An inspection of what we know directly, then, does not bear out the common sense theory that perceived familiarity, upon which abstraction and all description and explanation are based, consists in the perception of similar qualities shared by present matter and the matter retained by memory. A familiar fact appears to be, not a repetition, but a _new_ fact. This new fact may be described as containing present and past bare sensations, but it must be added that these bare sensations do not remain distinct things but are synthesised by the act of perception into a fresh whole which is not the sum of the bare sensations which it may be described as containing. Such a perceived whole will be familiar, and so lend itself to abstraction and explanation, in so far as the present bare sensation which it contains, taken as mere matter (that is apart from the act of perception which turns it from mere matter into actual fact), would have been a repetition of some of the past bare sensations which go to form its meaning and combine with it to create the fact actually known. For bare sensation now may be a repetition of past bare sensation though the full fact will always be something fresh, its flavour changing as it grows more and more familiar by taking up into itself more and more bare sensation which, taken in abstraction, apart from the act of synthesis which turns it into actual fact, would be repetitions. To take the example which we have already used of perceiving first a rose and then a strawberry ice cream: let us suppose that the rose was the very first occasion on which you saw pink. The perceived fact on that occasion would, like all perceived facts, be a combination of / past and present bare sensations. It would I not be familiar because the elements of present bare sensation would not be repetitions of the elements of past bare sensation (always assuming, as we must for purposes of explanation, that past and present bare sensations ever could be isolated from the actual fact and still both exist, which, however, is not possible). But when you saw the strawberry ice cream the past perceived rose would be among the memories added to this bare sensation which constitute its meaning and, by forming a synthesis with it, turn it from mere matter into fact. The pink would now be perceived as familiar because the pink of the rose (which as bare sensation is similar to the bare sensation of strawberry-ice-cream-pink) would be included, along with the present bare sensation of pink, in the whole fact of the perception of strawberry ice cream. Perceived fact, then, combines meaning and present bare sensation to form a whole with a qualitative flavour which is itself always unique, but which lends itself to abstraction in so far as the bare sensations, past and present, which go to produce it, would, as matter in isolation, be repetitions.