THEORY OF KNOWING.
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PROP. IX.————
The importance of reducing the ego per se to a contradiction, will be apparent in the ontology.
Why the word ego is used in these discussions.14. The words "ego," "me," or "self," have been repeatedly used in the course of these discussions, because, awkward and barbarous though they be, they are of a less hypothetical character than any other terms which can be employed to express what is intended. Whatever else a man may be, he is, at any rate—himself. He understands what he means when he utters the word "I," and, therefore, when such terms as "mind," or "subject," or "intelligence," are employed in these pages, they are to be regarded as strictly synonymous with this less ambiguous though egotistical monosyllable.
The individual or monad.15. The synthesis of the ego (which is the universal element of all cognition), and the things whatever they may be, or the mental states whatever they may be (which are the particular element of all cognition), is properly called "the individual." This is what Leibnitz expresses by the word "monad"—that is, the combination of the singular and the universal, or the soul and its presentations wrapt up together, and constituting the independent totality known by each individual intelligence,—the intelligence being a surd without something of which it is intelligent, and this something being a surd without the intelligence which