We see at once that we cannot stop here. We have really got a contradiction. If the parts of our world are connected with each other, they are not merely dependent upon us, that is, upon the changes of our consciousness. And we all take them to be independent of us, in the sense that we do not suppose the presence or absence of our perception to make any difference to the world except by the continuance or cessation of our perception of it or of its parts. This is the state of mind in which we practically live, philosophers and all. I do not really take notice of any difference in mode of existence between the wall in front of me, which I see, and the wall behind me, which I {8} do not see. While you are in this lecture-hall, if you think of your rooms at home, you think of them as they look, that is, as they would look if you were there to see them. How else, indeed, could you think of them? This is practically necessary, and therefore, for practical purposes, true.
But if you take it as a theory, omitting the hypothetical factor, “if I was there to see,” you go wrong. You then treat your world as being, outside your consciousness, the same that it is inside your consciousness, without allowing for the withdrawal of your consciousness. You are then on the way to think that the world, as you see, hear, and feel it, is outside your mind, and that the sight, hearing, feeling, and the ideas born of them, are inside your mind as a sort of faint and imperfect copy of the world which you then call “external,” in the sense of outside the mind.
Common sense
i. The first position was that of common sense. The second is that of common-sense theory. Common sense is quite justified. It says, “Things affect each other, but the mere presence and absence of our perception does not affect them.” For practical purposes we must treat them as being, when unapprehended by our minds, just the same as when apprehended by our minds. This is the first idea or rather postulate—for it is not a theoretical idea—of objectivity. Objective = “independent of our consciousness for practical purposes.”
Common-sense theory
ii. In describing the second position as that of common-sense theory I do not refer to the doctrine of any regular school of philosophers. There was a Scotch school of philosophy—the school of Reid in the eighteenth century—commonly called the common-sense school. I will say {9} below how I think this school was related to the position which I am now describing. But my present purpose is to hit off the simple theory of reality which common-sense people make for themselves when they reflect. Now this theory, in which we all live except when we make a special effort, accepts the distinction between things and the mind. For example, it defines truth as the conformity of ideas to objects. That means something of this kind: the ideas are inside our heads, and the objects are outside our heads. If we are to have knowledge, the objects have to be represented inside our heads, and they get in through the senses. And then you have two similar forms of the world, one outside our heads, which is real, and another like it but less perfect and without solidity or causal power, inside our heads, which is ideal or mental. This is what I call the common-sense theory of the Objective. Like common sense, it assumes that there is a world which the withdrawal of our individual consciousness does not affect, but which persists and acts all the same. Unlike common sense, it lays down an assertion as to the nature of this world, viz. that it is, apart from our consciousness, the same as it is for our consciousness. The world in consciousness, it assumes, is subjective, the world out of consciousness is objective, and the former is an imperfect copy of the latter in a feebler material.
The schools of common-sense philosophy, such as are represented by Locke and Reid, are not quite so simple-minded as the reflection of ordinary common sense, because every systematic thinker sees at once that the question stares him in the face, “If the world outside the mind is copied {10} by the world inside the mind, how can we ever know whether the copy conforms to the original?” We are by the hypothesis inside the mind; whatever has passed through the senses is inside the mind. We cannot as at present advised get at anything outside the senses or outside the mind. In face of this question, the common-sense philosophies have two courses open. They may start from the idea of things outside the mind, but admit that in passing through the senses the things are in some partial respects transformed—as for instance, that they acquire colour, sound, and smell in passing through the senses—this is what Locke says. Or again, still starting from the idea of things outside the mind, they may simply assert that perception is of such a nature that it gives us things as they really are. The former was the view of Locke, the latter that of Reid. This latter view obviously might pass into the most extreme idealism, and its interpretation, if it does not so pass, is exceedingly difficult.
But whatever may have been the view of the historical “common-sense school,” [1] the common-sense theory which we all make for ourselves involves a separation between the mind and reality. The objective world is the world as independent of mind, and independent of mind means existing and acting outside mind, exactly, or almost exactly, as it seems to exist and act before the mind.
[1] See Seth, Scottish Philosophy (Blackwood, 1885).
Now this is an absolute cul-de-sac. If the objective is that which is outside perception, the objective is out of our reach, and the world of our perception can never be objective. This is the pass to which we are brought by taking {11} common sense as the guide of theory and not as its material.