difficult to determine in what precise sense immediate experience is the foundation of knowledge. Anything like an adequate discussion would carry us far beyond the limits of a single lecture. I shall have to ignore many problems that I would gladly investigate, and to take for granted much that I am ready and anxious to discuss. The utmost I can hope to do is to awaken fresh interest in some features of the subject, and perhaps to provoke the reconsideration of certain traditional theories. Nor is there anything original in what I have to say. It is old, and perhaps for that reason apt to be forgotten and worth reviving.
The distinction between Immediacy and Mediation is often applied so as to mark primarily, though not only, a difference of level in our experience. We see the sun 'as distant about 200 paces from the earth'; and this impression is 'immediate' by contrast with the knowledge of the sun's real distance which we may derive from astronomy. We 'feel that A is the thief; and this instinctive feeling of distrust is 'immediate' by contrast with the mediate certainty resulting from proof of his guilt. We have an inexplicable dislike of Dr. Fell; and this 'immediate' and irrational emotion is contrasted with the reasoned love or hate which reflection might inspire. We are lost in admiration or reverence; sunk in contemplation; absorbed in, possessed by, the beautiful or the divine; and we call these visions of truth or beauty or divinity 'immediate',
