13
belonging with opposite contexts.  In one of
these contexts it is your 'field of consciousness';
in another it is 'the room in which you
sit,' and it enters both contexts in its wholeness,
giving no pretext for being said to attach
itself to consciousness by one of its parts or
aspects, and to out reality by another.  What
are the two processes, now, into which the
room-experience simultaneously enters in this
way?

     One of them is the reader's personal biography,
the other is the history of the house of
which the room is part.  The presentation, the
experience, the _that_ in short (for until we have
decided _what_ it is it must be a mere _that_) is the
last term in a train of sensations, emotions,
decisions, movements, classifications, expectations,
etc., ending in the present, and the first
term in a series of 'inner' operations
extending into the future, on the reader's
part.  On the other hand, the very same _that_
is the _terminus_ad_quem_ of a lot of previous

14
physical operations, carpentering, papering,
furnishing, warming, etc., and the _terminus_a_
_quo_ of a lot of future ones, in which it will be
concerned when undergoing the destiny of a
physical room.  The physical and the mental
operations form curiously incompatible groups.
As a room, the experience has occupied that
spot and had that environment for thirty
years.  As your field of consciousness it may
never have existed until now.  As a room, attention
will go on to discover endless new details
in it.  As your mental state merely, few
new ones will emerge under attention's eye.
AS a room, it will taken an earthquake, or a
gang of men, and in any case a certain amount
of time, to destroy it.  As your subjective
state, the closing of your eyes, or any instantaneous
play of your fancy will suffice.  IN the
real world, fire will consume it.  IN your mind,
you can let fire play over it without effect.  As
an outer object, you must pay so much a
month to inhabit it.  As an inner content, you
may occupy it for any length of time rent-free.
If, in short, you follow it in the mental direction,

15
taking it along with events of personal
biography solely, all sorts of things are true
of it which are false, and false of it which are
true if you treat it as a real thing experienced,
follow it in the physical direction, and relate it
to associates in the outer world.

                             III

     So far, all seems plain sailing, but my thesis
will probably grow less plausible to the reader
when I pass form percepts to concepts, or from
the case of things presented to that of things
remote.  I believe, nevertheless, that here also
the same law holds good.  If we take conceptual
manifolds, or memories, or fancies, they
also are in their first intention mere bits
of pure experience, and, as such, are single _thats_
which act in one context as objects, and in another
context figure as mental states.  By taking
them in their first intention, I mean ignoring
their relation to possible perceptual experiences
with which they may be connected,
which they may lead to and terminate in, and
which then they may be supposed to 'represent.'

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Taking them in this way first, we confine
the problem to a world merely 'thought-
of' and not directly felt or seen.  This world,
just like the world of percepts, comes to us at
first as a chaos of experiences, but lines of order
soon get traced.  We find that any bit of it
which we may cut out as an example is connected
with distinct groups of associates, just
as our perceptual experiences are, that these
associates link themselves with it by different
relations,(2) and that one forms the inner history
of a person, while the other acts as an impersonal
'objective' world, either spatial and temporal,
or else merely logical or mathematical,
or otherwise 'ideal.'

     The first obstacle on the part of the reader to
seeing that these non-perceptual experiences

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