when not much changed in
themselves, mere ideas fall into a new setting, whereas things, unless
something else has intervened to move them, reappear in their old
places. Finally things are acted upon by other men, but thoughts are
hidden from them by divine miracle.

Existence reveals reality when the flux discloses something permanent
that dominates it. What is thus dominated, though it is the primary
existence itself, is thereby degraded to appearance. Perceptions caused
by external objects are, as we have just seen, long sustained in
comparison with thoughts and fancies; but the objects are themselves in
flux and a man's relation to them may be even more variable; so that
very often a memory or a sentiment will recur, almost unchanged in
character, long after the perception that first aroused it has become
impossible. The brain, though mobile, is subject to habit; its
formations, while they lapse instantly, return again and again. These
ideal objects may accordingly be in a way more real and enduring than
things external. Hence no primitive mind puts all reality, or what is
most real in reality, in an abstract material universe. It finds,
rather, ideal points of reference by which material mutation itself
seems to be controlled. An ideal world is recognised from the beginning
and placed, not in the immediate foreground, nearer than material
things, but much farther off. It has greater substantiality and
independence than material objects are credited with. It is divine.

When agriculture, commerce, or manual crafts have given men some
knowledge of nature, the world thus recognised and dominated is far from
seeming ultimate. It is thought to lie between two others, both now
often called mental, but in their original quality altogether disparate:
the world of spiritual forces and that of sensuous appearance. The
notions of permanence and independence by which material objects are
conceived apply also, of course, to everything spiritual; and while the
dominion exercised by spirits may be somewhat precarious, they are as
remote as possible from immediacy and sensation. They come and go; they
govern nature or, if they neglect to do so, it is from aversion or high
indifference; they visit man with obsessions and diseases; they hasten
to extricate him from difficulties; and they dwell in him, constituting
his powers of conscience and invention. Sense, on the other hand, is a
mere effect, either of body or spirit or of both