Page:Vocation of Man (1848).djvu/67

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KNOWLEDGE.
67

ject but what is perceptible,—what is a property or attribute;—this perceptibility thou extendest through a continuous space which is divisible to infinity; and the true substratum or supporter of the attributes of things which thou hast sought, is, therefore, only the space which is thus filled?

I. Although I cannot be satisfied with this, but feel that I must still suppose in the object something more than this perceptibility and the space which it fills, yet I cannot point out this something, and I must therefore confess that I have hitherto been unable to discover any substratum but space itself.

Spirit. Always confess whatever thou perceivest to be true. The present obscurities will gradually become clear, and the unknown will be made known. Space itself, however, is not perceived; and thou canst not understand how thou hast obtained this conception, or why thou extendest throughout it this property of perceptibility?

I. It is so.

Spirit. As little dost thou understand how thou hast obtained even this conception of a perceptibility out of thyself, since thou really perceivest only thine own sensation in thyself, not as the property of an external thing, but as an affection of thine own being.

I. So it is. I see clearly that I really perceive only my own state, and not the object; that I neither see, feel, nor hear this object; but that, on the contrary, precisely there where the object should be, all seeing, feeling, and so forth, comes to an end.

But I have a presentiment. Sensations, as affections of myself, have no extension whatever, but are simple states; in their differences they are not contiguous to