I have
sometimes thought of the phenomenon called 'total reflexion' in
optics as a good symbol of the relation between abstract ideas and
concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold a tumbler of
water a little above your eyes and look up through the water at its
surface--or better still look similarly through the flat wall of an
aquarium. You will then see an extraordinarily brilliant reflected
image say of a candle-flame, or any other clear object, situated on
the opposite side of the vessel. No candle-ray, under these
circumstances gets beyond the water's surface: every ray is totally
reflected back into the depths again. Now let the water represent
the world of sensible facts, and let the air above it represent the
world of abstract ideas. Both worlds are real, of course, and
interact; but they interact only at their boundary, and the locus of
everything that lives, and happens to us, so far as full experience
goes, is the water. We are like fishes swimming in the sea of sense,
bounded above by the superior element, but unable to breathe it pure
or penetrate it. We get our oxygen from it, however, we touch it
incessantly, now in this part, now in that, and every time we touch
it we are reflected back into the water with our course re-
determined and re-energized.
Pages:
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114