taken as both positive and negative. They are to possess a singular reality, and they are to own in some sense an exclusive character. And from this shifting basis a rash conclusion is hastily drawn. But the singular reality, after all, may not be single and self-existent. And the exclusive character, perhaps, may be included and taken up in the Whole. And it is these questions which we must endeavour to clear up and discuss. I will begin with what we have called the positive aspect.
The “this” and the “mine” express the immediate character of feeling, and the appearance of this character in a finite centre. Feeling may stand for a psychical stage before relations have been developed, or it may be used generally for an experience which is not indirect (Chapters ix., xxvi., and xxvii.). At any time all that we suffer, do, and are, forms one psychical totality. It is experienced all together as a co-existing mass, not perceived as parted and joined by relations even of co-existence. It contains all relations, and distinctions, and every ideal object that at the moment exists in the soul. It contains them, not specially as such and with exclusive stress on their content as predicated, but directly as they are and as they qualify the psychical “that.” And again any part of this co-existence, to which we attend, can be viewed integrally as one feeling.
Now whatever is thus directly experienced—so far as it is not taken otherwise—is “this” and “mine.” And all such presentation without doubt has peculiar reality. One might even contend that logically to transcend it is impossible, and that there is no rational way to a plurality of “this-mines.” But such a plurality we have agreed for the present to assume. The “this,” it is however clear, brings a sense of superior reality, a sense which is far from being wholly deceptive and untrue. For all our knowledge, in the first place, arises from the “this.”
