II. CHARACTERISTICS OF SENSE-DATA

When I speak of a " sense-datum," I do not mean the whole of what is given in sense at one time. I mean rather such a part of the whole as might be singled out by attention : particular patches of colour, particular noises, and so on. There is some difficulty in deciding what is to be considered one sense-datum : often atten- tion causes divisions to appear where, so far as can be discovered, there were no divisions before. An observed complex fact, such as that this patch of red is to the left of that patch of blue, is also to be regarded as a datum from our present point of view : epistemologically, it does not differ greatly from a simple sense-datum as regards its function in giving knowledge. Its logical structure is very different, however, from that of sense : sense gives acquaintance with particulars, and is thus a two-term relation in which the object can be named but not asserted, and is inherently incapable of truth or false- hood, whereas the observation of a complex fact, which may be suitably called perception, is not a two-term relation, but involves the prepositional form on the object-side, and gives knowledge of a truth, not mere acquaintance with a particular. This logical difference, important as it is, is not very relevant to our present problem ; and it will be convenient to regard data of perception as included among sense-data for the purposes of this paper. It is to be observed that the particulars which are constituents of a datum of perception are always sense-data in the strict sense.
148 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC
Concerning sense-data, we know that they are there while they are data, and this is the epistemological basis of all our knowledge of external particulars. (The mean- ing of the word ' external ' of course raises problems which will concern us later.) We do not know, except by means of more or less precarious inferences, whether the objects which are at one time sense-data continue to exist at times when they are not data. Sense-data at the times when they are data are all that we directly and primitively know of the external world ; hence in episte- mology the fact that they are data is all-important. But the fact that they are all that we directly know gives, of course, no presumption that they are all that there is. If we could construct an impersonal metaphysic, independent of the accidents of our knowledge and ignorance, the privileged position of the actual data would probably disappear, and they would probably appear as a rather haphazard selection from a mass of objects more or less like them. In saying this, I assume only that it is probable that there are particulars with which we are not acquainted. Thus the special importance of sense- data is in relation to epistemology, not to metaphysics. In this respect, physics is to be reckoned as metaphysics : it is impersonal, and nominally pays no special attention to sense-data. It is only when we ask how physics can be known that the importance of sense-data re-emerges.