and universally discarded.

To deny plumply that 'consciousness' exists seems so absurd on the face
of it--for undeniably 'thoughts' do exist--that I fear some readers will
follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only
to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most
emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean, no
aboriginal stuff or quality of being,[4] contrasted with that of which
material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made;
but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for
the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That
function is _knowing_. 'Consciousness' is supposed necessary to explain
the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known. Whoever
blots out the notion of consciousness from his list of first principles
must still provide in some way for that function's being carried on.

I

My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only
one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything
is composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure experience,' then knowing
can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one
another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation
itself is a part of pure experience; one of its 'terms' becomes the
subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower,[5] the other becomes the
object known. This will need much explanation before it can be
understood. The best way to get it understood is to contrast it with the
alternative view; and for that we may take the recentest alternative,
that in which the evaporation of the definite soul-substance has
proceeded as far as it can go without being yet complete. If neo-Kantism
has expelled earlier forms of dualism, we shall have expelled all forms
if we are able to expel neo-Kantism in its turn.

For the thinkers I call neo-Kantian, the word consciousness to-day does
no more than signalize the fact that experience is indefeasibly
dualistic in structure. It means that not subject, not object, but
object-plus-subject is the minimum that can actually be. The
subject-object distinction meanwhile is entirely different from that
between mind and matter, from that between body and soul. Souls were
detachable, had separate destinies; things could happen to them. To
consciousness as such nothing can happen, for, timeless itself, it is
only a witness of