‘entity’ in the grapes of the bunch irresolvable into grapes. And that, as we know, has been exploded long ago. We feel that there are, and must be, some questions it is useless to ask; and if we use self-control, and abstain from asking them, we still, as before, can see things very well.
But here, unfortunately, our troubles are not over: this collection is aware of itself; it talks about itself as if it were simple. And this it is impossible to picture at all; and we here (I speak for myself, so far as I have tried) are reduced to despair; for we want to keep the collection steadily before us, and yet, as often as we have to imagine it aware of itself, our picture is at once in confusion, and we do not know what we have before us at all: all we are sure of is that it is not a collection, while we know all the time that it really is so; and we must comfort ourselves, I suppose, by saying that, so long as we remain ‘scientific,’ such difficulties as these must not be made too much of. But when we hear collections affirming that they really are not collections, and saying that what is many is really at the same time one, and that what is complex is really at the same time simple, and that what is different is none the less identical; and declaring that all this is contained in that which they call themselves, and which they say it is impossible for them to doubt of, because existence, for them, implies the thinking so—then we know with whom we have to do. These collections are trying to be ‘entities’ and ‘things in themselves’ or perhaps even the Absolute; and that is the only reason they have for saying these things, which can not be true, because, if they were, what we say would be false. This matter Hume—whom we have our reasons for not talking about, but keep, as it were, in reserve—has settled, and settled for ever. Such beliefs are nothing but fictions of the mind, and the mind itself is a fiction of the mind.
Let us take an illustration. We have all seen onions on a rope. Now each of these onions is not any other onion—it may be taken by itself, as a separate individual; and yet each of these onions is a state of the rope of onions. And further, this rope of onions is aware of itself—it talks about itself and generally comports itself as if it were inseparable, and, no doubt, it really is what it calls self-conscious. But here is the beginning of delusion; for, talking
