Page:Vocation of Man (1848).djvu/72

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72
BOOK II.

sensation itself. I see in them therefore not external senses, but only particular definitions of the objects of the inward sense, of my own states or affections. How they become external senses, or, more strictly speaking, how I come to regard them as such and so to name them, is now the question. I do not take back my admission that I have no organ for the object itself.

Spirit. Yet thou speakest of objects as if thou didst really know of their existence, and hadst an organ for such knowledge?

I. Yes.

Spirit. And this thou dost, according to thy previous assumption, in consequence of the knowledge which thou really dost possess, and for which thou hast an organ, and on account of this knowledge?

I. It is so.

Spirit. Thy real knowledge, that of thy sensations or affections, is to thee like an imperfect knowledge, which, as thou sayest, requires to be completed by another. This other new knowledge thou conceivest and describest to thyself,—not as something which thou hast, for thou hast it not,—but as something which thou shouldst have, over and above thy actual knowledge, if thou hadst an organ wherewith to apprehend it. “I know nothing indeed,” thou seemest to say, “of things in themselves, but such things there must be; if I could but find them, they are to be found.” Thou supposest another organ, which indeed is not thine, and this thou employest upon them, and thereby apprehendest them,—of course in thought only. Strictly speaking, thou hast no consciousness of things, but only a consciousness (produced by a procession out of