Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/465

 sensation is in very truth what I originally called it—the sensation’s object.

But, if all this be true, what follows?

Idealists admit that some things really exist of which they are not aware: there are some things, they hold, which are not inseparable aspects of their experience, even if they be inseparable aspects of some experience. They further hold that some of the things of which they are sometimes aware do really exist, even when they are not aware of them: they hold for instance that they are sometimes aware of other minds, which continue to exist even when they are not aware of them. They are, therefore, sometimes aware of something which is not an inseparable aspect of their own experience. They do know some things which are not a mere part or content of their experience. And what my analysis of sensation has been designed to show is, that whenever I have a mere sensation or idea, the fact is that I am then aware of something which is equally and in the same sense not an inseparable aspect of my experience. The awareness which I have maintained to be included in sensation is the very same unique fact which constitutes every kind of knowledge: ‘blue’ is as much an object, and as little a mere content, of my experience, when I experience it, as the most exalted and independent real thing of which I am ever aware. There is, therefore, no question of how we are to ‘get outside the circle of our own ideas and sensations’. Merely to have a sensation is already to be outside that circle. It is to know something which is as truly and really not a part of my experience, as anything which I can ever know.

Now I think I am not mistaken in asserting that the reason why Idealists suppose that everything which is must be an inseparable aspect of some experience, is that they suppose some things, at least, to be inseparable aspects of their experience. And there is certainly nothing which they are so firmly convinced to be an inseparable aspect of their experience as what they call the content of their ideas and sensations. If, therefore, this turns out in every case, whether it be also the content or not, to be at least not an inseparable aspect of the experience of it, it will be readily admitted that nothing else which we experience ever is such an inseparable aspect. But if we never experience anything but what is not an inseparable aspect of that experience, how can we infer that anything whatever, let alone everything, is an inseparable aspect of any experience? How utterly unfounded is the assumption that ‘esse is percipi’ appears in the clearest light.