He is not required to admit it. He is required to admit that our perceptions are not the only things of which we are conscious; or, to put it in other words, that our states of consciousness are not the only things of which we are conscious. And he is required to admit it simply and solely on the ground that it is a fact of common observation and everyday experience. Thus, for instance, we perform actions, and (usually) we are conscious of performing them. But the action is something more and other than our consciousness of it. Or is someone going to maintain that doing and knowing are the same thing? Is anyone prepared to push the illusion-argument so far as to say that the idea that we do things is a mere delusion? If it is not a delusion, if it is, on the contrary, a fact, then our actions are not states of consciousness, but things of which we are conscious. We apprehend them, in the very act of apprehension, as realities distinct from the consciousness which we have of them. And we have the very same guarantee for their reality as we have for the reality of our perception or sensations of them, viz. the fact that we are conscious of them. In the same way, when we push a solid object or feel the impact of a moving body, we are as conscious of that body as of our muscular sensations: our sensations make up our perception of the object, but are not the object. They constitute the state of consciousness, but that state is not the only thing we are conscious of. The object is apprehended as being in consciousness and not as merely being our consciousness of it. Mr. Herbert Spencer, at least, is quite clear that our states of consciousness are not the only things of which we are conscious; he holds even that we are vaguely conscious of that which transcends our consciousness. Thus, our personality is not a state of consciousness, yet we are conscious of it, and "its existence is to each a fact above all others the most certain."[6] And, as for the real, "our firm belief in objective reality, a belief which metaphysical criticism cannot shake," is not merely "a positive though vague consciousness of that which transcends consciousness," but "has the highest validity of any"[7] of our beliefs.