The difference between conception and perception, the imaginary and the real, the general abstract idea and the individual concrete presentation, amounts to this: that in the case of perception we have, in addition to the conceived relations which constitute the idea of the object, the thought that this idea is or has been felt; whereas in pure conception relations are considered independently of the impressions which they determine, i.e. of the fact that these impressions are or are not present. In the case of the single concrete idea, there is but one actual or possible impression, determined by a network of relations which are extremely numerous, and which have been noted more or less vaguely from the first; whilst simpler and more general relations may be equally well verified by a large number of relations without determining any one of them. A perfectly adequate conception of the conditions of a phenomenon would therefore in no way differ from its reality, since it would of necessity include amongst those conditions the relation that the phenomenon can be and is felt.
If objects exist only by virtue of their relations, relations in their turn are possessed of no consistency apart from the harmonious system of all relations, towards which of its very nature thought must tend. The consciousness of a unique system of relations at once universal and coherent is the criterion of truth and reality to which we unconsciously look even in our most elementary acts of judgment: a relation is real and true when it is in logical agreement with the whole manifold of known and knowable relations, and is false when it contradicts them.[1] Macbeth, when he imagines that he sees a dagger before him, is deceived because he has established false relations between his own actual sensations and other sensations, relations, that is to say, which are out of harmony with the whole system of relations constituting the universe. All our researches into the objective nature of appearances have one and the same aim — the discovery of an unchangeable order
- ↑ Op. cit. p. 18 ff.
