From this point of view matter is supposed to be the one reality with which we are in immediate contact, which we see and touch and taste and handle every hour of our lives. It may, therefore, sound a rather startling paradox to say that matter--matter in the sense of the Materialist--is something which nobody has ever seen, touched, or handled. Yet that is the literal and undeniable fact. Nobody has ever seen or touched or otherwise come in contact with a piece of matter. For in the experience which the plain man calls seeing or touching there is always present another thing. Even if we suppose that he is Justified in saying 'I touch matter,' there is always present the 'I' as well as the matter.[2] It is always and inevitably matter + mind that he knows. Nobody ever can get away from this 'I,' nobody can ever see or feel what matter is like apart from the 'I' which knows {8} it. He may, indeed, infer that this matter exists apart from the 'I' which knows it. He may infer that it exists, and may even go as far as to assume that, apart from his seeing or touching, or anybody else's seeing or touching, matter possesses all those qualities which it possesses for his own consciousness. But this is inference, and not immediate knowledge. And the validity or reasonableness of the inference may be disputed. How far it is reasonable or legitimate to attribute to matter as it is in itself the qualities which it has for us must depend upon the nature of those qualities. Let us then go on to ask whether the qualities which constitute matter as we know it are qualities which we can reasonably or even intelligibly attribute to a supposed matter-in-itself, to matter considered as something capable of existing by itself altogether apart from any kind of conscious experience.