Does it seem paradoxical? If so, I will try to make it
plausible by a few illustrations, which will lead to a fuller
acquaintance with the subject.
In many familiar objects everyone will recognize the human element.
We conceive a given reality in this way or in that, to suit our
purpose, and the reality passively submits to the conception. You
can take the number 27 as the cube of 3, or as the product of 3 and
9, or as 26 PLUS 1, or 100 MINUS 73, or in countless other ways, of
which one will be just as true as another. You can take a chessboard
as black squares on a white ground, or as white squares on a black
ground, and neither conception is a false one. You can treat the
adjoined figure [Figure of a 'Star of David'] as a star, as two big
triangles crossing each other, as a hexagon with legs set up on its
angles, as six equal triangles hanging together by their tips, etc.
All these treatments are true treatments--the sensible THAT upon the
paper resists no one of them. You can say of a line that it runs
east, or you can say that it runs west, and the line per se accepts
both descriptions without rebelling at the inconsistency.
We carve out groups of stars in the heavens, and call them
constellations, and the stars patiently suffer us to do so--tho if
they knew what we were doing, some of them might feel much surprised
at the partners we had given them.
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