Once, when a young man, I espied in the street a face in profile that was very displeasing and repulsive to me. I was not a little taken aback when a moment afterwards I found that it was my own, which, in passing by a place where mirrors were sold, I had perceived reflected from two mirrors that stood at the proper inclination to each other.
Not long ago, after a trying railway journey by night, being much fatigued, I got into an omnibus just as another gentleman appeared at the other end. "What degenerated pedagogue is that, who has just entered," thought I. It was myself: opposite me hung a large mirror. My ordinary dress, accordingly, was more familiar to me than my travelling attire.
The ego is as little absolutely permanent as bodies. That which we so greatly fear in death, the annihilation of our permanency, actually occurs in life in abundant measure. That which is most valued by us, remains preserved in countless copies, or, in cases of exceptional excellence, as a rule preserves itself. In the best human being, however, there are individual traits the loss of which neither he himself nor others need regret. Indeed, at times, death, viewed as liberation from individuality, can even become a pleasant thought.
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After the first survey has been obtained, by the formation of the concepts of substance, "body" "ego" (matter, soul), the will is impelled to a more exact examination of the changes that take place in this relatively permanent existence. The changeable element in bodies and in the ego, indeed, is the very thing that moves the will. Now, for the first time, do the constituent elements of the complex stand forth as properties of the same. A fruit is sweet; but it can also be bitter. So, too, other fruits can be sweet. The red color that is sought is found in many bodies. The neighborhood of some bodies is pleasant, that of others unpleasant. Thus, gradually, do different complexes appear to be composed of common constituent elements. The visible, the audible, the tangible, are separated from bodies. The visible is broken up into color and into form. Out of the manifold constitution of colors issue, again, in lesser numbers, certain other constituent elements—the primary colors, and so forth. The complexes are disintegrated into elements.
III.
The proper and useful habit of designating that which is permanent by a single name, and of comprehending the same in a single thought, without analysing at each operation its constituent parts, is liable to come into singular conflict with the tendency to separate these constituent parts. The obscure image formed of the permanent, which does not perceptibly change when one or another constituent part is taken away, appears to be something existent by itself. Inasmuch as it is possible to take away singly every constituent part without effecting the capacity of the image formed to represent the totality involved, or effecting its subsequent recognition, it is imagined that it is possible to take away all these parts and yet have something remaining. Thus arises the monstrous idea of a thing of itself, different from, and incognisable with relation to, its "phenomenal" existence.
Thing, body, matter, are nothing apart from this complex of colors, sounds, and so forth—apart from their so-called marks, or characteristics. That Protean, illusory philosophical problem of a single independent thing with many properties, arises from the misunderstanding of the fact, that extensive comprehension and accurate separation, although both are temporarily justifiable and profitable for a number of purposes, can not and must not be employed simultaneously. A body is single and unchangeable so long as it is not required to take details into consideration. Thus both the earth and a billiard ball are spheres so long as we disregard all minor deviations from the spherical form, and greater exactitude is not necessary. But if we are compelled to carry on investigations in orography or microscopy both bodies cease to be spheres.
IV.
Man possesses in pre-eminence the power to determine arbitrarily and consciously his point of view. He can at one time disregard the most salient features, and immediately afterwards take into account the smallest trifles; now regard a current of electricity as fixed, without consideration of its contents, and now determine the width of a Frauenhofer line in the solar spectrum; he can rise, at will, to the most general abstractions, or bury himself in the minutest particulars. The animal possesses this capacity in a much less degree. It does not assume a point of view, but usually is brought to it by impressions. The baby that does not recognise its father with his hat on, the dog that is perplexed at the new coat of its master, have succumbed in the conflict of points of view. Who has not been thus worsted in similar cases? Even the man of philosophy at times succumbs, as the fantastic problem above referred to, shows.