nt towns
in view.

To me the decisive reason in favor of our minds meeting in _some_ common
objects at least is that, unless I make that supposition, I have no
motive for assuming that your mind exists at all. Why do I postulate
your mind? Because I see your body acting in a certain way. Its
gestures, facial movements, words and conduct generally, are
'expressive,' so I deem it actuated as my own is, by an inner life like
mine. This argument from analogy is my _reason_, whether an instinctive
belief runs before it or not. But what is 'your body' here but a percept
in _my_ field? It is only as animating _that_ object, _my_ object, that
I have any occasion to think of you at all. If the body that you actuate
be not the very body that I see there, but some duplicate body of your
own with which that has nothing to do, we belong to different universes,
you and I, and for me to speak of you is folly. Myriads of such
universes even now may coexist, irrelevant to one another; my concern is
solely with the universe with which my own life is connected.

In that perceptual part of _my_ universe which I call _your_ body, your
mind and my mind meet and may be called conterminous. Your mind actuates
that body and mine sees it; my thoughts pass into it as into their
harmonious cognitive fulfilment; your emotions and volitions pass into
it as causes into their effects.

But that percept hangs together with all our other physical percepts.
They are of one stuff with it; and if it be our common possession, they
must be so likewise. For instance, your hand lays hold of one end of a
rope and my hand lays hold of the other end. We pull against each other.
Can our two hands be mutual objects in this experience, and the rope not
be mutual also? What is true of the rope is true of any other percept.
Your objects are over and over again the same as mine. If I ask you
_where_ some object of yours is, our old Memorial Hall, for example, you
point to _my_ Memorial Hall with _your_ hand which _I_ see. If you alter
an object in your world, put out a candle, for example, when I am
present, _my_ candle _ipso facto_ goes out. It is only as altering my
objects that I guess you to exist. If your objects do not coalesce with
my objects, if they be not identically where mine are, they must be
proved to be positively somewhere else. But no other location can be
assigned for them, so their place must be what it seems to be, the
same.[38]

Practically, t