In a simple and direct way these questions cannot be answered at all. The whole history of human thought is but an unfinished attempt to answer them. For what have men been trying to find out, since men were men, but just those things: "Where do our true interests lie--which relations shall we call the intimate and real ones--which things shall we call living realities and which not?" A few psychological points can, however, be made clear. _Any relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronger relation, suffices to make an object real._ The barest appeal to our attention is enough for that. Revert to the beginning of the chapter, and take the candle entering the vacant mind. The mind was waiting for just some such object to make its spring upon. It makes its spring and the candle is believed. But when the candle appears at the same time with other objects, it must run the gauntlet of their rivalry, and then it becomes a question which of the various candidates for attention shall compel belief. As a rule we believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we only could. When objects are represented by us quite unsystematically they conflict but little with each other, and the number of them which in this chaotic manner we can believe is limitless. The primitive savage's mind is a jungle in which hallucinations, dreams, superstitions, conceptions, and sensible objects all flourish alongside of each other, unregulated except by the attention turning in this way or in that. The child's mind is the same. It is only as objects become permanent and their relations fixed that discrepancies and contradictions are felt and must be settled in some stable way. As a rule, the success with which a contradicted object maintains itself in our belief is proportional to several qualities which it must possess. Of these the one which would be put first by most people, because it characterizes objects of sensation, is its-- (1) Coerciveness over attention, or the mere power to possess consciousness: then follow-- (2) Liveliness, or sensible pungency, especially in the way of exciting pleasure or pain; (3) Stimulating effect upon the will, i.e., capacity to arouse active impulses, the more instinctive the better; (4) Emotional interest, as object of love, dread, admiration, desire, etc.; (5) Congruity with certain favorite forms of contemplation--unity, simplicity, permanence, and the like; (6) Independence of other causes, and its own causal importance. These characters run into each other. Coerciveness is the result of liveliness or emotional interest. What is lively and interesting stimulates _eo ipso_ the will; congruity holds of active impulses as well as of contemplative forms; causal independence and importance suit a certain contemplative demand, etc. I will therefore abandon all attempt at a formal treatment, and simply proceed to make remarks in the most convenient order of exposition. * * * * *