It would appear, therefore, that we cannot reach a true conception of what we are to regard as _really one_, or _really manifold_, by abstract thought alone. It is external and internal sense experience, not abstract thought, which first brings us into direct and immediate mental contact with _actually existing_ reality. What we have therefore to determine is this: Does sense experience, or does it not, reveal reality to us as a _real manifold_, not as _one being_ but as _beings_ coexisting outside one another in space, succeeding one another in time, interdependent on one another, interacting on one another, and by this interaction causing and undergoing real change, each producing others, or being produced by others, really distinct from itself? In other words, is separateness of existence in time or space, as revealed in sense experience, a sufficient index of the real manifoldness of corporeal being, and of the really distinct individuality of each such being?—or are we to take it that because those space and time distinctions have to be apprehended by thought in order that not merely sense but intellect may apprehend corporeal beings as really manifold, therefore these distinctions are not _in the reality_ given to us? Or, again, is each person’s own conscious experience of himself as one being, of his own unity, and of his distinctness from other persons, a sufficient index that the distinction between person and person is a real distinction?—or are we to take it that because his _feeling_ of his individual unity through sense consciousness must be interpreted by the _thought-concepts_ of “one”—“individual”—“person”—“distinct” from “others,” these concepts do not truly express what is really given him to interpret? Finally, if we can infer from the actually existing material reality which forms the immediate datum of direct experience, or from the human _Ego_ as given in this experience, the actual existence of a real mode of being which is not material but spiritual, by what tests can we determine whether this spiritual mode of being is really one, or whether there is a real plurality of such beings? The solution of these questions bears directly on the validity of the adequate or “greater” real distinction, the “_distinctio realis major seu absoluta_”.