Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II REALITY AND TRUTH § 1. Opposite me, at a distance of about 500 yards, a hill rises steeply to a height of about 1000 feet. At its foot lies a narrow meadow surrounded by dark green woods of oak, chestnut and fir. Above the wood runs a brighter border of ferns, then heather, and at the top grey crags. In the blue overarching sky a few white or grey clouds drift slowly along. From the valley at the foot of the hill is heard the rushing of a mountain stream, hidden by trees, and from this side of it a meadow and lawn slope up to my window. Cattle browse across the meadows; swallows skim by in the air, and a light wind rustles through the woodland. This is Empirical Eeality, matter of fact, the scene of the activity and interest of life, the beauty of the world, which can never be " explained away," and for which no theory can ever be substituted. Why not be content with this, instead of making a theory about it ? Still, this being a working hour, terms of the Schools begin to jangle in my ears and gurgle in my throat. I observe grimly that the scene before me is matter in space, a continuum of points of resistance and intervals of free movement ; that I am necessarily impressed with its permanence as a whole, in spite of changes among its parts; and with its independence of myself, in the sense that others will see it when I go away, and that if I come back next year it will seem much the same. I see that all objects in the landscape have characteristic properties; that only oak, and fir, and fern, and heath, and rock look just like that; that onlyswallows and one or two other birds with similar wings have just that casting, sweeping flight; that only mountain streams make just that everlasting noise. And as to all this no serious doubt is possible, and if any ...