Matter and Mind

People say we can conceive the existence of matter and the existence of mind.  I doubt it.  I doubt how far we have any definite conception of mind or of matter, pure and simple.

What is meant by conceiving a thing or understanding it? When we hear of a piece of matter instinct with mind, as protoplasm, for example, there certainly comes up before our closed eyes an idea, a picture which we imagine to bear some resemblance to the thing we are hearing of.  But when we try to think of matter apart from every attribute of matter (and this I suspect comes ultimately to “apart from every attribute of mind”) we get no image before our closed eyes—we realise nothing to ourselves.  Perhaps we surreptitiously introduce some little attribute, and then we think we have conceived of matter pure and simple, but this I think is as far as we can go.  The like holds good for mind: we must smuggle in a little matter before we get any definite idea at all.