THEORY OF KNOWING.
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PROP. XVII.————
less, subsist in thought without any else subsisting there along with it; and thus it corresponds to the definition of known substance, which is all that is required to bear out the truth of the statement advanced in Proposition XVII. Any one may convince himself, without much difficulty, that he can think of things plus himself without thinking of anything more (and can therefore conceive the substantial); and also that he cannot think of anything less than this without thinking of something more; and, consequently, that whatever he thinks of as less than this completed synthesis, is thought of as the phenomenal, in conformity with the definition of phenomenon.
History of distinction between substance and phenomenon—its terms have been reversed.12. This article may be appropriately concluded by some brief notices of the history of this distinction between substance and phenomenon. In the first place, the most remarkable circumstance connected with it—as may have struck the reader from what has been already said—is the direct transposition of its terms which the distinction, as originally propounded, has sustained at the hands of psychology. The synthesis of object-plus-subject is the substantial (the substantial at least in cognition); while its constituents—object on the one hand, and subject on the other—are the mere phenomenal in cognition: this is undoubtedly the true, the intelligible, and, moreover, the ancient doctrine in regard
