In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about
and talk about the same world, because WE BELIEVE OUR PERCEPTS ARE
POSSESSED BY US IN COMMON. And we believe this because the percepts
of each one of us seem to be changed in consequence of changes in the
percepts of someone else. What I am for you is in the first instance a
percept of your own. Unexpectedly, however, I open and show you a book,
uttering certain sounds the while. These acts are also your percepts,
but they so resemble acts of yours with feelings prompting them, that
you cannot doubt I have the feelings too, or that the book is one
book felt in both our worlds. That it is felt in the same way, that my
feelings of it resemble yours, is something of which we never can be
sure, but which we assume as the simplest hypothesis that meets
the case. As a matter of fact, we never ARE sure of it, and, as
ERKENNTNISSTHEORETIKER, we can only say that of feelings that should NOT
resemble each other, both could not know the same thing at the same
time in the same way. [Footnote: Though both might terminate in the same
thing and be incomplete thoughts 'about' it.] If each holds to its own
percept as the reality, it is bound to say of the other percept, that,
though it may INTEND that reality, and prove this by working change upon
it, yet, if it do not resemble it, it is all false and wrong. [Footnote:
The difference between Idealism and Realism is immaterial here. What
is said in the text is consistent with either theory. A law by which my
percept shall change yours directly is no more mysterious than a law
by which it shall first change a physical reality, and then the reality
change yours. In either case you and I seem knit into a continuous
world, and not to form a pair of solipsisms.]
If this be so of percepts, how much more so of higher modes of thought!
Even in the sphere of sensation individuals are probably different
enough. Comparative study of the simplest conceptual elements seems to
show a wider divergence still. And when it comes to general theories
and emotional attitudes towards life, it is indeed time to say with
Thackeray, 'My friend, two different universes walk about under your hat
and under mine.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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