Now, if this feeling of Q be the only creation of the god, it will of course form the entire universe.  And if, to escape the cavils of that large class of persons who believe that Semper idem SENTIRE AC non SENTIRE are the same, [Footnote:1 ‘The Relativity of Knowledge,’ held in this sense, is, it may be observed in passing, one of the oddest of philosophic superstitions.  Whatever facts may be cited in its favor are due to the properties of nerve-tissue, which may be exhausted by too prolonged an excitement.  Patients with neuralgias that last unremittingly for days can, however, assure us that the limits of this nerve-law are pretty widely drawn.  But if we physically could get a feeling that should last eternally unchanged, what atom of logical or psychological argument is there to prove that it would not be felt as long as it lasted, and felt for just what it is, all that time?  The reason for the opposite prejudice seems to be our reluctance to think that so stupid a thing as such a feeling would necessarily be, should be allowed to fill eternity with its presence.  An interminable acquaintance, leading to no knowledge-about,—­such would be its condition.] we allow the feeling to be of as short a duration as they like, that universe will only need to last an infinitesimal part of a second.  The feeling in question will thus be reduced to its fighting weight, and all that befalls it in the way of a cognitive function must be held to befall in the brief instant of its quickly snuffed-out life,—­a life, it will also be noticed, that has no other moment of consciousness either preceding or following it.

Well now, can our little feeling, thus left alone in the universe,—­ for the god and we psychological critics may be supposed left out of the account,—­can the feeling, I say, be said to have any sort of a cognitive function?  For it to know, there must be something to be known.  What is there, on the present supposition?  One may reply, ‘the feeling’s content q.’  But does it not seem more proper to call this the feeling’s quality than its content?  Does not the word ‘content’ suggest that the feeling has already dirempted itself as an act from its content as an object?  And would it be quite safe to assume so promptly that the quality q of a feeling is one and the same thing with a feeling of the quality q?  The quality q, so far, is an entirely subjective fact which the feeling carries so to speak endogenously, or in its pocket.  If any one pleases to dignify so simple a fact as this by the name of knowledge, of course nothing can prevent him.  But let us keep closer to the path of common usage, and reserve the name knowledge for the cognition of ‘realities,’ meaning by realities things that exist independently of the feeling through which their cognition occurs.  If the content of the feeling occur nowhere in the universe outside of the feeling itself, and perish with the feeling, common usage refuses to call it a reality, and brands it as a subjective feature of the feeling’s constitution, or at the most as the feeling’s dream.