erience
that you can take it in disparate systems of association, and treat it
as belonging with opposite contexts.[9] In one of these contexts it is
your 'field of consciousness'; in another it is 'the room in which you
sit,' and it enters both contexts in its wholeness, giving no pretext
for being said to attach itself to consciousness by one of its parts or
aspects, and to outer reality by another. What are the two processes,
now, into which the room-experience simultaneously enters in this way?

One of them is the reader's personal biography, the other is the history
of the house of which the room is part. The presentation, the
experience, the _that_ in short (for until we have decided _what_ it is
it must be a mere _that_) is the last term of a train of sensations,
emotions, decisions, movements, classifications, expectations, etc.,
ending in the present, and the first term of a series of similar 'inner'
operations extending into the future, on the reader's part. On the other
hand, the very same _that_ is the _terminus ad quem_ of a lot of
previous physical operations, carpentering, papering, furnishing,
warming, etc., and the _terminus a quo_ of a lot of future ones, in
which it will be concerned when undergoing the destiny of a physical
room. The physical and the mental operations form curiously incompatible
groups. As a room, the experience has occupied that spot and had that
environment for thirty years. As your field of consciousness it may
never have existed until now. As a room, attention will go on to
discover endless new details in it. As your mental state merely, few new
ones will emerge under attention's eye. As a room, it will take an
earthquake, or a gang of men, and in any case a certain amount of time,
to destroy it. As your subjective state, the closing of your eyes, or
any instantaneous play of your fancy will suffice. In the real world,
fire will consume it. In your mind, you can let fire play over it
without effect. As an outer object, you must pay so much a month to
inhabit it. As an inner content, you may occupy it for any length of
time rent-free. If, in short, you follow it in the mental direction,
taking it along with events of personal biography solely, all sorts of
things are true of it which are false, and false of it which are true if
you treat it as a real thing experienced, follow it in the physical
direction, and relate it to associates in the outer world.

III

So far, all seems