Page:Mind and the Brain (1907).djvu/28

 organs, and travel afar in pursuit of objects in order to know or to modify them.

Before going further, we must make our terminology more precise. We have just seen the necessity of drawing a distinction between the sensations of which we are conscious and the unknown cause which produces these sensations by acting on our nervous systems. This exciting cause I have several times termed, in order to be understood, the external object. But under the name of external object are currently designated groups of sensations, such as those which make up for us a chair, a tree, an animal, or any kind of body. I see a dog pass in the street. I call this dog an external object; but, as this dog is formed, for me who am looking at it, of my sensations, and as these sensations are states of my nervous centres, it happens that the term external object has two meanings. Sometimes it designates our sensations; at another, the exciting cause of our sensations. To avoid all confusion we will call this exciting cause, which is unknown to us, the $$X$$ of matter.

It is, however, not entirely unknown, for we at least know two facts with regard to it. We know, first, that this $$X$$ exists, and in the second place, that its image must not be sought in the sensations it excites in us. How can we doubt, we say,