Note 120 — Chapter II · THE PROBLEM OF MATTER

Cf. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chap. 22, pp. 260-267 (1st ed.). The attempts which have been made to exempt “primary” qualities from this relativity do not seem to demand serious criticism. The argument in the text applies as directly to extension and shape as to colour or smell. It is not defensible to contend, as Mr. Hobhouse does, that qualities, whether primary or secondary, depend on the percipient organ only for their perception, not for their existence. The contention rests upon taking two aspects of experience which are always given together, the that and the what of a sense-content, and arguing that because these two aspects of a single whole can be distinguished, therefore the one can exist in actual separation from the other. It would be quite as logical to infer by the same method and from the same premisses that there can be a perceptive state without any content, as that the contents can exist as we know them, apart from the state.