Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/81

THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY. 69 of objects, sentient beings as its psychological Subjects, and material things as the Objects of those psychological Sub- jects, both which classes of objects are held to be reed exist- ents in opposition to their matrix, so to speak, the states and trains of consciousness which constitute the knowledge of them, and out of whose content they have been distin- guished. These states or trains of consciousness are matrix from the philosophical point of view, medium from the psychological. I have already shown the applicability of the method to this matrix generally. We have now to see its applicability to the matrix as opposed to, and distin- guished from, those two classes of real existents ; that is to say, to states or trains of consciousness as such, on the one hand, and to real existents on the other. Now this applicability is effected in the simplest manner. The conception of condition becomes applicable to conscious- ness and real existents severally, by introducing into con- sciousness in general, that is, as matrix or medium, a dis- tinction between conditions, corresponding to that already introduced into it between these two classes of objects. The conditions, upon which states and trains of consciousness as such depend, are themselves states or trains of conscious- ness ; they are feelings, imaginations, volitions, or thoughts, antecedent to or concomitant with those to which they give rise, and fall under the general name of conditions of knowing a thing, conditiones cognoscendi. Among these are some which are conditions of knowing for certain, by way either of immediate inspection or reasoning. These are logical con- ditions of truth. The remaining class of conditions, those upon which real existents and their trains of action depend, are themselves real existents, or actions of real existents ; and these are called by the general name of real conditions, or conditiones exist endi. The method is precisely the same as above described ; the distinction drawn in its cardinal con- ception of condition rendering it applicable to the distinction now existing in its object-matter. But there is a circumstance to be mentioned, which has been the source of much confusion. States of consciousness, you will have observed, appear twice over, once as the undis- tinguished matrix or medium, and once as the opposite of real existents ; a doubleness parallel to that noticed above in the case of analysis and genesis, and springing from the same root, namely, from the fact that Reflection is perception both of itself and its object, its total object being double, namely, self and object together. Here we have the same doubleness in the case of conditions. A state of consciousness has two sets of conditions, (1) other states of consciousness which