THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 217 



might learn the complexion of its thoughts ; but, as we 

 should have no realities outside of it to compare them with, 

 • — for if we had, the Mind would not be Absolute, — we could 

 not criticise them, and find them either right or wrong ; and 

 we should have to call them simply the thoughts, and not 

 the knowledge, of the Absolute Mind. Finite minds, how- 

 ever, can be judged in a different way, because the psychol- 

 ogist himself can go bail for the independent reality of the 

 objects of which they think. He knows these to exist out- 

 side as well as inside the minds in question ; he thus knows 

 whether the minds think and knoiv, or only think ; and 

 though his knowledge is of course that of a fallible mortal, 

 there is nothing in the conditions that should make it more 

 likely to be wrong in this case than in any other. 



Now by what tests does the psychologist decide whether 

 the state of mind he is studying is a bit of knowledge, or 

 only a subjective fact not referring to anything outside 

 itself? 



He uses the tests we all practically use. If the state of 

 mind resembles his own idea of a certain reality ; or if without 

 resembling his idea of it, it seems to imply that reality and 

 refer to it by operating upon it through the bodily organs ; 

 or even if it resembles and ojjerates on some other reality 

 that implies, and leads up to, and terminates in, the first 

 one, — in either or all of these cases the psychologist admits 

 that the state of mind takes cognizance, directly or remotely, 

 distinctly or vaguely, truly or falsely, of the reality's nature 

 and position in the world. If, on the other hand, the 

 mental state under examination neither resembles nor oper- 

 ates on any of the realities known to the psychologist, he calls 

 it a subjective state pure and simple, possessed of no cog- 

 nitive worth. If, again, it resemble a reality or a set of 

 realities as he knows them, but altogether fail to operate 

 on them or modify their course by producing bodily motions 

 which the psychologist sees, then the psychologist, like all 

 of us, may be in doubt. Let the mental state, for example, 

 occur during the sleep of its subject. Let the latter dream 

 of the death of a certain man, and let the man simulta- 

 neously die. Is the dream a mere coincidence, or a veri- 

 table cognition of the death ? Such puzzling cases are 



