But
there is no test discoverable, so far as I know,
by which it can be shown that the place occupied
by your percept of Memorial Hall differs
from the place occupied by mine. The percepts
themselves may be shown to differ; but
if each of us be asked to point out where his
percept is, we point to an identical spot. All
the relations, whether geometrical or causal, of
the Hall originate or terminate in that spot
wherein our hands meet, and where each of us
begins to work if he wishes to make the Hall
change before the other's eyes. Just so it is
with our bodies. That body of yours which
you actuate and feel from within must be in
the same spot as the body of yours which I see
or touch from without. 'There' for me means
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where I place my finger. If you do not feel my
finger's contact to be 'there' in _my_ sense, when
I place it on your body, where then do you feel
it? Your inner actuations of your body meet
my finger _there:_ it is _there_ that you resist its
push, or shrink back, or sweep the finger aside
with your hand. Whatever farther knowledge
either of us may acquire of the real constitution
of the body which we thus feel, you from
within and I from without, it is in that same
place that the newly conceived or perceived
constituents have to be located, and it is
_through_ that space that your and my mental
intercourse with each other has always to be
carried on, by the mediation of impressions
which I convey thither, and of the reactions
thence which those impressions may provoke
from you.
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