identify the Creator with the Creaton; or else represent the Supreme Being as a mere impersonal Law or ordo ordinans, differing from the Law of Gravitation only by its universality.
[77] I have elsewhere remarked on the assistance which those that labour after distinct conceptions would receive from the re-introduction of the terms objective, and subjective, objective and subjective reality, and the like, as substitutes for real and notional, and to the exclusion of the false antithesis between real and ideal. For the Student in that noblest of the sciences, the scire teipsum, the advantage would be especially great.[78] The few sentences that follow, in illustration of the terms here advocated, will not, I trust, be a waste of the reader's time.
The celebrated Euler having demonstrated certain properties of arches, adds: "All experience is in contradiction to this; but this is no reason for doubting its truth." The words sound paradoxical; but mean no more than this--that the mathematical properties of figure and space are not less certainly the properties of figure and space because they can never be perfectly realized in wood, stone, or iron. Now this assertion of Euler's might be expressed at once, briefly and simply, by saying, that the properties in question were subjectively true, though not objectively--or that the mathematical arch possessed a subjective reality though incapable of being realized objectively.
In like manner if I had to express my conviction, that space was not itself a thing, but a mode or form of perceiving, or the inward ground and condition in the percipient, in consequence of which things are seen as outward and co-existing, I convey this at once by the words, space is subjective, or space is real in and for the subject alone.
If I am asked, Why not say in and for the mind, which every one would understand? I reply: we know indeed, that all minds are Subjects; but are by no means certain, that all subjects are minds. For a mind is a subject that knows itself, or a subject that is its own object. The inward principle of Growth and individual Form in every seed and plant is a subject, and without any exertion of poetic privilege poets may speak of the soul of the flower. But the man would be a dreamer, who otherwise than poetically should speak of roses and lilies as self-conscious subjects. Lastly, by the assistance of the terms, Object and Subject, thus used as correspondent opposites, or as negative and positive in physics (for example, negative and positive electricity) we may arrive at the distinct import and proper use of the strangely misused word, idea. And as the forms of logic are all borrowed from geometry (Ratiocinatio discursiva formas suas sive canonas recipit ab intuitu) I may be permitted to elucidate my present meaning. Every line may be, and by the ancient Geometricians was, considered as a point produced, the two extremes being its poles, while the point itself remains in, or is at least represented by, the midpoint, the indifference of the two poles or correlative opposites. Logically applied, the two extremes or poles are named Thesis and Antithesis: thus in the line
I T-----------------------A
we have T = Thesis, A = Antithesis, and I = Punctum Indifferens sive amphotericum, which latter is to be conceived as both in as far as it may be either of the two former. Observe: not both at the same time in the same relation; for this would be the identity of T and A, not the indifference:--but so, that relatively to A, I is equal to T, and relatively to T it becomes = A. For the purposes of the universal Noetic, in which we require terms of most comprehension and least specific import, might not the Noetic Pentad be,--
Prothesis. Sum. Thesis. Methosesis. Antithesis. Res. Agere. Ago, Patior. Synthesis. Agens.