presented in the object before it. Apperception not only sees the object, but explains it by thinking it in the light of its past history and in its dependency upon distant objects not in the field of perception, thus re-enforcing the experience of the present moment by placing it in relation to all past experience.

In seizing a fact, everything depends on how large a portion of its entire compass is reached. The illustration of Isaac Newton and the apple has been often used to make this clear. Newton's perception may have been the same as that of the domestic animal who ran to devour the apple when it fell. But his apperception was altogether different. The animal saw only the practical and useful fact that the apple was good to eat and had come within his reach. Newton saw in the fall of the apple the cause acting as the law of gravity, which impelled the apple to the earth and also caused the movement of the moon which he noticed in the sky as he looked up through the branches of the apple tree. The animal had a practical, useful common sense, but it did not give him true knowledge. For the fact of the fall of the apple was not the whole fact. The true fact was much larger than the animal saw, for the fact included this great law of

gravity and the movements taking place according to it in the starry heavens. Without other attracting bodies than the apple there would have been no gravitation to cause any movement of falling.

A fact as usually observed is only a partial truth-it is a little glimpse of the true reality, it is a symbolic object of knowledge. Such a fact becomes truth only when it is seen in its scientific principle. Then we see the great whole of which the fact is only a partial manifestation. The animal senses alone do not see the truth, but only a small phase of it, as inadequate as the particular grass blade under our feet would be if it were offered to us as the reality of the whole vegetable world. The law of the fact states what is true under all circumstances.

Midway between facts and principles are typical facts. These are what art and poetry use. The natural symbolism of the mind uses such facts to best advantage. The typical fact is one so complete that it illustrates almost all of the phases of the law or principle. Each fact gives some phases of the law but not all, and is therefore defective. The typical fact should contain all phases.

Art and poetry in giving to facts the form of

types make for us a series of permanent facts. These facts of poetry do not have such historic reality as particular events or individuals have, but a deeper one, inasmuch as they present for us a more correct general impression. Shakespeare's historical plays give us an account of the development and growth of the English nation from a mere dependency of France and Rome to a mighty nation with a national church and a powerful House of Commons. No history yet written shows us the essentials the typical facts-like these historical plays of Shakespeare. So, too, a novel of Charles Kingsley or of Walter Scott, of Felix Dahn or Sienkiewicz, may give us the true picture of an historic epoch, while the historian's account may be far from adequate, through its failure to seize the motives of the actors.

The mythical epoch of a nation's history furnishes symbols of theoretical and moral truths. The Prose Edda in recounting the events of Thor's journey to Utgard presents in an interesting way the doctrine above discussed of the inadequacy of facts merely perceived and not apperceived.

Thor was told to lift a cat which he saw in the corner of the room. As he lifted the animal it

arched its back and he could not reach high enough to raise all the feet clear of the floor. It was later explained to him by the giant that this cat was a coil of the world serpent which holds the world together. At one time Thor had succeeded in lifting one of the feet from the floor. Had he lifted all the feet the world serpent would have lost his grip and the world would have gone to pieces. Thor was told to drink a beaker of mead, but with all his efforts (and Thor was a famous drinker) he could not drain the cup. The explanation subsequently made to him was that the beaker which appeared to him as only a small cup was so connected with the sea that had he emptied it he would have emptied the sea. Every fact is like the world serpent in that in its entire compass it involves all the other facts of the world, and without a connecting principle all these facts go to pieces in chaotic confusion. Every fact is, like the beaker of mead, connected with a sea of facts, all of which must be comprehended if we truly comprehend the single fact.

W. T. HARRIS.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 12, 1899.