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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. XIII.————
universe than this; but this kind of independent universe they permit us to construe to our heart's content.
Why we do not think of things as amorphous when they are absent from us.3. Another point which this proposition clears up is this: The reader may ask, When I suppose myself removed from this sublunary scene, why do I not think of it as relapsing into that amorphous and nonsensical state in which it is declared to be when dissociated altogether from me? Why do I think of it as still orderly and subsistent? Why does it not drop instantly into the gulf of the contradictory? Simply because you do not think of it as dissociated from every me. You cannot perform the abstraction. Whenever you think of material things which are no longer before you, you will find that you are either thinking of them and yourself as these were formerly apprehended together, or that you are thinking of them in connection with some other self or subject. It is through the performance of the latter operation that each of us is enabled to think the universe as independent of himself. This is not a matter of choice,—a mode in which we choose to think: it is a matter of necessity,—a mode in which we cannot help thinking. It is an operation which is done for us, and in spite of us, and in obedience to our deeper genius, who laughs to see how, even while we are performing it, we imagine ourselves to be doing something very dif-