Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/294

284 between an acid-alkali on the one hand, and an acid-alkali on the other? in other words, What is the connection between two neutral salts? or it would be this absurd one, What is the connection between one thing, the indivisible acid-alkali? In the same way, with respect to the question in hand. There is not a subjective and objective before us, but there is what we find to be an indivisible subjective-objective, when we commence by regarding what we imagined to be the pure subjective; and there is what we find to be an indivisible subjective-objective also, when we commence by regarding what we imagined to be the pure objective; so that the question respecting the nature of the connection between the subjective and the objective comes to be either this, What is the nature of the connection between two subjective-objectives? (but that is not the question to which an answer was wished), or else this, What is the nature of the connection between one thing, one thing which no effort of thought can construe as really two? Surely no one but an Irishman would think of asking, or expecting an answer to, such a question.

Now, with regard to the question in its new shape, it is obvious that it requires no answer; and that no answer given to it would be explanatory of any real difficulty. For, as in chemistry, no purpose would be gained; no new truth would be evolved by our explaining the connection between two neutral salts, except an observed increase of bulk in one neutral