PROP. III.————
The unit of cognition further explainedthe unit or minimum of cognition may consist of: it matters not how clearly we may be able to distinguish these elements from each other when the whole unit or minimum is before us. These circumstances do not make the unit of cognition more than a unit or minimum. However numerous its elements may be, the unit is still a mere unit, if the whole of them are required to make up one datum of knowledge. The only circumstance which could prove the unit of cognition, consisting of the two factors subject and object, to be more than a unit, would be the entire removal of either of its factors, and the continuance of the other factor by itself as a unit or minimum of cognition. But such a removal and such a continuance have been seen to be impossible. Therefore, subject and object, though capable of being discriminated as the two elements of our knowledge, are, in their duality, still a single unit of cognition: because the one of them cannot be removed from any datum of knowledge without extinguishing the datum altogether.
No essential but only an accidental difference between the minimum and the maximum of cognition8. The minimum scibile per se, consisting of subject and object, is only accidentally but not essentially enlarged by augmenting the objective factor. Popularly considered, the universe plus me is greater than a grain of sand plus me. But this difference is altogether trivial, and of no account in philosophy. Let Y represent the subject, and X the object. So