John attributes to his ideal Thomas. Does that make John’s notion an error? No, for he spoke and could speak only of his ideal Thomas. The real Thomas was the other room, that he knew not of, the other side of the shield, that he never could conceive. His Thomas was his phantom Thomas. This phantom it is that he judges and thinks about, and his thoughts may have their own consistency or inconsistency. But with the real other person they have nothing to do. The real other is not his object, and how can he err about what is not object for him?
Absurd, indeed, some one will reply to us. John and Thomas have to deal with representative phantoms of each other, to be sure; but that only makes each more apt to err about the real other. And the test that they can err is a very simple one. Suppose a spectator, a third person, to whom John and Thomas were both somehow directly present, so that he as it were included both of them. Then John’s judgment of his phantom Thomas would be by this spectator at once compared with the real Thomas, and even so would Thomas’s judgment of John be treated. If now John’s phantom Thomas agreed with the real Thomas, then John’s ideas would be declared in so far truthful; otherwise they would be erroneous. And this explains what is meant by John’s power to err about Thomas.
The explanation is fair enough for its own purpose, and we shall need it again before long. But just now we cannot be content with it. For what we want to know is not what the judgment of a
