But, it may be asked: What is this common simple sense of the word "exists"? For my own part, it seems to me to be so simple that it cannot be expressed in other words, except those which are recognised as its synonyms. I think we are all perfectly familiar with its meaning: it is the meaning which you understood me to have throughout this paper, until I began this discussion. I think we can perceive at once what is meant by asserting that my perception of black marks on a white ground is "real," and that no such perception as Sindbad's of a Roc was ever "real": we are perfectly familiar with the property which the one perception is affirmed to possess, and the other to be without. And I think, as I have said, that this property is a simple one. But, whatever it is, this, which we ordinarily mean, is what I mean by "existence" or "reality." And this property, we have seen, is certainly neither identical with nor inclusive of that complex one which we mean by the words "is perceived."
I may now, then, at last approach the main question of my paper. Which among the "contents" which I observe will give me reason to suppose that my observation of some of them is generally preceded or accompanied or followed by the existence of certain particular perceptions, thoughts or feelings in another person? I have explained that the "contents" which I actually observe may be divided into two classes: on the one hand, those which, as we commonly say, we perceive "through the senses"; and, on the other hand, my perceptions of these last, my thoughts, and my feelings. I have explained that if any of these observed contents are to give reason for a generalisation about what exists, _they_ must exist. And I have explained that with regard to both classes of "contents" I am using the word "exist" in precisely the same sense--a sense, in which it is certainly not self-contradictory to suppose that what _is_ perceived, does not exist, and that what is _not_ perceived, does exist; and, in which, therefore, the assumption that a red patch with gold letters on it exists, is a _different_ assumption from the assumption that my _perception_ of a red patch with gold letters on it exists; and the assumption that my _perception_ of a red patch with gold letters on it exists, is a _different_ assumption from the assumption that a red patch with gold letters on it exists.