PROP. IX.————
that to suppose matter to become a nonentity in the supposed withdrawal or annihilation of (every) me, would be to suppose it still in connection with the very factor which we profess to have withdrawn. Accordingly the conclusion is, first, if we can suppose all intelligence at an end, matter, although it would cease to be an entity, would not become a nonentity. It would become the contradictory—it would be neither nothing nor anything.[1] And secondly, we can not conceive all intelligence at an end, because we must conceive, under any circumstances, either that something exists or that nothing exists. But neither the existence nor the non-existence of things is conceivable out of relation to an intelligence—and therefore the highest and most binding law of all reason is, that in no circumstances can a supreme mind be conceived to be abstracted from the universe. The system which inculcates these truths may be termed a philosophy of real-idealism. It loses hold of nothing which the unreflective mind considers to be real; but seizing on the material universe, and combining it inseparably with an additional element it absorbs it in a new product, which it gives out as the only true and substantial universe—the only universe which any
- ↑ It is a remarkable confirmation of this conclusion, that Plato found himself unable to affirm either the existence or the non-existence of the material universe per se. But not having distinctly reduced matter per se to a contradiction, he failed to fathom and to exhibit the grounds of this inability.
