First. In general, and loosely, any mental operation is called thinking. Second. Specifically, all acts of reflection are thinkings. Under this head we notice two points. a. That act of the Understanding in which an object presented by the Sense is analyzed, and its special and generic elements noted, and is thus classified, and its relations determined, is properly a thinking. Thus, in the object cat I distinguish specifically that it is domestic, and generically that it is carnivorous. b. That act of the finite spiritual person by which he compares the judgments of the Understanding with the a priori laws of the Pure Reason, and by this final standard decides their truth or error. Thus, the judgment of the young Indian warrior is, that he ought to hunt down and slay the man who killed his father in battle. The standard of Reason is, that Malice is criminal. This judgment is found to involve malice, and so is found to be wrong. Third, the intuitions of the reason. These, in the finite person, come after a process of reflection, and are partly consequent upon it; yet they take place in another faculty, which is developed by this process; but they are such, that by no process of reflection alone could they be. Thinking, in the Universal Genius, is the sight, at once and forever, of all possible object of mental effort. It is necessary and spontaneous, and so is an endowment, not an attainment; and is possessed without effort. We are prepared now to entertain the following statements:—
A. So far as it represents thinking as the active, i. e. causative ground, or agent of the condition, the dictum is not true. The fact of the thinking is not, cannot be, the ground of the condition. The condition of the object thought, whatever the form of thinking may be, must lie as far back at least as the ground of the thinker. Thus, God's self, as ground for his Genius, must also be ground for all conditions. Yet men think of an object in its conditions. This is because the same Being who constructed the objects in their conditions, constructed also man as thinker, correlated to those conditions, so that he should think upon things as they are. In this view, to think is not condition, but is mental activity in the conditions already imposed. Thus it is with the Understanding; and the process of thinking, as above designated, goes on in accordance with the law stated in a, of the second general definition. It follows, therefore,
B. That so far as the dictum expresses the fact, that within the sphere of conditions proper,—observing the distinction of conditions into two classes heretofore made,—the finite intellect must act under them, and see those objects upon which they lie, accordingly,—as, for instance, a geometrical figure must be seen in Time and Space,—so far it is true, and no farther. For instance: To see an eagle flying, is to see it under all the conditions imposed upon the bird as flying, and the observer as seeing. But when men intuit the a priori truth, Malice is criminal, they perceive that it lies under no conditions proper, but is absolute and universal. We perceive, then,
C. That for all mental operations which have as object pure laws and ideal forms, and that Being in whom all these inhere, this dictum is not true. The thinker may be conditioned in the proper sense of that term; yet he entertains objects of thought which are unconditioned; and they are not affected by it. Thus, it does not affect the universality of the principle in morals above noted that I perceive it to be such, and that necessarily.
Assuming, then, that by the dictum, To think is to condition, is meant, not that the thinker, by the act of thinking, constructs the conditions, but that he recognizes in himself, as thinking subject, and in the object thought, the several conditions (proper) thereof,—the following statements will define the province of this dictum.
1. The Universe as physical object, the observing Sense, and the discursive Understanding, lie wholly within it.
2. Created spiritual persons, as constituted beings, also lie wholly within it. But it extends no farther. On the other hand,
3. Created spiritual persons, in their capacities to intuit pure laws, and pure ideal forms; and those laws and forms themselves lie wholly without it.
4. So also does God the absolute Being in whom those laws and forms inhere. Or, in general terms,
When conditions (proper) already lie upon the object thought, since the thinker must needs see the object under its conditions, it is true that, To think is to condition. But so far as it is meant that thinking is such a kind of operation that it cannot proceed except the object be conditioned, it is not true; for there are processes of thought whose objects are unconditioned.