the evidence we choose before we declare our inference to be warranted;
but we must not ask for something more than evidence, nor expect to know
realities without inferring them anew. They are revealed only to
understanding. We cannot cease to think and still continue to know.

[Sidenote: Is thought a bridge from sensation to sensation?]

It may be said, however, that principles and external objects are
interesting only because they symbolise further sensations, that
thought is an expedient of finite minds, and that representation is a
ghostly process which we crave to materialise into bodily possession. We
may grow sick of inferring truth and long rather to become reality.
Intelligence is after all no compulsory possession; and while some of us
would gladly have more of it, others find that they already have too
much. The tension of thought distresses them and to represent what they
cannot and would not be is not a natural function of their spirit. To
such minds experience that should merely corroborate ideas would prolong
dissatisfaction. The ideas must be realised; they must pass into
immediacy. If reality (a word employed generally in a eulogistic sense)
is to mean this desired immediacy, no ideal of thought can be real. All
intelligible objects and the whole universe of mental discourse would
then be an unreal and conventional structure, impinging ultimately on
sense from which it would derive its sole validity.

There would be no need of quarrelling with such a philosophy, were not
its use of words rather misleading. Call experience in its existential
and immediate aspect, if you will, the sole reality; that will not
prevent reality from having an ideal dimension. The intellectual world
will continue to give beauty, meaning, and scope to those bubbles of
consciousness on which it is painted. Reality would not be, in that