is it surprising that they come together, since abstraction alone has separated them?—On the first hypothesis, the material object is nothing of all that we perceive: you put on one side the conscious principle with the sensible qualities, and on the other a matter of which you can predicate nothing, which you define by negations because you have begun by despoiling it of all that reveals it to us. In the second, an ever-deepening knowledge of matter becomes possible. Far from depriving matter of anything perceived, we must on the contrary bring together all sensible qualities, restore their relationship, and re-establish among them the continuity broken by our needs. Our perception of matter is, then, no longer either relative or subjective, at least in principle, and apart, as we shall see presently, from affection and especially from memory; it is merely dissevered by the multiplicity of our needs.—On the first hypothesis, spirit is as unknowable as matter, for you attribute to it the undefinable power of evoking sensations we know not whence, and of projecting them, we know not why, into a space where they will form bodies. On the second, the part played by consciousness is clearly defined: consciousness means virtual action; and the forms acquired by mind, those which hide the essence of spirit from us, should, with the help of this second principle, be removed as so many concealing veils. Thus, on our hypothesis, we begin to see the possibility of a clearer
