Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/291

Rh 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 connection 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 connection 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 connection between mind-and-matter (in one), and mind-and-matter (in one)? Or differently still, What is the connection 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,