Where, however, the actions of one mind seem to take no effect in the
world of the other, the case is different. This is what happens in
poetry and fiction. Every one knows Ivanhoe, for example; but so long as
we stick to the story pure and simple without regard to the facts of its
production, few would hesitate to admit that there are as many different
Ivanhoes as there are different minds cognizant of the story. [Footnote:
That is, there is no REAL 'Ivanhoe,' not even the one in Sir Walter
Scott's mind as he was writing the story. That one is only the FIRST
one of the Ivanhoe-solipsisms. It is quite true we can make it the real
Ivanhoe if we like, and then say that the other Ivanhoes know it or do
not know it, according as they refer to and resemble it or no. This is
done by bringing in Sir Walter Scott himself as the author of the real
Ivanhoe, and so making a complex object of both. This object, however,
is not a story pure and simple. It has dynamic relations with the world
common to the experience of all the readers. Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe
got itself printed in volumes which we all can handle, and to any one of
which we can refer to see which of our versions be the true one, i.e.,
the original one of Scott himself. We can see the manuscript; in short
we can get back to the Ivanhoe in Scott's mind by many an avenue and
channel of this real world of our experience,--a thing we can by no
means do with either the Ivanhoe or the Rebecca, either the Templar or
the Isaac of York, of the story taken simply as such, and detached from
the conditions of its production. Everywhere, then, we have the same
test: can we pass continuously from two objects in two minds to a third
object which seems to be in BOTH minds, because each mind feels every
modification imprinted on it by the other? If so, the first two objects
named are derivatives, to say the least, from the same third object, and
may be held, if they resemble each other, to refer to one and the same
reality.] The fact that all these Ivanhoes RESEMBLE each other does
not prove the contrary. But if an alteration invented by one man in his
version were to reverberate immediately through all the other versions,
and produce changes therein, we should then easily agree that all
these thinkers were thinking the SAME Ivanhoe, and that, fiction or no
fiction, it formed a little world common to them all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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