THE OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE. 371 natural consequences of the assumption of spiritual memory. To escape such a concatenation of absurdities, there remains to Transcendentalism but one outlet. It has unambiguously to declare nature abolished altogether, which, indeed, it is implicitly already doing. There is thus left on the scene nothing but spirit, which in its all-embracing completeness must be the world-totality in unconscious repose. Any stir or throb in the equipoise of the perfect unity of the One- and-All would produce consciousness, yielding like lightning partial illuminations, which illuminations are our mental states all the rest vapid illusion. I hardly think that we are in imminent danger of any such nihilistic interpretation of individual consciousness. Keinenibered phenomena, arising at once as complete figurations in definite sequence, are evidently already duly synthetised. If, therefore, memory may be considered in any degree organic, it is clear that the synthetising power, active in the reviving process, must also be of organic con- sistency, and cannot possibly be a force exerted by a spiritual agent on uncombined memory-elements in the very instant of their re-emergence into consciousness. As regards simultaneous representation, I have explained in former articles how all organic elaboration and function conspire to establish the microcosmic focus of momentary mental realisation, which I have called the " mental pre- sence ". It needs, really, only a correct understanding of Organisa- tion to make it impossible for any thinker to dispense with its teachings in the interpretation of the facts of conscious- ness. Unfortunately, our literary education renders us too apt to lean in our reasonings on words, whose meaning we only very generally and vaguely realise, and also to give our- selves up to emotions nurtured in the same artificial and pliable medium, and not in actual contact with the stern realities of life. Who of us has not at one time or another had his full swing in those boundless realms of frictionless flight ? But how many a fine mind has been for ever un- profitably dissipated in the serenely rarified atmosphere of such uncontrolled thought ! How many a nation has been mortally convulsed, or has utterly perished through deadly struggle of its thought-phantoms with the inexorable realities of nature ! Let young thinkers of our time seek to gain as concerning us most nearly at present an insight into what Transcendentalism has practically done for Germany from 1815 to 1848, and may they benefit by so eloquent a lesson ! "V hen a student in Germany, a quarter of a century ago,
