Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/372

 360 EDMUND MONTGOMERY : or perceptual presence ; whilst, on the contrary, Naturalistic thinkers have not to postulate anything that is not capable of appearing with utmost distinctness in phenomenal exist- ence. To the Transcendent alist, there emerges into mani- fest existence nothing but the conscious phenomena which he believes to be all-through the work or thought of a spiritual principle. To him there can be no other being than this intelligible Ego and its thoughts ; for there can be nothing intermediate between the spiritual subject and its own creations. Consequently, we are at once confronted with the ques- tion : What then, in a universe where thought and being are identical, can that persistent system of mental phenomena signify, which, all through life, so faithfully accompanies us as our own body ? It is incumbent on thinkers who have the truth at heart and are not merely advocating foregone conclusions, not to allow themselves self-delusively to glide over this paramount contrast demonstrated by nature itself as actually obtaining between the Transcendental and the Natural mode of ac- counting for the subject of conscious occurrences. Both views presuppose a bearer or subject of the pheno- mena of consciousness, which alone are immediately given. We all naturally and practically take our sensible indi- viduality to be this subject. The theoretically desiderated entity manifests itself to us as a bodily organisation with all the compulsory vividness and particularity of perception. Transcendentalists, nevertheless, reject this actually appear- ing individuality, and invent, in its stead, a subject of their own, whose existence is proved by nothing but specious words ; whose powers, all assumed without evidence, and incapable of being put to the test of experience, can be multiplied, exalted and directed as fancy or any other con- sideration may dictate. Who can prescribe limits to a thinking principle whose thoughts are reality itself reality wholly constituted by thought ? And, as thoughts in their most developed form are humanly established vehicles for the representation of extensive and frequently experienced complexes of feelings, the true signi- fication of these consolidated complexes of feelings is, by the Identity-philosophy, with strange natural perversity and human superciliousness, believed to be of the nature of the vehicle or sign, and not of the phenomena signified. Like- wise the experiencing subject is considered to be kindred to the sign-making department in us, and not to the sphere of signified phenomenal revelations. The sign-making activity,