or rather non-circumstanced—to be a nonentity (as Mr Cairns would insinuate), but only a non-sensical—an absolutely inconceivable. According to my system a truly existing mind is a mind with some environment of states—some accompaniment either of thoughts, or of things. Is there anything so very wrong in that opinion? As for the statement that I have proved, "that the mind cannot know, without some object of knowledge," this is another piece of silliness which Mr Cairns has fathered upon me so politely and so truly.
The fourth result with which Mr Cairns debits my system is this:—
"IV. That it subverts the substantiality of the mind, renders all consistent belief in personal identity, so vital to intelligence and responsibility, impossible; and suspends on the successive thought of the individual the existence of God and the universe."
To this article, I answer, First, I do not subvert the substantiality of the mind. On the contrary, I confirm it, by making the substantiality of the mind to consist in its being the One great Permanent, and Immutable Constituent, amid all the fluctuating states by which it may be visited, or the transitory things among which it may be placed. Mr Cairns has no idea of substantiality, except as something on which he can lay his hands. Plato has sufficiently ridiculed these tallow-brained materialists; so, without another word on this point, I shall leave my reverend censor to stand by the order to which he belongs.
Secondly, My system not only does not render all consistent belief in personal identity "impossible;" it is the only system in the world of which that belief is a vital and essential part. Personal identity is accidental to all other philosophical schemes; to mine it is the very breath of life. Take from it this, and it dies. What is the assertion of personal identity, except the assertion that there can be no knowledge—no continued consciousness, without the presence, amid all the fluctuations of cognition, of
