And further if everything, of which he thinks he is aware, is in reality merely a content of his own experience he has certainly no _reason_ for holding that anything does exist except himself: it will, of course, be possible that other persons do exist; solipsism will not be necessarily true; but he cannot possibly infer from anything he holds that it is not true. That he himself exists will of course follow from his premiss that many things are contents of _his_ experience. But since everything, of which he thinks himself aware, is in reality merely an inseparable aspect of that awareness; this premiss allows no inference that any of these contents, far less any other consciousness, exists at all except as an inseparable aspect of his awareness, that is, as part of himself.
Such, and not those which he takes to follow from it, are the consequences which _do_ follow from the Idealist's supposition that the object of an experience is in reality merely a content or inseparable aspect of that experience. If, on the other hand, we clearly recognise the nature of that peculiar relation which I have called "awareness of anything"; if we see that _this_ is involved equally in the analysis of _every_ experience--from the merest sensation to the most developed perception or reflexion, and that _this_ is in fact the only essential element in an experience--the only thing that is both common and peculiar to all experiences--the only thing which gives us reason to call any fact mental; if, further, we recognise that this awareness is and must be in all cases of such a nature that its object, when we are aware of it, is precisely what it would be, if we were not aware: then it becomes plain that the existence of a table in space is related to my experience of _it_ in precisely the same way as the existence of my own experience is related to my experience of _that._ Of both we are merely aware: if we are aware that the one exists, we are aware in precisely the same sense that the other exists; and if it is true that my experience can exist, even when I do not happen to be aware of its existence, we have exactly the same reason for supposing that the table can do so also. When, therefore, Berkeley, supposed that the only thing of which I am directly aware is my own sensations and ideas, he supposed what was false; and when Kant supposed that the objectivity of things in space _consisted_ in the fact that they were "Vorstellungen" having to one another different relations from those which the same "Vorstellungen" have to one another in subjective experience, he supposed what was equally false. I am as directly aware of the existence of material things in space as of my own sensations; and _what_ I am aware of with regard to each is exactly the same--namely that in one case the material thing, and in the other case my sensation does really exist. The question requiring to be asked about material things is thus not: What reason have we for supposing that anything exists _corresponding_ to our sensations? but: What reason have we for supposing that material things do _not_ exist, since _their_ existence has precisely the same evidence as that of our sensations? That either exist _may_ be false; but if it is a reason for doubting the existence of matter, that it is an inseparable aspect of our experience, the same reasoning will prove conclusively that our experience does not exist either, since that must also be an inseparable aspect of our experience of _it._ The only _reasonable_ alternative to the admission that matter exists _as well as_ spirit, is absolute Scepticism--that, as likely as not _nothing_ exists at all. All other suppositions--the Agnostic's, that something, at all events, does exist, as much as the Idealist's, that spirit does--are, if we have no reason for believing in matter, as baseless as the grossest superstitions.