violate the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and I am tolerably well satisfied that others are in the same case. To my wit the notion of an idea 'reporting' what is outside of itself is a piece of incoherency. An idea is the name we give to a certain mental appearance. It is, as one may say, an image or picture[1] before the mind. Its being is its being felt, and it is just so far as it is felt. Its whole being, nature, and function are wrapped up and circumscribed in its existence as an idea. If it alters, it is a different idea – yet people talk as though it were a personal agent, as though, preserving its identity as the same idea, it could perform a variety of functions, and engage in almost any respectable occupation. How should an idea set about this delicate task of getting out of itself, and telling us, like Mr. Stevenson's fair Cuban, 'I am not what I seem'? Is it to present a picture to the mind and say, (for surely it can talk) 'This is an object outside of consciousness.' But that would be an unholy falsehood – That object is inside consciousness. Is it to stretch out a long arm, grasp an external thing, and drag it within consciousness? But the external thing could only cross the portals by becoming an idea. It is clear, then, that mental states can never, as theorists have fancied, 'report' or 'tell us of' anything beyond themselves. Such attempts to escape from the grinding tyranny of the Law of Identity to the free country of self-contradiction are human, but they are not heroic. We can understand, but we cannot abet.
The problem is now sufficiently before us. We must try to compass its solution. What we need is no metaphysical hypothesis, but an analysis of the states of mind that we call knowledge, of the means by which we distinguish knowledge from error, and of the notions attached to the word knowledge, as it is commonly employed.
- ↑ These terms are convenient ones for the purposes of this discussion. It is hardly necessary to caution the reader that they have no exclusive reference to visual ideas. I shall use them of mental appearances in general.
