Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/289

252 No; so far, it would be a knowledge of the repugnance of what I now call certain universal qualities. The meaning of it, technically expressed, would be simply that various colour experiences cannot at the same time acquire the same “local sign.” But the local sign, or complex of local signs, by which in the long run I define any one portion of my visual field, is essentially a universal, a quality; and that this same quality cannot be associated, at the same time, with two different colour experiences, is a fact belonging to the world of universal law, namely, of law relating to the mutual repugnance of qualities. Neither local signs nor colours, as such, are yet individuals. Nor is their union an individual. Nor is the segmentation of the field of colour vision, viewed with or without its local signs, as yet an experience of anything but universals. Nor does repugnance between various universals, or between various combinations of universals, nor does the fact that a given universal A cannot at the same time be associated, or fused, with two universals of another type, B and C, while it can be fused with either of them singly, — nor does, I say, all this taken together as yet present to us the kind of uniqueness that is meant by individuality. We learn, in brief, that if A means a local sign whereby a given region of the field of vision is distinguished from the rest, and if B and C mean colour experiences, then the combination AB is possible, and the combination AC is also possible, but that AB excludes AC, and cannot co-exist with it. Surely we learn, in such a case, of nothing that establishes any relation except such as