Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/239

219 THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 219 of fact that the mere existence of a thing outside the brain is not a sufficient cause for our knowing it : it must strike the brain in some way, as well as be there, to be known. But the brain being struck, the knowledge is constituted by a new construction that occurs altogether in the mind. The thing remains the same whether known or not.* And when once there, the knowledge may remain there, what- ever becomes of the thing. By the ancients, and by unreflecting people perhaps to- day, knowledge is explained as the passage of something from without into the mind — the latter, so far, at least, as its sensible affections go, being passive and receptive. But even in mere sense-impression the duplication of the object by an inner construction must take place. Consider, with Professor Bowne, what happens when two people con- verse together and know each other's mind. " No thoughts leave the mind of one and cross into the mind of the other. When we speak of an exchange of thought, even the crudest mind knows that this is a mere figure of speech. ... To perceive another's thought, we must construct his thought within ourselves; . . . this thought is our own and is strictly original with us. At the same time we owe it to the other ; and if it had not originated with him, it would probably not have originated with us. But what has the other done ? . . . This : by an entirely mysterious world-order, the speaker is enabled to produce a series of signs which are totally unlike [the] thought, but which, by virtue of the same mysterious order, act as a series of incitements upon the hearer, so that he constructs within himself the corresponcfing mental state. The act of the speaker consists in availing himself of the proper incitements. The act of the hearer is immediately only the reaction of the soul against the incitement. . . . All communion between finite minds is of this sort. . . . Probably no reflecting person would deny this conclusion, but when we say that what is thus true of perception of another's thought is equally true of the perception of the outer world in general, many minds will be disposed to question, and not a few will deny it outright. Yet there is no alternative but to affirm that to perceive the universe we must construct it in thought, and that our knowledge of the universe is but the unfolding of the mind's inner nature. ... By describing the mind as a waxen tablet, and things as impressing themselves upon it, we seem to get great insight until we think to ask where this extended tablet is, and how things stamp themselves on it, and how the percep- fact that it is known. The knowing ^er se in no wise affects the thing.
 * I disregard consequences which may later come to the thing from the