context, which is not comprehended. And hence the connection observed is, to this extent, bare conjunction and mere co-existence. Or it is chance, when you measure it by a higher necessity. It is a truth conditioned by our ignorance, and so contingent and belonging to the “this.” But, upon the other side, we have seen that the “this” can hold nothing. As soon as a relation is made out, that is universal knowledge, and has at once transcended presentation. For within the merely “this” no relation, taken as such, is possible. The content, if you distinguish it, is to that extent set free from felt unity. And there is no “what” which essentially adheres to the bare moment. So far as any element remains involved in the confusion of feeling, that is but due to our defect and ignorance. Hence, to repeat, the “this,” considered as mere feeling, is certainly positive. As the absence of universal relations, the “this” again is negative. But, as an attempt to make and to retain distinctions of content, the “this” is suicidal.
It is so too with the “mere mine.” We hear in discussions on morality, or logic, or æsthetics, that a certain detail is “subjective,” and hence irrelevant. Such a detail, in other words, belongs to the “mere mine.” And a mistake may be made, and we may imagine that there is matter which, in itself, is contingent.[1] It may be supposed that an element, such perhaps as pleasure, is a fixed part of something called the “this-me.” But there is no content which, as such, can belong to the “mine.” The “mine” is my existence taken as immediate fact, as an integral whole of psychical elements which simply are. It is my content, so far as not freed from the feeling moment. And it is merely my content, because it is not subordinate to this or that ideal whole. If I regard a mental fact, say, from the side
- ↑ Or again, having no clear ideas, we may try to help ourselves with such phrases as “the individuality of the individuals.”
