The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c7.s3.t7.18

c7.s3.t7.18

“Yes indeed, you maintain that! But only because your trunk is not goaded [elephants are guided by goads], and not because you have reasons. For we are compelled to admit objects outside our apperception, and this by our apperception itself. For no one apperceives a column or a wall as a mere apperception, but everybody apperceives the column and the wall as objects of apperception. And that everybody thus apperceives, is shown by the fact that even those who deny outward objects bear witness to this when they say: ‘The form perceived interiorly seems as if it were outside.’ For they also call to their aid the consciousness of an outside that everyone in the world has, when, in order to deny the existence of outward objects with their ‘as if it were outside,’ they appeal to an assumed outside. For how otherwise could they say ‘as if it were outside?’ No one says: such a one looks as if he were the son of a barren woman. Therefore, when we according to our feelings conceive the nature of anything that exists, we must say: ‘It appears outside,’ but not ‘as if it were outside.’”