The words _I_, YOU, THEY, are not signs of
any actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts
thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different
modifications of the one mind.
Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous
presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one
mind. I am but a portion of it. The words _I_, and YOU, and THEY,
are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally
devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to
them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle
a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has
conducted us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and what
wonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little
we know. The relations of THINGS remain unchanged, by whatever system.
By the word THINGS is to be understood any object of thought, that
is any thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an
apprehension of distinction.
The relations of these remain unchanged; and such is the material
of our knowledge. What is the cause of life? that is, how was it
produced, or what agencies distinct from life have acted or act
upon life? All recorded generations of mankind have weariedly busied
themselves in inventing answers to this question; and the result
has been,--Religion. Yet, that the basis of all things cannot be,
as the popular philosophy alleges, mind, is sufficiently evident.
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