Note 67 — XI THE EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM

The reply implies that the exhaustive, all-at-once perception of the entire universe assumed by some idealistic writers does not involve any external world. I do not make this remark for the sake of identifying myself with this school of thinkers, but to suggest that the limited character of empirical data is what occasions inference. But it is a fallacy to suppose that the nature of the limitations is psychologically given. On the contrary, they have to be determined by descriptive identifications which involve reference to the more extensive world. Hence no matter how "self-evident" the existence of the data may be, it is never self-evident that they are rightly delimited with respect to the specific inference in process of making.