It is a platitude that thought implies a subject and an object: the subject is the thinker, or the thinking mind, and the object is that which is thought about. This is probably the most elementary fact of consciousness, comprehensible alike to the child, the unreflecting man of affairs, and the philosopher, and it forms the natural startingpoint for philosophy. And indeed, one of the great divisions between philosophical systems is that which separates subjectivism on one hand from objectivism (more often called by the indefinite and overburdened name, realism) on the other. Subjectivism professes to interpret the object in terms of the subject, and objectivism professes to interpret the subject in terms of the object.