Page:Vocation of Man (1848).djvu/75

Rh means demand of thee an immediate consciousness of the act as such, but only that on subsequent reflection thou shouldst discover that there must have been an act. The higher question, what it is that prevents any such state of indecision, or any consciousness of our act, will undoubtedly be afterwards solved.

This act of the mind is called thought; a word which I have hitherto employed with thy concurrence; and it is said that thought takes place with spontaneity, in opposition to sensation which is mere receptivity. How is it then, that, in thy previous statement, thou addest in thought to the sensation which thou certainly hast, an object of which thou knowest nothing?

I. I assume that my sensation must have a cause, and then proceed further,—

Spirit. Wilt thou not, in the first place, explain to me what is a cause?

I. I find a thing determined this way or that. I cannot rest satisfied with knowing that so it is;—it has become so, and that not by itself, but by means of a foreign power. This foreign power, that made it what it is, contains the cause, and the manifestation of that power, which did actually make it so, is the cause of this particular determination of the thing. That my sensation must have a cause, means that it is produced within me by a foreign power.

Spirit. This foreign power thou now addest in thought to the sensation of which thou art immediately conscious, and thus there arises in thee the presentation of an object? Well,—let it be so.

Now observe; if sensation must have a cause, then I admit the correctness of thy inference; and I see with what perfect right thou assumest the existence of