Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/80

 66 GEOEQE GALLOWAY: would the same individual refuse to term outward his experi- ence when, leaning back on his chair and closing his eyes, he thought out carefully the merits of several possible lines of action in order to select the best. And between the one experience and the other there would appear to him to be a qualitative difference. If every inner experience is outer as well, why do we habitually distinguish what we call subjective mental processes from the perception of outward objects, and contrast the one with the other? No doubt each outer experience has an inward side, and in virtue of this we sometimes wrongly interpret an inner state to signify facts in the external world. But we never mistake our perception of objects in space for a purely inward mental process. We find therefore a difficulty in accepting the view that the contrast of inner and outer experience rests entirely on a difference of degree in the development of consciousness. From this standpoint distinctions which are universally noted and acted upon are not adequately explained. Against this it may be urged that inner and outer experi- ence cannot be two diverse kinds of experience, for both are experiences of the one subject and are distinctions within the one consciousness. We have already admitted this. For the purely perceptual consciousness experience would be one, and the generalised distinction of outward and in- ward we know is made possible by conceptual thinking. But on the level of mediate thought, or rational inference, a new question presses itself upon us. We ask, Does the ultimate raison d'etre of the distinction lie in the conscious selves who make it? Or is the inference reasonable that the experience which we name external gets its character from the implication of realities, which are not those of self-conscious subjects? In other words, Is outer experience the interpretation by self-conscious subjects of the action of reals which thought itself does not create? This we believe to be the true solution of the problem, and the explanation of the refusal of outer experience to be taken up into and merged in inner experience. But before going further let us deal with an objection which is certain to be raised. The assumption that a trans- subjective real is implied in presented objects will be termed gratuitous. The apparent independence of the object, it will be contended, is entirely the outcome of conceptual thought. For the application of the concept generalises the particular experience of perception, and treats it as an instance of a general relation: and this just means that "we are conscious