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It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses’ by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality; but anything else, any idea, for example, that might similarly excite it, would have that same prerogative of appearing real which objects of sense normally possess.
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses’ by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality; but anything else, any idea, for example, that might similarly excite it, would have that same prerogative of appearing real which objects of sense normally possess.
Approximate author period: c. 1876 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- William James
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
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- Approximate author period: c. 1876 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1842 to 1910; Wikidata Q125249, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q125249 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 138944; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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