Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/380

 368 EDMUND MONTGOMERY : ceive a being or subject constantly experiencing changes with- out ever changing itself? Can the most inspired intellectual intuition represent to itself an entity whose life consists in experiencing changes, and which nevertheless remains itself unalterably the same ? Yet, this is exactly what Trans- cendentalism asserts of its experiencing subject. True it is, that the conscious phenomena can be experienced only by an identically enduring subject. This is the mystery to which the entire philosophy of knowledge naturally points. But, it is obvious that Transcendentalism possesses as little the key to it as any other speculative system. Well, then, let us enter the laboratory of Nature and humbly give up our mind to her teachings. There one may witness with one's own senses how this psychologically incompre- hensible operation of change-experiencing identity is actually accomplished. Will a candid philosopher deny, if it be clearly shown how the natural subject which experiences the con- scious phenomena endures nevertheless in identical self-con- sistency, that then the argument on which Transcendentalism principally bases its right of existence, must be considered overcome ? Of course, Transcendentalism as the mere belief of ever so many millions of us, or as the mystic faith of many an exuberant soul, will in no wise be immediately affected by such an elucidation. The ghostly or opiritual effectuation of natural occurrences has ever been and is still the mode of interpretation most readily seized upon by primitive think- ing ; and the ephemeral consistency of all thought-material opens a royal road to the loftiest imaginings of idealistic mys- ticism. But by the actual demonstration of the identical per- durability of our natural subject and its knowledge, amidst all the phenomenal changes and experiences to which it is incident by such a natural understanding of the indispen- sable postulate of every theory of knowledge, Transcen- dentalism would in fact find itself for ever vanquished in the sphere of scientific philosophy. The entity which has power to arouse in us the perception of a living human organism, we recognise to be the veritable subject, having the conscious phenomena. If so, this subject, whilst experiencing its ever-varying play of conscious states, must nevertheless be capable of upholding intact its own identity. The activity which we perceive as functional changes of the nervous system of our natural subject, gives rise to its conscious states. The subject itself suffers thereby as much change as is involved in its functional activity. But now mark the truly transcendental alchemy