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THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT.
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CHAPTER VI.
In knowing anything one only knows the states of one's own consciousness, for knowledge is the very nature of the soul. No one can possibly know another except by observing the effect of the presence of that other on one's own consciousness. Hence, the soul only takes note of the modifications of its own substance, called states of consciousness.
CHAPTER VII. The soul is a reality, or substance, because it exists, and because existence is a quality of substance.* If existence were not a quality of substance, it would appertain to that which is devoid
* The word substance used in connection with the soul need cause us no alarm, since it merely denotes subsistence, existence or being, and is not confined to matter. In philosophy, substance is that which underlies or is the permanent subject or cause of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual; the subject which we imagine to underlie the attributes or qualities by which alone we are conscious of existence; that which exists independently and unchangeably, in contradistinction to accident, which denotes any of the changes of changeable phenomena in substance, whether these phenomena are necessary or casual, in which latter case they are called accidents in a narrower sense.... Substance is, with respect to the mind, a merely logical distinction from its attributes. We can never imagine it, but we are compelled to assume it. We cannot conceive substance shorn of its attributes, because those attributes are the sole staple of our
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