Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/290

Rh could exist and constantly does exist amongst ideas, or purely universal objects, wherein there is no trace of individuality. So far, then, the field of vision is not defined as presenting to us individuation.

But one may insist that by this object or things seen before me, I do not mean merely the mass of colour, but the object with which, by experience, touch and muscular sensations have been combined. The “real thing” is a blending of colour experiences with touch and muscle-sensations, which have all come to be localised in what we call objective space. And by the impenetrability of the thing we mean a collection of experienced facts in which touch and muscular sensation play more part, or certainly not less, than visual experience. The whole impenetrable thing, which excludes others from its place, is thus the presented individual of daily experience. In reply to this argument, I admit, at once, that I doubt not the individuality of the thing of ordinary experience, as maturely conceived by us. What I deny is, that its individuality can ever be defined in terms merely of its spatial characters and of its physical exclusion of other things. The individual object of ordinary experience seems individual to us by virtue of the fact that “I,” who behold it, am for myself, in mature life, already an individual, and that this, which occupies this definite relation to me, is therefore individuated by this relation. But how I came to be regarded as an individual is a question not to be decided in terms of sense-presentation. Moreover, the individual of ordinary experience is still further individuated by the fact that it occupies