ere at least something actual while they
lasted and made good their momentary claim to our interest; but what is
this new ideal figment, unseizable yet ever present, invisible but
indispensable, unknowable yet alone interesting or important? Strange
that the only possible object or theme of our knowledge should be
something we cannot know.

[Sidenote: Can the immediate be meant?]

An answer these doubts will perhaps appear if we ask ourselves what sort
of contact with reality would satisfy us, and in what terms we expect or
desire to possess the subject-matter of our thoughts. Is it simply
corroboration that we look for? Is it a verification of truth in sense?
It would be unreasonable, in that case, after all the evidence we demand
has been gathered, to complain that the ideal term thus concurrently
suggested, the super-sensible substance, reality, or independent object,
does not itself descend into the arena of immediate sensuous
presentation. Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour
and possess _what we mean_. Knowledge is recognition of something
absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace. It is an advance on
sensation precisely because it is representative. The terms or goals of
thought have for their function to subtend long tracts of sensuous
experience, to be ideal links between fact and fact, invisible wires
behind the scenes, threads along which inference may run in making
phenomena intelligible and controllable. An idea that should become an
image would cease to be ideal; a principle that is to remain a principle
can never become a fact. A God that you could see with the eyes of the
body, a heaven you might climb into by a ladder planted at Bethel, would
be parts of this created and interpretable world, not terms in its
interpretation nor objects in a spiritual sphere. Now external objects
are thought to be principles and sources of experience; they are
accordingly conceived realities on an ideal plane. We may look for all
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
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