word 'content' suggest that the feeling has already dirempted itself
as an act from its content as an object? And would it be quite safe
to assume so promptly that the quality q of a feeling is one and the
same thing with a feeling of the quality q? The quality q, so far,
is an entirely subjective fact which the feeling carries so to speak
endogenously, or in its pocket. If any one pleases to dignify so
simple a fact as this by the name of knowledge, of course
nothing can prevent him. But let us keep closer to the path of
common usage, and reserve the name knowledge for the cognition of
'realities,' meaning by realities things that exist independently of
the feeling through which their cognition occurs. If the content of
the feeling occur nowhere in the universe outside of the feeling
itself, and perish with the feeling, common usage refuses to call it
a reality, and brands it as a subjective feature of the
feeling's constitution, or at the most as the feeling's DREAM.

For the feeling to be cognitive in the specific sense, then, it must
be self-transcendent; and we must prevail upon the god to CREATE A
REALITY OUTSIDE OF IT to correspond to its intrinsic quality Q. Thus
only can it be redeemed from the condition of being a solipsism. If
now the new created reality RESEMBLE the feeling's quality Q I say
that the feeling may be held by us TO BE COGNIZANT OF THAT REALITY.

This first instalment of my thesis is sure to be attacked. But one
word before defending it 'Reality' has become our warrant for
calling a feeling cognitive; but what becomes our warrant for
calling anything reality? The only reply is--the faith of the
present critic or inquirer. At every moment of his life he
finds himself subject to a belief in SOME realities, even though his
realities of this year should prove to be his illusions of the next.