knowing mind along with whatever else is known: not q, as we have
supposed, but q PLUS MYSELF, must be the least I can know. It is
certain that the common sense of mankind never dreams of using any
such principle when it tries to discriminate between conscious
states that are knowledge and conscious states that are not. So
that Ferrier's principle, if it have any relevancy at all, must
have relevancy to the metaphysical possibility of consciousness
at large, and not to the practically recognized constitution
of cognitive consciousness. We may therefore pass it by
without further notice here.] It is to be feared that the reader may
consider this formula rather insignificant and obvious, and hardly
worth the labor of so many pages, especially when he considers that
the only cases to which it applies are percepts, and that the whole
field of symbolic or conceptual thinking seems to elude its grasp.
Where the reality is either a material thing or act, or a state of
the critic's consciousness, I may both mirror it in my mind and
operate upon it--in the latter case indirectly, of course--as
soon as I perceive it. But there are many cognitions, universally
allowed to be such, which neither mirror nor operate on their
realities.

In the whole field of symbolic thought we are universally held both
to intend, to speak of, and to reach conclusions about--to know in
short--particular realities, without having in our subjective
consciousness any mind-stuff that resembles them even in a remote
degree. We are instructed about them by language which awakens no
consciousness beyond its sound; and we know WHICH realities they
are by the faintest and most fragmentary glimpse of some remote
context they may have and by no direct imagination of themselves. As
minds may differ here, let me speak in the first person. I am sure