na. No physical phenomenon shows anything similar. And so we
can define psychical phenomena by saying that they are phenomena which
intentionally contain an object in themselves."

The view here expressed, that relation to an object is an ultimate
irreducible characteristic of mental phenomena, is one which I shall be
concerned to combat. Like Brentano, I am interested in psychology, not
so much for its own sake, as for the light that it may throw on the
problem of knowledge. Until very lately I believed, as he did, that
mental phenomena have essential reference to objects, except possibly in
the case of pleasure and pain. Now I no longer believe this, even in
the case of knowledge. I shall try to make my reasons for this rejection
clear as we proceed. It must be evident at first glance that the
analysis of knowledge is rendered more difficult by the rejection; but
the apparent simplicity of Brentano's view of knowledge will be found,
if I am not mistaken, incapable of maintaining itself either against
an analytic scrutiny or against a host of facts in psycho-analysis and
animal psychology. I do not wish to minimize the problems. I will
merely observe, in mitigation of our prospective labours, that thinking,
however it is to be analysed, is in itself a delightful occupation,
and that there is no enemy to thinking so deadly as a false simplicity.
Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and
it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast
countries still very imperfectly explored.

The view expressed by Brentano has been held very generally, and
developed by many writers. Among these we may take as an example his
Austrian successor Meinong.* According to him there are three elements
involved in the thought of an object. These three he calls the act, the
content and the object. The act is the same in any two cases of the same
kind of consciousness; for instance, if I think of Smith or think
of Brown, the act of thinking, in itself, is exactly similar on both
occasions. But the content of my thought, the particular event that
is happening in my mind, is different when I think of Smith and when I
think of Brown. The content, Meinong argues, must not be confounded with
the object, since the content must exist in my mind at the moment when
I have the thought, whereas the object need not do so. The object may
be something past or future; it may be physical, not mental; it may
be