I have tried to study the nature of the mind and to understand its office in knowing. And the end of all my studies brought me to the sequel that I was compelled to testify to Hume's strange statements: "Nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions. . . . We never really advance a step beyond ourselves. . . . Philosophy informs us that everything which appears to the mind is nothing but a perception, and is interrupted and dependent on the mind, whereas the vulgar confound perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct, continued existence to the very things they feel or see. There is no question of importance whose decision is not comprised in the science of mind; and there is none which can be decided with any certainty before we become acquainted with that."
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 4 : The Challenge of Mentalism > # 207
