Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/53

 physical objects, and therefore is physical; then you must subjoin, and our physical realist does most fully and carefully subjoin, that it is physical objects so far only as my organism can receive them, so far as my memory and mental system can revive and interpret them, so far as my personal incapacity does not take them at cross purposes and mix one with another. If you prefer to say, knowledge is the system of reality as reconstructed and stored up within my mind, and is part of my mind, and is a mental system; then you must say in addition that the name of knowledge belongs to this mental system so far only as it presents to us the world and its components as they completely and necessarily are. In either case it is impossible to omit the "so far only," and if you retain it you are not a single hair's breadth nearer to reality in the former statement than the latter, nor to mentalism in the latter than in the former. What special use or gain is there in saying that knowledge is physical, when you have to subjoin an elaborate