Our first
imperfect notion of things as isolated from each other, or connected
only by co-existence and succession, is a mere imagination of things.
It is a fictitious substantiation of isolated moments in the eternal
Being. Knowledge, so far as it deals with the finite, is engaged in a
continual process of self-correction which can never be completed, for
at every step there is an element of falsity, in so far as the mind
rests in the contemplation of a certain number of the elements of the
world, as if they constituted a complete whole by themselves, whereas
they are only a part, the conception of which has to be modified at
the next step of considering its relation to the other parts. Thus we
rise from individuals of the first to individuals of the second order,
and we cannot stop short of the idea of "all nature as one individual
whose parts vary through an infinite number of modes, without change
of the whole individual."[35] At first we think of pieces of matter as
independent individuals, either because we can picture them
separately, or because they preserve a certain proportion or relation
of parts through their changes. But on further consideration, these
apparent substances sink into modes, each of which is dependent on all
the others. All nature is bound together by necessary law, and not an
atom could be other than it is without the change of the whole world.
Hence it is only in the whole world that there is any true
individuality or substance. And the same principle applies to the
minds of men. Their individuality is a mere semblance caused by our
abstraction from their conditions. Isolate the individual man, and he
will not display the character of a thinking being at all. His whole
spiritual life is bound up with his relations to other minds, past and
present. He has such a life, only in and through that universal life
of which he is so infinitesimal a part that his own contribution to it
is as good as nothing. "Vis qua homo in existendo perseverat limitata
est, et a potentia causarum externarum infinite superatur."[36] What
can be called his own? His body is a link in a cyclical chain of
movement which involves all the matter of the world, and which as a
whole remains without change through all. His mind is a link in a
great movement of thought, which makes him the momentary organ and
expression of one of its phases. His very conscious