Page:Mind and the Brain (1907).djvu/207

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them. We have already discussed this proposition, and have shown that it contains nothing imperative; and we may very well decline to subscribe to it.

2. There follows a second proposition, barely distinct from the previous one. There should be nothing else in objects but that which we perceive, and that of which we have consciousness should be, in the fullest possible acceptation of the words, the measure of what is. Consequently there should be no need to seek, under the object perceived, another and larger reality, a source from which might flow wider knowledge than that we at present possess. This is as disputable as the preceding affirmation, and for the same reasons.

3. The third proposition is the heart of the idealist thesis. It is sometimes presented as a deduction from the foregoing, but it is nevertheless thoroughly distinct from it, and the preceding affirmations might legitimately be accepted and this new one rejected. This proposition may be expressed thus: Everything that is perceived is psychical.

It is not only idealists who subscribe to this opinion, however, and we have seen, when dealing with the definition of matter, that it is widely spread. We understand by it that the objects we perceive exist in the consciousness, are of the