tervening physical
agencies, and that the only thing directly known is the _mental
impression_ of the table. On the other hand, if you insist that your
knowledge of the table is direct, immediate and intuitive you must
admit that the table is only a mental image, a mental reality, if it
is any sort of reality at all, and that it has no existence outside
of the mind.

[Sidenote: _Effect of Closing One's Eyes_]

You may easily convince yourself that the table you directly
perceive can be nothing other than a mental picture. How? Simply
close your eyes. It has now ceased to exist. What has ceased to
exist? The external table of wood and glue and bolts? By no means.
Simply its mental duplicate. And by alternately opening and closing
your eyes, you can successively create and destroy this mental
duplicate.

[Sidenote: _If Matter Were Annihilated_]

Clearly, then, the table of which you are directly and immediately
conscious when your eyes are open is always this _mental duplicate_,
this aggregate of color, form, size and touch _impressions_; while
the real table, the physical table, may be something other than the
one of which you are directly aware. This other thing, this physical
table, whatever it is, can never be directly known, if indeed it has
any existence, a fact that many distinguished philosophers have had
the courage to deny.

Imagine, then, for a moment that everything except mind should
suddenly cease to exist, but that your sense-perceptions--that is
to say, your perception of sensory impressions--were to continue to
follow one another as before. Would not the physical world be for
you just exactly what it is today, and would you not have the same
reasons for believing in its existence that you now have?

[Sidenote: _If Mind Were Annihilated_]

And, conversely, if the world of matter were to go on, but all
mental images, all perception of sense-impressions, were to come
to an end, would not all matter be annihilated for you when your
perceptions ceased?

_It is obvious that the world is not the same for all of us; but
that it is for each one of us simply the world of his individual
perceptions._

[Sidenote: _As Many Worlds as Minds_]

The whole subject of sense-impressions, sensation and perception
may, therefore, be looked at from the standpoint of the mind as an
active influence, as well as from the standpoint of outside objects
as the exciting causes of sense-impressions.

CHAPTER V