Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/466

 But further I think it may be seen that if the object of an Idealist’s sensation were, as he supposes, not the object but merely the content of that sensation, if, that is to say, it really were an inseparable aspect of his experience, each Idealist could never be aware either of himself or of any other real thing. For the relation of a sensation to its object is certainly the same as that of any other instance of experience to its object; and this, I think, is generally admitted even by Idealists: they state as readily that what is judged or thought or perceived is the content of that judgment or thought or perception, as that blue is the content of the sensation of blue. But, if so, then, when any Idealist thinks he is aware of himself or of any one else, this cannot really be the case. The fact is, on his own theory, that himself and that other person are in reality mere contents of an awareness, which is aware of nothing whatever. All that can be said is that there is an awareness in him, with a certain content: it can never be true that there is in him a consciousness of anything. And similarly he is never aware either of the fact that he exists or that reality is spiritual. The real fact, which he describes in those terms, is that his existence and the spirituality of reality are contents of an awareness, which is aware of nothing—certainly not, then, of its own content.

And further if everything, of which he thinks he is aware, is in reality merely a content of his own experience he has certainly no reason for holding that anything does exist except himself: it will, of course, be possible that other persons do exist; solipsism will not be necessarily true; but he cannot possibly infer from anything he holds that it is not true. That he himself exists will of course follow from his premiss that many things are contents of his experience. But since everything, of which he thinks himself aware, is in reality merely an inseparable aspect of that awareness; this premiss allows no inference that any of these contents, far less any other consciousness, exists at all except as an inseparable aspect of his awareness, that is, as part of himself.

Such, and not those which he takes to follow from it, are the consequences which do follow from the Idealist’s supposition that the object of an experience is in reality merely a content or inseparable aspect of that experience. If, on the other hand, we clearly recognise the nature of that peculiar relation which I have called ‘awareness of anything’; if we see that this is involved equally in the analysis of every experience—from the merest sensation to the most developed perception or reflexion, and that this is in fact the only