But though Mr. Spencer admits, or rather insists, that we know _that_ the Real is, he denies that we know _what_ it is. In other words, he accepts the validity of one half of every act of experience and denies the validity of the other half. Our analysis of experience has shown us that we apprehend the real, in the very act of apprehension, as being both a state of our consciousness and something more than that state. To say that one half of the apprehension is a misapprehension is to say that both are invalid. If what is present in consciousness is merely appearance and not the real thing, then our states are the only things of which we are conscious, and the existence of anything more is not a fact of experience and observation--still less can it have the highest validity of any of our beliefs. We may be asked, "Granted that the Real is more than a state of our consciousness, what more is it?" and, if no answer is forthcoming, we may be told that after all then, it seems, we know _that_ the Real is, but not _what_ it is. The reply is: So far as the Real is out of consciousness we may not know what it is; as far as it is in, we do. By "being conscious of a thing" we mean knowing what the thing is--not necessarily complete knowledge, but some. If it be said that, on our own showing, a thing and the knowledge of it are different, and that consequently however great our knowledge may become there always remains, and must always remain, something which we cannot know, because it is _ex hypothesi_, not knowledge, we must reply that this objection is but a restatement of the inveterate fallacy of idealism--the fallacy that states of consciousness are the only things we can be conscious of; that if we know a thing the thing ceases to be anything but our knowledge of it; that to be conscious of performing an action is proof that no action is really performed, and that the only doing is knowing. We act, and we know that we act. Reality must be accorded to both or denied to both; it cannot be accorded to one and denied to the other. Indeed, knowledge itself is action, a series of actions. But it is also something more, just as an action of which we are conscious is something more than our consciousness of it. But we are conscious not only of our own actions, but of the reactions of things on us, and of the interactions of things on one another. We apprehend all three--action, reaction, and interaction--as real; we know not only _that_ they are, as being realities, but also _what_ they are as states of consciousness. As states of consciousness they are successive sensations or perceptions; as more than states of consciousness they are power or force.