PROP. XIII.————
Why we cannot cogitate matter per se—no single type.intelligence has, or can have, any type or model whereby to construct it in thought. Had we been furnished with any single instance of such a type, we could multiply in thought that type as often as we pleased, and represent to ourselves a world, or a plurality of worlds, per se. There is no transgression of the laws of thought involved in the supposition that what has once been known may be repeated—and repeated in a great variety of fashions. But we have not, and cannot have, a single type given us whereby to cogitate matter per se at all. We are not supplied even with an example of a grain of sand per se. Proposition I. settles that point. And, therefore no model whatever of matter per se being presentable to us in knowledge, the material universe per se must for ever remain absolutely irrepresentable by us in thought
We have a single type of objects+subject—can conceive other cases of this.7. But the case is totally different in regard to the universe mecum. In thinking of objects plus another subject, we are restrained by no such incapacity as that which paralyses us when we would cogitate the universe plus no subject at all. Each of us has had an instance of this synthesis given to him in his own knowledge or experience. Each man apprehends the universe (or parts of it) with the addition of himself; and therefore there is nothing whatever to prevent him from conceiving the same process to take place in an unlimited
