above distinction between the impression and the act of cognition, it has been admitted that the entire sensation, taken en bloc, is a psychological phenomenon, a modification of our consciousness and a peculiar state of our minds. Descartes has even employed this very explicit formula: “The objects we perceive are within our understanding.” It is curious to see how little trouble authors take to demonstrate this opinion; they declare it to be self-evident, which is a convenient way of avoiding all proof. John Stuart Mill has no hesitation in affirming that: “The mind, in perceiving external objects, can only take notice of its own conditions.” And Renouvier expresses the same arbitrary assertion with greater obscurity when he writes: “The monad is constituted by this relation: the connection of the subject with the object within the subject.”[1] In other words, it is laid down as an uncontrovertible principle that “the mental can only enter into direct relations with the mental.” That is what may be called “the principle of Idealism.”
This principle seems to me very disputable, and it is to me an astonishing thing that the most resolute of sceptics—Hume, for example—should have accepted it without hesitation. I shall first enunciate my personal opinion, then make known
- ↑ Ch. Renouvier et Louis Prat, La Nouvelle Monadologie, p. 148.
