This 'pen,' for example, is, in the first
instance, a bald _that_, a datum, fact, phenomenon,
content, or whatever other neutral or
ambiguous name you may prefer to apply. I
called it in that article a 'pure experience.' To
get classed either as a physical pen or as some
one's percept of a pen, it must assume a _function_,
---
1 [Reprinted from _The_Journal_of_Philosophy,_Psychology_and_
_Scientific_Methods_, vol II, No. 7, March 30, 1905.]
124
and that can only happen in a more complicated
world. So far as in that world it is
a stable feature, holds ink, marks paper and
obeys the guidance of a hand, it is a physical
pen. That is what we mean by being 'physical,'
in a pen. So far as it is instable, on the
contrary, coming and going with the movements
of my eyes, altering with what I call my
fancy, continuous with subsequent experiences
of its 'having been' (in the past tense), it is the
percept of a pen in my mind. Those peculiarities
are what we mean by being 'conscious,'
in a pen.
In Section VI of another [essay](1) I tried to
show that the same _that_, the same numerically
identical pen of pure experience, can enter
simultaneously into many conscious contexts,
or, in other words, be an object for many different
minds.
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