerned for the skilful care which has been given to the printing of it. So much in the book is due to what I learned at Cambridge that I may be pardoned, I hope, for finding a peculiar delight in this privilege. July 12, 1920 J. L. Immediate knowledge of the past and of the future The place of memory-images Realism in the human sciences: and, first, economics. Imagination and the world of art CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Comme donc il est clair que je pense, il est clair aussi que je pense à quelque chose, c'est-à-dire, que je connais, et que j'aperçois quelque chose. Car la pensée est essentiellement cela. Et ainsi, ne pouvant y avoir de pensée ou de connaissance sans objet connu, je ne puis non plus me demander à moi-même la raison pourquoi je pense à quelque chose, que pourquoi je pense. ARNAULD, Des vrayes et des fausses Idées. THERE is no best way of beginning a book, but journeys have to start somehow, and intending travellers expect to be apprised of certain matters before they set out. If you would go with us, gentle reader, you have the right to ask what we intend to discuss, and what our chief assumptions are. You will not ask more than this from an introductory chapter; for you are discerning and experienced, dear sir or madam, and we would not address you if you were not. But you cannot ask less, and we cannot do less than comply. No philosopher wants to talk about words more than he can help doing in the ordinary way of business, and the retort that philosophy is a wordy business at the best is far too cheap to be worth a glance. There would be some excuse, it is true, and perhaps some little interest, in discussing the various senses in which critics and philosophers have used the word realism. It is a hard-used drudge of a word in art and philosophy (it would turn if a word could), and that is not surprising, for reality is a difficult thing to get away from. Those who try to turn their backs upon it set their faces towards another reality, and those who desert the actual for the ideal soon bestir themselves to prove that this ideal is the only genuine fact. Realists by profession, therefore, are very apt to assume a virtue to which others are equally entitled, and the end of this thing is confusion. If everyone is a realist |