Studies in Logical Theory. Джон Дьюи

it. A reference, it may be argued, must be a reference to something. But it seems as if in this case the something were the fact of reference itself, the rational convention between intelligent beings, or rather the world which has existence, whether for one rational being or for many, merely as contained in and sustained by such intellectual reference.

      I only adduce these considerations in order to explain that transitional conception of an objective world or world of meanings, distinct from the real world or world of facts, with which it is impossible wholly to dispense in an account of thought starting from the individual subject. The paradox is that the real world or world of fact thus seems for us to fall within and be included in the objective world or world of meanings, as if all that is fact were meaning, but not every meaning were fact. This results in the contradiction that something is objective, which is not real. (Pp. 4, 5.)

      In the seventh section of the introduction Bosanquet explains his meaning further by what the reader is privileged to regard as a flight of the imagination—a mere simile—which he thinks may, nevertheless, make the matter clearer.