V. MIND.
Mind has a certain a priori constitution; this is our inference. It must be so, or else we could never have any experience whatever. It is the only way in which the possibility of apodeictic knowledge can be accounted for. What I do not get from without I must get from within, if I have it at all. Mind, it would seem from this, cannot be, according to its nature, a finite affair—a thing with properties. Were it limited in Time or Space, it could never (without transcending itself) conceive Time and Space as universally continuous or infinite. Mind is not within Time and Space, it is as universal and necessary as the apodeictic judgments it forms, and hence it is the substantial essence of all that exists. Time and Space are the logical conditions of finite existences, and Mind is the logical condition of Time and Space. Hence it is ridiculous to speak of my mind and your mind, for mind is rather the universal substrate of all individuality than owned by any particular individual.
These results are so startling to the one who first begins to think, that he is tempted to reject the whole. If he does not do this, but scrutinizes the whole fabric keenly, he will discover what he supposes to be fallacies. We cannot anticipate the answer to his objections here, for his objections arise from his inability to distinguish between his imagination and his thinking and this must be treated of in the next chapter. Here, we can only interpose an earnest request to the reader to persevere and thoroughly refute the whole argument before he leaves it. But this is only one and the most elementary position from which the philosophic traveller sees the Eternal Verities. Every perfect analysis—no matter what the subject be—will bring us to the same result, though the degrees of concreteness will vary,—some leaving the solution in an abstract and vague form,—others again arriving at a complete and satisfactory view of the matter in detail.
SEED LIFE.
BY E. V.
Ah! woe for the endless stirring,
The hunger for air and light,
The fire of the blazing noonday
Wrapped round in a chilling night!
The muffled throb of an instinct
That is kin to the mystic To Be;