Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/558

542 would appear at the assertion: 'He, my guide or teacher or comrade, sees the same object that I see.' And so his 'permanent possibility' is regarded as numerically identical with mine. Doubtless, for a time, every child virtually thinks this to be true. But social communication involves sooner or later differences of opinion, conflict of testimony and frequent evidences of a variety in the experience of different people. At last it comes slowly to one's mind that the experiences of another consciousness, external to mine, cannot themselves be identical with the objects of my experience as mine. The individuals of the social world come to be sharply separated. And thus, too, not only does my neighbor's private inner world come to be regarded as beyond mine, but his objects come to be regarded as primarily and numerically not identical with my direct objects. What he sees is now regarded as the object for his eye, what I see is regarded as the object of my perception. What I can imitate, when I appeal to him as to the truth about my experience, is, then, directly speaking, only my perceived object, not his. And he imitates his object, which is now regarded as primarily not mine.

Thus it is that our theory of knowledge begins to become dualistic, or, in another terminology, it becomes a 'representative theory of knowledge.' For how can we still hold that we are imitating in common the same truths? Only, I answer, on this level of consciousness, by forming an essentially representative theory of knowledge. We now come, namely, to establish the idea of a tertium quid, the external object as it is for itself. This is now neither my object as mine, i.e., as directly present in my experience, nor my fellow's object as his, but our object, in so far as we both seek to imitate its structure just as we try to imitate each other's thoughts; but external to both of us, just as we are external to each other. Our faith now is that we are able to imitate the structure of this external object. Our only concrete warrant for our faith is in any special case the success of our efforts to give common accounts of its appearance to each of us. If the object itself responded to our efforts to imitate its structure