which is no bigger than a sixpence, is the observer's planet, and he walks off with his own property.

It stands to reason that modern relativity strengthens this argument, since previously there were two elements in our experience which the argument did not touch, I mean Space and Time. Berkeley's argument rests on the basis that appearances in space and through time are personal to the observer. But space and time were left as common facts. But now it has been shown that space and time cannot be excluded from the scope of Berkeley's argument. Accordingly you can no longer meet the argument by showing that there are exceptions to it. Hence so far as idealism is concerned with the facts of nature and it must be concerned with them-its characteristic type of argument has been strengthened by the recent scientific bombshell. The realist is now left hugging the multiplication table as the sole common fact untouched by each immediate expression of mind. But the multiplication table is no good to a realist. It shuts him up with Plato's ideas, out of space and out of time, which is just where he does not want to be-Poor man, like Wordsworth and the rest of us, he wants to hear the throstle sing.

We seem to be left then with the idealist position that nature is nothing else than a common expression for diverse processes of mentality. I do not believe that this is the sole choice; I have been trying to sketch in a few sentences the line of thought according to which Relativity strengthens the argument for idealism. But, before proceeding, the immediate moral that I want to draw is that Berkeley must be stopped at the very beginning. The presupposition of the whole line of argument must be challenged. Later on there is no resting place.

Let us now begin again and scan carefully the main point of Berkeley's argument.

He attacks the presumption that we observe subjects as qualified by attributes, subject and attribute being independent

of ourselves. He easily―ridiculously easily-establishes this point so far as it goes, and it is the scope of this argument which is widened by the modern doctrine of relativity in physical science, so as to include time and space. The exact conclusion which we ought to draw and must draw is that the form of thought of a two-termed relation of predicate to subject imposed by the Aristotelian logic is not adequate to express the immediate deliverance of observation. A wider relativity is necessary in the sense that the fact of nature observed-the crimson cloud, to take another of Berkeley's examples-cannot be expressed in terms of the two factors "crimson" and "cloud." In other words, the proposition "the cloud is crimson" is in reality a highly elliptical form of expression and is meaningless unless the suppressed factors are supplied. In practice these suppressed factors always are supplied; in truth they are so obvious to us that it is difficult for us to believe that language has shirked its job of exposing the fact.

Furthermore, everyone would agree that in some sense the suppressed factor includes the observer. Berkeley's argument is that it stands in the essential nature of the case that different observers perceive different things. Accordingly, in the realm of things observed there can be nothing common to diverse observers. Accordingly, there is no common realm of things observed, whose interrelations can be expressed apart from reference to observers. Accordingly, the only common ground for observers is the common stock of abstract ideas which they individually apply to their diverse experiences. Furthermore, these diverse experiences now lose all claim to any objectivity other than that of being phases in the process of the self-development of the observer.

Now I see no escape from this argument provided that the concept of an "observer" is not ambiguous. Unfortunately, it is very ambiguous. Berkeley-tacitly presupposing the Aristotelian logical forms-has thereby presupposed that in the fact

observed there can only be the two-termed relation of predicate to subject, for example, "crimson to cloud." Accordingly, for him the additional factor introduced must be something underlying and in a sense creating the realm of the observed. This additional factor is accordingly (for Berkeley) the mentality of the observer which is expressing itself in these observations. In other words, for Berkeley the observer is mind, and therefore Berkeley is an idealist. But when a realist admits that—as above the suppressed factor includes the observer, he is (or should be) using the term "observer" in a quite different sense. He is thinking of the observer's body. I do not think that for the exposition of the realist position the term "observer" is at all well-chosen. I put it in, to start with, because, after all, Berkeley started the whole train of thought, so that the idealists are entitled to the initial phraseology which suits their line of development of the argument. But whereas Berkeley puts in an additional factor, namely, mind, which underlies the whole realm observed, the additional factor added by the realists consists of other items within the realm observed. Among these other items is the body of the observer, and this is why a realist carelessly, and in a loose unsatisfactory sense of the term, may assent to the statement that the additional factor includes the observer.

But note that now the realist has admitted that the simple proposition," the cloud is crimson," is a meaningless statement about nature unless other items of nature are implicitly included in the proposition. In other words, a fact of nature cannot be expressed in the simple two-termed relation of predication which is the standard form of the Aristotelian logic. In allowing that it is essential to add other items of naturé to crimson and the cloud in order to express the immediately apparent fact, he has admitted that the essential facts of apparent nature involve irreducible relations of more than two terms. Owing to the influence of training and custom, as embodied in the phraseology of philosophical literature, it

is habitual to us to presuppose that all relations-even if they are not that of predication are two-termed, and to acquiesce in arguments which tacitly make this presupposition. Accordingly, it is the more necessary for me to emphasize this point, since I consider that, apart from this admission of irreducible many-termed relations, there is no escape from the full force of Berkeley's argument.

If you ask how many other items of nature enter into the relation of crimson to cloud, I think that we must answer that every other item of nature enters into it. At first sight, this would appear to make knowledge impossible for poor finite human beings. But we can classify grades of relata in this multiple relation which I term that of crimson to cloud. The lowest grade sweeps all nature into itself. It is the grade of relata whereby all nature expresses its patience for this relationship of crimson to cloud. There is no such thing as crimson lone and by itself apart from nature as involving spacetime, and the same is true of cloud. The crimson cloud is essentially connected with every other item of nature by the spatio-temporality of nature, and the proposition, "the cloud is crimson" has no meaning apart from this spatio-temporality. In this way all nature is swept into the net of the relationship.

You may put it this way, nature as a system is presupposed in the crimsonness of the cloud. But a system means systematic relations between the items of a system. Accordingly, you cannot know that nature is a system unless you know what these systematic relations are. Now we cannot know these systematic relations by any observational method involving enumeration of all the items of nature. It follows that our partial knowledge must disclose a uniform type of relationship which reigns throughout the system. For if we do not know that, we know nothing: and there is simply nothing to talk about. For example, we should have no reason to believe that there is an interior to the earth, or any lapse of time apply

ing to it. We ask whether this interior is occupied with condensed matter or is empty, and whether this matter be hot or cold, solid or gaseous, because we know that the uniform systematic spatio-temporal relations must supply entities which have the status of forming the interior of the earth.

I call this principle by which a systematic nature is known to us, the uniform significance of events. This uniform significance is disclosed to us as expressing the patience of nature for every item of our experience-for example, the crimson-ness of the cloud.

Another grade of items in the relationship "crimson to cloud" entirely lacks the uniformity which attaches to the first grade. Accordingly, in contrast to "uniformity," I will speak of its "contingency." The principle of the contingence of appearance means that a set of items of nature are presupposed in the relationship crimson to cloud, whose status in the relationship requires detailed examination in each particular instance; though the laws of nature enable us to make a shrewd guess at the types of status which are possible. But there is one item in this contingent grade which is so pre-eminent that it almost deserves a whole grade to itself. I mean the observer's body. It is an empirical fact, which in no way seems to enter into the character of knowledge as such, that our knowledge of nature consists of knowledge of those relationships for which our bodies are important members off the contingent grade of items. The cloud is crimson, as per ceived by a person B, because B is aware of a certain multiple relationship involving processes within his body and other items of nature. We may put it in this way, that B is aware of nature from the standpoint of his body. Thus the relativity to an observer is dominated by the physical state of the observer's body. It is therefore relativity to his body.

Apart from the empirical fact that it so happens, I cannot convince myself that the character of awareness of nature necessarily involves this reference to the observer's body. In