THEORY OF KNOWING.
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PROP. VII.————
my ordinary thinking, is a particular and completed cognition, distinct from the other two, just as they are distinct from each other. There cannot be a doubt that this, in our ordinary moods, is the way in which we reckon up the relation which subsists between ourselves and surrounding things.
Corrective illustration.26. But this reckoning is at variance both with fact and with reason. It is contradictory; it implies that there can be a knowledge of the particular without a knowledge of the universal, a knowledge of things without a knowledge of me. It never really and truly takes place; it only appears to take place. The true reckoning is this: the book and "I" together constitute a distinct and completed cognition. The tree and "I" together constitute another distinct and completed cognition. In short, whatever the things or complexus of things may be, it is always they and "I" together which make up the cognition: but such a cognition never is and never can be particular; it is always a synthesis of the particular (the thing, or rather element, whatever it may be) and the universal (the me). When I observe a book, I also observe myself; when I observe a tree, I also observe myself; when II think of Julius Cæsar, I also take note of myself; and so on (see Prop. HI, Obs. 4.) Is not this consideration sufficient to prove, and to make perfectly intelligible, the statement
