Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/26

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THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN

that for the author all these are the objects of the mental acts, not the acts themselves, and are therefore physical realities, and in no way bits of mind.

Hence arise two further peculiarities, one, if not both, of which characterise most twentieth century realism, and save it in a great measure from the defects of the older eclectic or demarcating realisms, in a word, dualistic realisms, which necessarily leaned toward materialism. I do not say that the new Realism is not itself in a sense dualistic.

First, the doctrine of the open door, as I have made bold to call it, destroys the superstition that spatial properties are distinguished by being self-existent, while sensations of the special senses, and these only, are dependent upon mind. Its attitude is indeed the reverse of that to which this destruction is usually ascribed. It does not say that primary qualities, like secondary, are mind-dependent; but that secondary, like primary, are mind-independent. But for the immediate purpose of destroying the distinc-