222 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



view seems to be that there is some mental existent 

 which may be called the "idea " of something outside 

 the mind of the person who has the idea, and that, since 

 judgment is a mental event, its constituents must be 

 constituents of the mind of the person judging. But in 

 this view ideas become a veil between us and outside 

 things ^we never really, in knowledge, attain to the 

 things we are supposed to be knowing about, but only to 

 the ideas of those things. The relation of mind, idea, and 

 object, on this view, is utterly obscure, and, so far as I 

 can see, nothing discoverable by inspection warrants the 

 intrusion of the idea between the mind and the object. 

 I suspect that the view is fostered by the dislike of 

 relations, and that it is felt the mind could not know 

 objects unless there were something " in " the mind 

 which could be called the state of knowing the object. 

 Such a view, however, leads at once to a vicious endless 

 regress, since the relation of idea to object will have to be 

 explained by supposing that the idea itself has an idea of 

 the object, and so on ad infinitum. I therefore see no 

 reason to believe that, when we are acquainted with an 

 object, there is in us something which can be called the 

 "idea" of the object. On the contrary, I hold that 

 acquaintance is wholly a relation, not demanding any 

 such constituent of the mind as is supposed by advocates 

 of " ideas." This is, of course, a large question, and one 

 whicli would take us far from our subject if it were 

 adequately discussed. I therefore content myself with 

 the above indications, and with the corollary that, in 

 judging, the actual objects concerning which we judge, 

 rather than any supposed purely mental entities, are 

 constituents of the complex which is the judgment. 



When, therefore, I say that we must substitute for 

 " Julius Caesar " some description of Julius Caesar, in order 



