Page:Vocation of Man (1848).djvu/95

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KNOWLEDGE.
95

the fullest insight into the origin of my conceptions of objects out of myself.

1. I am absolutely, because I am conscious of this I,—myself; and that partly as a practical being, partly as an intelligence. The first consciousness is Sensation, the second Intuition—unlimited space.
2. I cannot comprehend the unlimited, for I am finite. I therefore set apart, in thought, a certain portion of universal space, and place the former in a certain relation to the latter.
3. The measure of this limited portion of space is the extent of my own sensibility, according to a principle which may be thus expressed:—Whatever affects me in such or such a manner is to be placed, in space, in such or such relations to the other things which affect me.

The properties or attributes of the object proceed from the perception of my own internal state; the space which it fills, from intuitive contemplation. By a process of thought, both are conjoined; the former being added to the latter. It is, assuredly, as we have stated above;—that which is merely a state or affection of myself, by being transferred or projected into space becomes an attribute of the object; but it is so projected into space, not by intuition, but by thought, by measuring, regulating thought. Not that this act is to be regarded as an intellectual discovery or creation; but only as a more exact definition, by means of thought, of something which is already given in sensation and intuition, independent of all thought.

Spirit. Whatever affects me in such or such a manner is to be placed in such or such relations:—thus