Where, however, the actions of one mind seem to take no effect in the world of the other, the case is different.  This is what happens in poetry and fiction.  Every one knows Ivanhoe, for example; but so long as we stick to the story pure and simple without regard to the facts of its production, few would hesitate to admit that there are as many different Ivanhoes as there are different minds cognizant of the story. [Footnote:  That is, there is no real ‘Ivanhoe,’ not even the one in Sir Walter Scott’s mind as he was writing the story.  That one is only the first one of the Ivanhoe-solipsisms.  It is quite true we can make it the real Ivanhoe if we like, and then say that the other Ivanhoes know it or do not know it, according as they refer to and resemble it or no.  This is done by bringing in Sir Walter Scott himself as the author of the real Ivanhoe, and so making a complex object of both.  This object, however, is not a story pure and simple.  It has dynamic relations with the world common to the experience of all the readers.  Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe got itself printed in volumes which we all can handle, and to any one of which we can refer to see which of our versions be the true one, i.e., the original one of Scott himself.  We can see the manuscript; in short we can get back to the Ivanhoe in Scott’s mind by many an avenue and channel of this real world of our experience,—­a thing we can by no means do with either the Ivanhoe or the Rebecca, either the Templar or the Isaac of York, of the story taken simply as such, and detached from the conditions of its production.  Everywhere, then, we have the same test:  can we pass continuously from two objects in two minds to a third object which seems to be in both minds, because each mind feels every modification imprinted on it by the other?  If so, the first two objects named are derivatives, to say the least, from the same third object, and may be held, if they resemble each other, to refer to one and the same reality.] The fact that all these Ivanhoes resemble each other does not prove the contrary.  But if an alteration invented by one man in his version were to reverberate immediately through all the other versions, and produce changes therein, we should then easily agree that all these thinkers were thinking the same Ivanhoe, and that, fiction or no fiction, it formed a little world common to them all.

Having reached this point, we may take up our thesis and improve it again.  Still calling the reality by the name of q and letting the critic’s feeling vouch for it, we can say that any other feeling will be held cognizant of q, provided it both resemble q, and refer to q, as shown by its either modifying q directly, or modifying some other reality, p or r, which the critic knows to be continuous with q.  Or more shortly, thus:  The feeling of q knows whatever reality it resembles,