I have used the rather awkward expression "There is in my mind a direct apprehension of this black mark," because I want to insist that though, when I see the mark, the mark certainly has to _something_ the fundamental relation which I wish to express by saying that it is directly apprehended, and though the event which consists in its being directly apprehended by that something is certainly a mental act of _mine_ or which occurs in my mind, yet the something which directly apprehends it may quite possibly not be anything which deserves to be called "I" or "me." It is quite possible, I think, that there is _no_ entity whatever which deserves to be called "I" or "me" or "my mind"; and hence that nothing whatever is ever directly apprehended by _me._ Whether this is so or not, depends on the nature of that relation which certainly does hold between all those mental acts which are _mine_, and does not hold between any of mine and any of yours; and which holds again between all those mental acts which are yours, but does not hold between any of yours and any of mine. And I do not feel at all sure what the correct analysis of this relation is. It may be the case that the relation which unites all those acts of direct apprehension which are mine, and which is what we mean to say that they have to one another when we say they are all mine, really does consist in the fact that one and the same entity is _what_ directly apprehends in each of them: in which case this entity could properly be called "me," and it _would_ be true to say that, when I see this black mark, _I_ directly apprehend it. But it is also quite possible (and this seems to me to be the view which is commonest amongst psychologists) that the entity which directly apprehends, in those acts of direct apprehension which are mine, is numerically different in every different act; and that what I mean by calling all these different acts _mine_ is either merely that they have some kind of relation to _one another_ or that they all have a common relation to some other entity, external to them, which may or may not be something which deserves to be called "me." On any such view, what I assert to be true of this black mark, when I say that it is seen by me, would not be simply that it is directly apprehended by me, but something more complex in which, besides direct apprehension, some other quite different relation was also involved. I should be asserting _both_ (1) that the black mark is being directly apprehended by _something_, _and_ (2) that this act of direct apprehension has to something else, external to it, a quite different relation, which is what makes it an act of _mine._ I do not know how to decide between these views, and that is why I wished to explain that the fundamental relation which I wish to call direct apprehension, is one which quite possibly never holds between _me_ and any sensible. But, once this has been explained, I think no harm can result from