Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/15

, the latter set are to be called products of mind, or bits of mind, so ought the others to be. Then you may conclude to subjective idealism, in which all objects of mind without distinction are absorbed into mind, become either minds or bits of mind, or products or states of mind.

We are told that beneath any such view as this there is the mistake of confusing acts of mind with its objects—seeing with colour; and that may be true. All the same, such a view gives you one enormous gain for general culture and general philosophy. It puts the common qualities we love—what practically make up the world we live in—colour, sound, and the rest—on the same level of reality and claim to existence as the shape and motion of atoms or the facts of gravitation. The humanising effect of this belief, and the reality it enables you to assign to beauty, for instance, is an unspeakable gain for life and for philosophy. And, I believe, although the fallacy above-mentioned is operative—yet I believe there is a sound