Spread on a canvas, with other
paints around it, it represents, on the contrary,
a feature in a picture and performs a spiritual
function. Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided
portion of experience, taken in one
context of associates, play the part of a knower,
of a state of mind, of 'consciousness'; while in
a different context the same undivided bit of
experience plays the part of a thing known, of
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an objective 'content.' In a word, in one group
it figures as a thought, in another group as a
thing. And, since it can figure in both groups
simultaneously we have every right to speak of
it as subjective and objective, both at once.
The dualism connoted by such double-barrelled
terms as 'experience,' 'phenomenon,'
'datum,' '_Vorfindung_' -- terms which, in philosophy
at any rate, tend more and more to replace
the single-barrelled terms of 'thought'
and 'thing' -- that dualism, I say, is still preserved
in this account, but reinterpreted, so
that, instead of being mysterious and elusive,
it becomes verifiable and concrete. It is an affair
of relations, it falls outside, not inside, the
single experience considered, and can always
be particularized and defined.
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