Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/23

 realise what it is like if you are stopped short of the object. Breaking off in a sentence gives a good case of this feeling.

Knowledge, then, and thought, so far as it is what we think of, are non-mental, or physical. They are simply the existent things, or parts of them, so far as we apprehend them; never, of course, completely apprehended, but so far as our powers go, apprehended as they really are. Colour, sound, taste are not mental facts. They are physical realities to each of which there is a corresponding mental act, to see, to hear, and so forth. But act and object, even act and the nearer object which some would call content, are not to be identified. Your mind does not in any way make nature. It does not make the object of sense or perception, or construct the object of thought. You are here; the object is there. It stirs your mind in a certain way; and your mind reacts and apprehends, and finds the object as it is, according to the degree in which your powers of apprehension are developed. If you are