THEORY OF KNOWING.
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PROP. III.————
Inseparability in cognition not to be confounded with inseparability in space: the external and the internal.apprehending things as separate or as separable in cognition from ourselves in any sense whatever. It is to be suspected that some misconception on this point has been pretty general among the cultivators of philosophy, and that some who may have had a glimpse of the truth have shrunk from advocating, and even from contemplating, the inseparability in cognition of subject and object, from confounding this idea with the idea of their inseparability in space. Subject and object may be separated from each other in space more widely than the poles; it is only in cognition that they are absolutely inseparable. They may very well be separated in space; but space itself cannot be separated in cognition from the subject—space is always known and thought of as my cognisance of space—therefore a separation in space has no effect whatever in bringing about a separation in cognition, of object from subject. The cultivators of philosophy just referred to seem to have been apprehensive lest, in denying the separability in cognition of subject and object, they might appear to be calling in question the existence of external things, and thereby falling into idealism. As if any genuine idealism ever denied the existence of external things,—ever denied that these things were actually and bonâ fide external to us. Idealism never denied this: it only asks what is the meaning of "external" considered out of all relation to "internal," and it shows that, out of this
