Are things, then, apprehended as objective in virtue of the agent's attitude toward them, or is the agent's attitude in a typical case grounded upon an antecedent determination of the objectivity of the things in question? We must answer, in the first place, that there can be no such antecedent determination. We may, it is true, speak of believing, on the evidence of sight or touch, that a certain object is really present before us. But neither sight nor touch possesses in itself, as a particular sense-quality, any objective meaning. If touch is _par excellence_ the sense of the objective and the appeal to touch the test of objectivity, this can only be because touch is the sense most closely and intimately connected in our experience with action. After any interval of hesitation and judgment, action begins with contact with and manipulation of the physical means which have been under investigation. Not only is touch the proximate stimulus and guide to manipulation, but all relevant knowledge which has been gained in any judgment-process, through the other senses, and especially through sight, must ultimately be reducible to terms of touch or other contact sense. The alleged tactual evidence of objectivity is, then, rather a confirmation than a difficulty for our present view. In short, we must dismiss as impossible the hypothesis that there can be a consciousness of objectivity which is not dependent upon and an expression of primary antecedent tendencies toward motor response to the presented stimulus. It is our attitude toward the prospective stimulus that mediates the consciousness of an object standing over against us. So far, indeed, is it from being true that objectivity is a matter for special determination antecedently to action that by common testimony the conviction of objectivity comes to us quite irresistibly. The object forces itself upon us, as we say, and "whether we will or no" we must recognize its presence there before us and its independence of any choice of ours or of our knowledge. In the cautious manipulation of an instrument, in the laborious shaping of some refractory material, in the performance of any delicate or difficult task, one's sense of the objectivity of the thing with which one works is as obtrusive as remorse or grief, and as little to be shaken off. We shall revert to this suggested analogy at a later stage in our discussion.