Chapter 53

the External World," and "Sensations and 'Things,'" in my "System of Metaphysics." In that work the discussion of the distinction between the objective order of experience and the subjective order is completed in Chapter XXIII, "The Distinction between the World and the Mind." This was done that the subjective order might be treated in the part of the book which discusses the mind and its relation to matter.

As it is possible that the reader may be puzzled by differences of expression which obtain in the two books, a word of explanation is not out of place.

In the "Metaphysics," for example, it is said that sensations so connect themselves together as to form what we call the system of material things (p. 105). It is intimated in a footnote that this is a provisional statement and the reader is referred to later chapters. Now, in the present book (sections 16-17), it is taught that we may not call material things groups of sensations.

The apparent contradiction is due to the fact that, in this volume, the full meaning of the word "sensation" is exhibited at the outset, and sensations, as phenomena of the subjective order, are distinguished from the phenomena of the objective order which constitute the external world. In the earlier work the word "sensation" was for a while used loosely to cover all our experiences that do not belong to the class called imaginary, and the distinction between the subjective and objective in this realm was drawn later (Chapter XXIII).

I think the present arrangement is the better one, as it avoids from the outset the suggestion that the real world is something subjective--our sensations or ideas--and thus escapes the idealistic flavor which almost inevitably attaches to the other treatment, until the discussion is completed, at least.