third thinker would be in case these two were somehow not independent beings at all, but things in this third being’s thought. For we have started out with the supposition of common sense that John and Thomas are not dreams or thoughts of some higher third being, but that they are independent beings by themselves. Our supposition may have to be given up hereafter, but for the present we want to hold fast to it. And so John’s judgment, which we had supposed to be about the independently existing Thomas, has now turned out to be only a judgment about John’s idea of Thomas. But judgments are false only in case they disagree with their intended objects. What, however, is the object of John’s judgment when he thinks about Thomas? Not the real Thomas, who could not possibly be an object in another man’s thoughts. John’s real object being an ideal Thomas, he cannot, if sincere, and if fully conscious of what he means by Thomas, fail to agree in his statements with his own ideal. In short, on this our original supposition, John and Thomas are independent entities, each of which cannot possibly enter in real person into the thoughts of the other. Each may be somehow represented in the other’s thoughts by a phantom, and only this phantom can be intended by the other when he judges about the first. For unless one talks nonsense, it should seem as if one could mean only what one has in mind.
Thus, like the characters in a certain Bab ballad, real John, real Thomas, the people in this simple tale, are total strangers to each other. You might
