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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
a series of nerve changes of which, moreover, it knows nothing, it is plain that the object is a long way off. All talk of pictures, impressions, etc., ceases because of the lack of all the conditions to give such figures any meaning. It is not even clear that we shall ever find our way out of the darkness into the world of light and reality again. We begin with complete trust in physics and the senses, and are forth with led away from the object into a nervous labyrinth, where the object is entirely displaced by a set of nervous changes which are totally unlike anything but themselves. Finally, we land . in the dark chamber of the skull. The object has gone completely, and knowledge has not yet appeared. Nervous signs are the raw material of all knowledge of the outer world, according to the most decided realism. But in order to pass beyond these signs into a knowledge of the outer world, we must posit an interpreter who shall read back these signs into their objective meaning. But that interpreter, again, must implicitly contain the meaning of the universe within itself; and these signs are really but excitations which cause the soul to unfold what is within itself. Inasmuch as by common consent the soul communicates with the outer world only through these signs, and never comes nearer to the object than such signs can bring it, it follows that the principles of interpretation must be in the mind itself, and that the resulting construction is primarily only an expression of the mind's own nature. All reaction is of this sort; it expresses the nature of the reacting agents, and knowledge comes under the same head."
Even that great psychologist Prof. William James, found himself forced to recognise that the l' which knows cannot be an aggregate personality, though, as a psychologist, he did not feel called upon to pronounce judgment upon the precise question before us now. He writes :
“The consciousness of self involves a stream of thought, each part of which as 'I'can (1) remember those which went before, and know the things they knew; and (2) emphasize and care paramountly for certain ones among them as 'me' and appropriate to these the rest. The nucleus of the 'me' is always the bodily existence felt to be present at the time. This 'me' is an empirical aggregate of things objectively known. The 'I' which knows them cannot itself be an aggregate, neither for psychological purposes need it be con
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