one's while to assert: no inferences of any importance could be drawn from such an assertion. Our principle could only mean that when a thing happens to have _percipi_ as well as the other qualities included under _esse,_ it has _percipi_: and we should never be able to _infer_ that it was experienced, except from a proposition which already asserted that it was both experienced and something else. Accordingly, if the assertion that _percipi_ forms part of the whole meant by reality is to have any importance, it must mean that the whole is organic, at least in this sense, that the other constituent or constituents of it _cannot_ occur without percipi, even if percipi can occur without them. Let us call these other constituents _x._ The proposition that _esse_ includes _percipi,_ and that therefore from _esse percipi_ can be inferred, can only be important if it is meant to assert that _percipi_ can be inferred from _x._ The only importance of the question whether the whole _esse_ includes the part _percipi_ rests therefore on the question whether the part _x_ is necessarily connected with the part _percipi._ And this is (3) the third possible meaning of the assertion _esse is percipi:_ and, as we now see, the only important one. _Esse_ is _percipi_ asserts that wherever you have _x_ you also have _percipi_ that whatever has the property _x_ also has the property that it is _experienced._ And this being so, it will be convenient if, for the future, I may be allowed to use the term '_esse_' to denote _x alone._ I do not wish thereby to beg the question whether what we commonly mean by the word 'real' does or does not include _percipi_ as well as _x._ I am quite content that my definition of 'esse' to denote _x_, should be regarded merely as an arbitrary verbal definition. Whether it is so or not, the only question of interest is whether from _x percipi_ can be inferred, and I should prefer to be able to express this in the form: can _percipi_ be inferred from _esse?_ Only let it be understood that when I say _esse,_ that term will not for the future _include percipi_: it denotes only that _x,_ which Idealists, perhaps rightly, include _along with percipi_ under _their_ term _esse._ That there is such an _x_ they must admit on pain of making the proposition an _absolute_ tautology; and that from this _x percipi_ can be inferred they must admit, on pain of making it a perfectly barren analytic proposition. Whether _x_ done should or should not be called _esse_ is not worth a dispute: what is worth dispute is whether _percipi_ is necessarily connected with _x._