facts having a subjective, or, what one might almost call a
physical, existence, but no such self-transcendent function as
would be implied in their being pieces of knowledge. Our task
is again limited here. We are not to ask, 'How is self-transcendence
possible?' We are only to ask, 'How comes it that common sense
has assigned a number of cases in which it is assumed not only to be
possible but actual? And what are the marks used by common sense
to distinguish those cases from the rest?' In short, our inquiry is
a chapter in descriptive psychology,--hardly anything more.

Condillac embarked on a quest similar to this by his famous
hypothesis of a statue to which various feelings were successively
imparted. Its first feeling was supposed to be one of fragrance. But
to avoid all possible complication with the question of genesis, let
us not attribute even to a statue the possession of our imaginary
feeling. Let us rather suppose it attached to no matter, nor
localized at any point in space, but left swinging IN VACUO, as
it were, by the direct creative FIAT of a god. And let us also, to
escape entanglement with difficulties about the physical or
psychical nature of its 'object' not call it a feeling of
fragrance or of any other determinate sort, but limit ourselves to
assuming that it is a feeling of Q. What is true of it under this
abstract name will be no less true of it in any more particular
shape (such as fragrance, pain, hardness) which the reader may
suppose.

Now, if this feeling of Q be the only creation of the god, it will
of course form the entire universe. And if, to escape the cavils of
that large class of persons who believe that SEMPER IDEM SENTIRE AC
NON SENTIRE are the same, [Footnote:1 'The Relativity of Knowledge,'