Hence I said that it is not only more satisfactory and convenient, but more correct, to speak directly of the object as constructed, and not our idea of the object. The mental product _is_ the object for us, not only for me, but for you and all normal human beings, since the object is the same for all of us. And hence, also, I said that the analogy of gateways, through which pictures of objects gain access to the mind, was false and misleading, and that a truer analogy is that something stands without and knocks at the doorway of sense, and that from the nature of the knocks we learn somewhat concerning that which knocks. The person inside can never open the door to see what manner of thing it is which knocks. But he can build up a most cunning symbolism of knocks which shall suffice for all practical purposes. In other words, the object-world, symbolic though it is, which you and I and the rest of us construct at the bidding of something without us (the existence of which I assume), is amply sufficient for all our practical needs, and constitutes the only practical reality for human-folk. I am well aware that there are many people who cannot bring themselves to believe in, or even to listen without impatience to, the view that the world we see around us is a world of phenomena. It is absurd, they say, to tell us that yonder tulip, as an object, is in any sense dependent on our perception of it. There it is, and there it would have been had man never been created. Can one conceive that the new species of fossil, which was only yesterday disentombed from the strata in which it has lain buried for long ages, is dependent on man's observation for its qualities as an object? To say that it was "constructed" by the lucky geologist who was fortunate enough first to set eyes on it is sheer nonsense. Its shelly substance protected a bivalve mollusc millions of years before man appeared upon the earth. When we see the orange in the fruiterer's shop, the sight of it merely reminds us of its other qualities--its taste, its smell, its weight, and the rest, which are essentially its own, and no endowments of ours--nowise bestowed upon it by us. I have no hope of convincing, and not much desire to convince, one who thus objects. I would merely ask him how and when he stepped outside his own consciousness to ascertain that these things are so. Does he believe that consciousness is an accompaniment of certain nervous processes in the grey cortex of the brain? If so, let him tell us how these conscious accompaniments resemble (not merely symbolize, but _resemble_) tulips and oranges and fossil molluscs. If not, let him propound his new theory of consciousness.