Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/18

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
12
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN

For this reason, because it is so new, and in its aim is so complete, and because it issues from so high a philosophical source, and because that source must here be of paramount interest, I propose to take the liberty of restating before you, as simply as I can, the doctrine of physical realism, which has become familiar to the English world in the last few years as promulgated from the University of Manchester.

For this doctrine comes, so to speak, on the top of the two doctrines we have already alluded to. Say that Materialism logically wins the first game—I am not speaking in historical order—I think that Subjective Idealism must so far be held to have won the return match. But the temper which demands a self-existent non-mental reality may be held to open the game again with twentieth century Realism, a very different thing from Materialism; and whether an existing or a future philosophy, whatever it may be called, can once more win the return match against the realistic side, or—dropping