352 F. C. S. SCHILLER : inferred realities, and if they can contribute nothing valuable to its elucidation, their assumption is nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit. For what started the whole cognitive process was just the felt unsatisfactoriness of our immedi- ate experience : our inferences must approve themselves as specifics against this disease, by their ability to supplement the actual, by the power they give us to transform our experi- ences. The transmutation of appearances therefore must not be represented as an inscrutable privilege of the Absolute ; it must be made a weapon mortal hands can actually wield. What will in the last resort decide, therefore, whether an inferred reality really exists or is merely a figment of the imagination, is the way it works, and the power which its aid confers. The assumption, e.g., of the earth's rotundity is 'true,' and preferable to the ' flat -earth ' theory, because on the whole it works better and accounts better for the course of our experience. Similarly if I am comparing the merits of the scientific theory that the transmission of light is effected by the vibrations of a hypothetical reality called the ' ether ' with those of a more poetic theory that it is due to the flapping of equally hypothetical cherubs' wings, my decision will certainly be affected by the consideration that I can probably discover regular ways of manipulating the ether, but can hardly hope to control the movements of the cherubs. An assumed reality, then, approves itself to be true in pro- portion as it shows itself capable of rendering our life more harmonious ; it exposes itself to rejection as false in propor- tion as it either fails to affect our experiences, or exercises a detrimental effect upon them. Knowledge is power, because we decline to recognise as knowledge whatever does not satisfy our lust for power. It follows (5) that Ultimate Reality must be absolutely satis- factory. For that is the condition of our accepting it as such. So long as the most ultimate reality we have reached falls short in any respect of giving complete satisfaction, the struggle to harmonise experience must go on, lead to fresh efforts, and inspire the suspicion that something must exist to dissolve away our faintest discords. We cannot acquiesce therefore in what we have found. Or rather our acquiescence in it would at most betray the exhaustion of despair. To this we might be reduced for a season, but the hope would always rise anew that somehow there was something better, truer and more real lurking behind the apparent ultimates of our know- ledge. For illustration I need merely appeal to the well- known fact that an " other " world is always conceived as a
