how some one could have been carried away into saying that the world is only a differential equation.
With due reserve regarding this paradoxical proposition, we must nevertheless admit that nothing is objective which is not transmissible, and consequently that the relations between the sensations can alone have an objective value.
Perhaps it will be said that the esthetic emotion, which is common to all mankind, is proof that the qualities of our sensations are also the same for all men and hence are objective. But if we think about this, we shall see that the proof is not complete; what is proved is that this emotion is aroused in John as in James by the sensations to which James and John give the same name or by the corresponding combinations of these sensations; either because this emotion is associated in John with the sensation A, which John calls red, while parallelly it is associated in James with the sensation B, which James calls red; or better because this emotion is aroused, not by the qualities themselves of the sensations, but by the harmonious combination of their relations of which we undergo the unconscious impression.
Such a sensation is beautiful, not because it possesses such a quality, but because it occupies such a place in the woof of our associations of ideas, so that it can not be excited without putting in motion the 'receiver' which is at the other end of the thread and which corresponds to the artistic emotion.
Whether we take the moral, the esthetic or the scientific point of view, it is always the same thing. Nothing is objective except what is identical for all; now we can only speak of such an identity if a comparison is possible, and can be translated into a 'money of exchange' capable of transmission from one mind to another. Nothing, therefore, will have objective value except what is transmissible by 'discourse,' that is, intelligible.
But this is only one side of the question. An absolutely disordered aggregate could not have objective value since it would be unintelligible, but no more can a well-ordered assemblage have it, if it does not correspond to sensations really experienced. It seems to me superfluous to recall this condition, and I should not have dreamed of it, if it had not lately been maintained that physics is not an experimental science. Although this opinion has no chance of being adopted either by physicists or by philosophers, it is well to be warned so as not to let oneself slip over the declivity which would lead thither. Two conditions are therefore to be fulfilled, and if the first separates reality[1] from the dream, the second distinguishes it from the romance.
- ↑ I here use the word real as a synonym of objective; I thus conform to common usage; perhaps I am wrong, our dreams are real, but they are not objective.
