Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/49

 beside the point of mind's relation to its objects. The objects of finite mind—mind other than finite could hardly have an object—are, according to the view to which our argument has led us, neither minds nor products of mind, nor states of mind, nor in any sense except as parts in contrast with wholes, are they secondary and less actual adjuncts or adjectives of minds. They are necessary to minds, as minds are to them, and are discriminated by a concurrent process within the same totality. They are external, and though relative to mind are not mental or psychical in se. They are parts of wholes or of a whole, which can only be ultimately self-existent through the full-grown nature of mind. But then, as the nature of mind is above all things to be a whole, when we say that objects are parts, we actually say that so far they are not mental. The more anything is a fragment or an abstraction, the less it is or belongs to a mind. This leads to a paradox which seems to me all important in dealing with mentalism. Take the case of