Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/33

 facts are not described by saying that we start with a pair of objects facing each other, of which one may be a body having a mind. The relation is not that of a mind on one side and a tree on the other. If there is a mind on one side there is at least a complex of objects on the other.

But for my own experience even this does not seem true. "On one side," and "on another side" are incorrect expressions. Speaking of fact as I find it, I should compare my consciousness to an atmosphere, not to a thing at all. Its nature is to include. The nature of its objects is to be included. When I came into this hall, out of the smaller room in which we met, the circumference of my mind seemed to expand. The limits of my consciousness became, at any rate, not narrower than the walls of this chamber. From the beginning, then, the analogy of two objects confronting one another seems to me inapplicable. I never seem to think in the form, "my mind is here, and the tree is there." Mind takes itself ab initio as a