Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/291

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THE CONCEPTION OF GOD

a place in the individual whole now called “our space,” or, at all events, the space of “our environment.” But if one is to learn how we first individuated this space, one must not argue in a circle by first pointing out that this thing, in this part of our environment, is, as such, an individual by virtue of its relations to the presupposed whole of surrounding space, and by then saying that surrounding space gets its individuality through the mere summation of the individualities of the things and places that fill it up. We are still to see how the impenetrable thing first becomes presented as an individual. And my comment so far is, that, just as the field of vision, viewed in itself, presents us no individuals, but only sense-qualities, some combinations of which exclude other combinations, just so the addition of other sense-qualities, of local signs belonging to touch and to the muscular sense, in no wise alters, of itself, the logical situation with which we are dealing. The local signs, the sense-qualities, — they are all universals. Their segmentation, their repugnance, is, so far, like the segmentation of good and evil, or the repugnance of A and not-A in general. It presents us, as yet, no individuation, — only varieties and relationships of types. That the sense-qualities are universals, and that the local signs which were to be so important for individuation are universals, is proved by the very experiences to which one refers when one talks of individuation through impenetrability. The concrete thing A, which sense cognises, is not only coloured, but unyielding. What does this mean? It means that touch, sensations of re-