THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 289 



thing of whicli we think. Any object which remains uncon- 

 tradicted is ipso facto believed and posited as absolute reality. 



Now, how comes it that one thing though*-, of can be con- 

 tradicted by another ? It cannot unless it begins the quar- 

 rel by saying something inadmissible about that other. 

 Take the mind with the candle, or the boy with the horse. 

 If either of them say, ' That candle or that horse, even when 

 I don't see it, exists in the older ivorld,' he pushes into ' the 

 outer world ' an object which may be incompatible with 

 everything which he otherwise knows of that world. If so, 

 he must take his choice of which to hold by, the present 

 perceptions or the other knowledge of the world. If he 

 holds to the other knowledge, the present perceptions are 

 contradicted, so far as their relation to that ivorld goes. Can- 

 dle and horse, whatever they may be, are not existents in 

 outward space. They are existents, of course ; they are 

 mental objects ; mental objects have existence as mental 

 objects. But they are situated in their own spaces, the 

 space in which they severally appear, and neither of those 

 spaces is the space in whicli the realities called ' the outer 

 world ' exist. 



Take again the horse with wings. If I merely dream of 

 a horse with wings, my horse interferes with nothing else 

 and has not to be contradicted. That horse, its wings, and 

 its place, are all equally real. That horse exists no other- 

 wise than as winged, and is moreover really there, for that 

 place exists no otherwise than as the place of that horse, 

 and claims as yet no connection with the other places of 

 the world. But if with this horse I make an inroad into 

 the ivorld otherivise knoivn, and say, for example, ' That is 

 my old mare Maggie, having grown a pair of wings where 

 she stands in her stall,' the whole case is altered ; for now 

 the horse and place are identified with a horse and place 

 otherwise known, and what is known of the latter objects is 

 incompatible with what is perceived with the former. 

 ' Maggie in her stall with wings ! Never ! ' The wings are 

 unreal, then, visionary. I have dreamed a lie about Mag- 

 gie in her stall. 



The reader will recognize in these two cases the two 

 sorts of judgment called in the logic-books existential and 



