Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/329

THE NEW EEALISM AND THE OLD IDEALISM. 315 existence is to attempt to substantiate what we know only as an aspect of our experience. It is the cogito of Descartes carried to an even more extreme refinement of abstraction. Certainly, pain, hunger, the colour yellow, a tree, a triangle, an axiom of geometry, a moral requirement, an article of religious faith, a poetic ideal, all contain something which is of the nature of an objective material set before our consciousness ; but what would that consciousness be, apart from such objective material ? When I am conscious of yellow, the yellow is certainly something of which I am conscious ; and it is something of which somebody else might be conscious. Nevertheless, it is surely not true that in this fact of experience there is consciousness + yellow. If you remove the yellow, you remove the consciousness as well. This has been already urged against Mr. Moore ; and it seems to me so obvious, on reflexion, that I do not think it necessary to press it further. 1 But the next point is this. It seems clear, as I have just stated, that, in the experience of yellow, if you remove the yellow, you remove the consciousness. Now, can we say, in like manner, that, if you remove the consciousness, you remove the yellow? This is the really crucial question. And if it is raised specifically in such a case as that of yellow, the right answer is not at once apparent. On the one hand it may be urged that, if we try to think of a yellow which is not the experience of some individual consciousness, we do not seem to be able to attach any meaning to it. Yellow is a colour : a colour is something seen. What could it possibly be, then, if it were not seen ? On the other hand, I seem to be able to identify the yellow that I see to-day with that which I saw yesterday, though the two experiences as such are quite distinct ; and it even seems to be possible to com- pare my apprehension of yellow with that of some one else, and to pronounce that they are the same or different. On these grounds it may be urged that I can distinguish the yellow that I experience as something objective and distinct from the fact that I experience it. Perhaps, however, the solution of the problem will become more apparent if we consider instances somewhat different from that of yellow. Let us try two extremely different types of cases. Let us take pleasure, on the one hand, and an axiom of geometry on the other. 1 1 may refer, however, to the paper by Mr. C. A. Strong hi MIND, April, 1905, entitled, ' Has Mr. Moore Refuted Idealism ? ' where this aspect of the question seems to me to be very well stated.