THEORY OF PERCEPTION

Let us consider, say, my perception of a table, and let us attempt to find what is the process of my thought in the perception. We find these to be the action of our mind.

Previously, I know what a table is; this idea is in me, rooted. When I see this thing before me, my conception of a table passes out of me into the object, which is similar, of a generality, to it. My thought returns to me bearing with itself a particularised idea of a table — the table that I see before me. Thus thought, after passing through the object links the object to itself, as a particularisation of thought.

C. R. Anon