Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/424

410 what is it to mean an outer fact? What but to think of it? And to think of it, again, is at best to have an idea that resembles it. Turn which way we will, we are met by the same difficulty.

The gulf opens not only between my personal consciousness and the things beyond it, but between my present and my past. I know nothing but what is before me, and only the present moment is before me. My former states are as truly external to my present self as are the minds of others. I am shut in to the four walls of my momentary consciousness.

The problem here broached is not, of course, that which is at issue between Realism and Idealism. Realists affirm that the physical world is in its essential qualities external to our minds, and of a substance not mental. The various opinions of Idealists agree in the tenet that all existence is mental. The difficulty upon which we are engaged would appear to apply as much to one party as the other, since the Idealist regards his neighbor's mind and his own past as in a true sense outside of his own present mind.

There are metaphysicians who will seek to cut the ground from under this reasoning by challenging its terms. You tell us, they will say, that the only thing present to the mind in thinking of outer facts is its ideas; and by this we take you to mean that we apprehend in such thought only our ideas. This we deny. What we apprehend is the outer facts, and we apprehend them through our ideas. An idea. presents an object. It is a fundamental property of our ideas to report something not themselves, to tell us of something external to our consciousness. This self-transcendent power of certain mental states is among the ultimate data with which philosophy has to start. So far, then, from apprehending only my ideas, I apprehend only a world of objects; the ideas are the apprehension. Do you ask, What can we be conscious of but consciousness? As well say, What can we see but our eyes? Or, What can we eat but our mouths?

Nevertheless I am persuaded, after much observation and thought, that my own ideas have no such special license to