Human experience : a study of its structure / by Viscount Haldane.

  • Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Human experience : a study of its structure / by Viscount Haldane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that this experience alone is what is actual. It seems to be essentially our starting-point, and this statement serves not only as a provisional reply to our question, but appears to agree with the opinions of mankind gen¬ erally. By our experience we mean the world as it is before our minds, the world that is without and also that is within us ; a world that includes truth and beauty and values and all that we are aware of. But if this be true it does not carry us very far. Our worlds and what we are aware of depend, to some extent at least, on ourselves in¬ dividually. If our organisms and our senses were different our worlds might be different also. A rabbit has a more contracted world, and if there be an angel he may enjoy a wider one. Moreover, it is only a little of our worlds that we can apprehend. We are conditioned by our stations in nature, by our periods, and by our histories. Directly we ask about knowledge we find that we apprehend only a fraction of nature, and for knowledge of a wider scope we are dependent on indirect methods of inference, where perception through the senses ceases to be possible. That does not limit our knowledge. We ourselves exist within nature, and as parts of it. Yet our intelligence is also a possible
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