perceptual by conceptual
experiences, it would again prove to be an affair of external relations.
One experience would be the knower, the other the reality known; and I
could perfectly well define, without the notion of 'consciousness,' what
the knowing actually and practically amounts to--leading-towards,
namely, and terminating-in percepts, through a series of transitional
experiences which the world supplies. But I will not treat of this,
space being insufficient.[18] I will rather consider a few objections
that are sure to be urged against the entire theory as it stands.

V

First of all, this will be asked: "If experience has not 'conscious'
existence, if it be not partly made of 'consciousness,' of what then is
it made? Matter we know, and thought we know, and conscious content we
know, but neutral and simple 'pure experience' is something we know not
at all. Say _what_ it consists of--for it must consist of something--or
be willing to give it up!"

To this challenge the reply is easy. Although for fluency's sake I
myself spoke early in this article of a stuff of pure experience, I have
now to say that there is no _general_ stuff of which experience at large
is made. There are as many stuffs as there are 'natures' in the things
experienced. If you ask what any one bit of pure experience is made of,
the answer is always the same: "It is made of _that_, of just what
appears, of space, of intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness, or
what not." Shadworth Hodgson's analysis here leaves nothing to be
desired.[19] Experience is only a collective name for all these sensible
natures, and save for time and space (and, if you like, for 'being')
there appears no universal element of which all things are made.

VI

The next objection is more formidable, in fact it sounds quite crushing
when one hears it first.

"If it be the self-same piece of pure experience, taken twice over, that
serves now as thought and now as thing"--so the objection runs--"how
comes it that its attributes should differ so fundamentally in the two
takings. As thing, the experience is extended; as thought, it occupies
no space or place. As thing, it is red, hard, heavy; but who ever heard
of a red, hard or heavy thought? Yet even now you said that an
experience is made of just what appears, and what appears is just such
adjectives. How can the one experience in its thing-function be made of
them, consist of them, carry them as its own attr