Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 050.djvu/568

534 of any perception, we are forced by the same law of our nature, to think the objective part of the perception along with it; and to think these two, not as two, but as constituting one thought. Therefore the objective, which hitherto, through a delusion of thought, had been considered as that which excluded the subjective from its sphere, was found to embrace and comprehend the subjective, and to be nothing and inconceivable without it; while the subjective, which hitherto, through the same delusion of thought, had been considered as that which excluded the objective from its sphere, was found to embrace and comprehend the objective, and to be nothing and inconceivable without it. We have now reached the very acme of our speculation, and shall proceed to point out the very singular change which this discovery brings about, with regard to the question with which we commenced these remarks—the question concerning the intercourse between man and the external universe.

What was hitherto considered the objective, was the whole external universe; and what was hitherto considered the subjective, was the whole percipient power—or, in other words, the whole mind of man. But we have found that this objective, or the whole external universe, cannot become a thought at all, unless we blend and identify with it the subjective, or the whole mind of man. And we have also found that this subjective, or the whole mind of man, cannot become a thought at all, unless we blend and identify with it the objective, or the whole external universe. So that—instead of the question as it originally stood, What is the nature of the connexion which subsists between the mind of man and the external world?—in other words, between the subjective and the objective of perception? the question becomes this—and into this form it is forced by the laws of the very thought which thinks it—What is the nature of the connexion which subsists between the mind of man plus the external universe on the one hand, the mind of man plus the external universe on the other? Or differently expressed, What is the connexion between mind-and-matter (in one), and mind-and-matter (in one)? Or differently still, What is the connexion between the subjective subject-object and the objective subject-object?

This latter, then, is the question really asked. This is the form into which the original question is changed, by the very laws and nature of thought. We used no violence with the question—we made no effort to displace it—that we might bring forward the new question in its room: we merely thought it, and this is the shape which it necessarily assumed. In this new form the question is still the same as the one originally asked; the same, and yet how different!

But though this is the question really asked, it is not the one which the asker really wished or expected to get an answer to. No—what he wished to get explained, was the nature of the connexion between what was heretofore considered the subjective, and what was heretofore considered the objective part of perception. Now, touching this point, the following is the only explanation which it is possible to give him. Unless we are able to think two things as two and separated from each other, it is vain and unreasonable to ask how they can become one. Unless we are able to hold the subjective and the objective apart in thought, we cannot be in a position to inquire into the nature of their connexion. But we have shown that it is not possible for us, by any effort of thought, to hold the subjective and the objective apart; that the moment the subjective is thought, it becomes both the subjective and the objective in one; and that the moment the objective is thought, it becomes both the subjective and the objective in one; and that, however often we may repeat the attempt to separate them, the result is invariably the same:—each of the terms, mistakenly supposed to be but a member of one whole, is again found to be itself that very whole. Therefore, we see that it is impossible for us to get ourselves into a position, from which we might inquire into the nature of the connexion between mind and matter, because it is not possible for thought to construe, intelligibly to itself, the ideal disconnexion which must necessarily be presupposed as preceding such an inquiry. It must not be supposed, however, that this inability to separate the subject and