In principle, then, let natural realism pass
for possible. Your mind and mine _may_ terminate
in the same percept, not merely against it,
as if it were a third external thing, but by inserting
themselves into it and coalescing with
it, for such is the sort of conjunctive union that
appears to be experienced when a perceptual
terminus 'fulfils.' Even so, two hawsers may
embrace the same pile, and yet neither one of
them touch any other part except that pile, of
what the other hawser is attached to.
It is therefore not a formal question, but
a question of empirical fact solely, whether
when you and I are said to know the 'same'
Memorial Hall, our minds do terminate at or in
a numerically identical percept. Obviously, as
a plain matter of fact, they do _not_. Apart from
color-blindness and such possibilities, we see
the Hall in different perspectives. You may be
on one side of it and I on another. The percept
of each of us, as he sees the surface of the Hall,
is moreover only his provisional terminus. The
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next thing beyond my percept is not your
mind, but more percepts of my own into which
my first percept develops, the interior of the
Hall, for instance, or the inner structure of its
bricks and mortar.
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