Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 24 1 



connect them ; if we cut an apple into twenty pieces, and scatter 

 them to the winds from the summit of a tower, these scattered 

 fragments no longer make up an apple. The same would be the 

 case with that phenomenal, disintegrated, and unconnected plurality, 

 which nothing can reduce to unity. But, like the ego and the non- 

 ego, the internal and the external are correlative terms, and the 

 one cannot be assumed without the other ; if I cannot know my- 

 self, I cannot know anything ; and thus, if there is no unity of 

 consciousness there is no cognition, whether internal or external, 

 nor is there in the universe any such thing as thought To 

 suppose, as some appear to have done, that the unity of the ego 

 is nothing but the continuity of the consciousness, is an illusion, 

 for consciousness being, as we have seen, discontinuous, could 

 produce only an intermittent unity. 



Thus, then, we find it impossible to reach a conclusion, or 

 rather, we find ourselves forced to conclude that here science ends 

 and metaphysics begins. We are face to face with the unknow- 

 able ; it is within us, in the profoundest depths of our being. We 

 are equally unable to suppress the two terms of our antinomy and 

 to reconcile them ; equally unable to say whether our unity is real 

 or only apparent. The fact is, that the study of the ultimate con- 

 ditions of consciousness withstands analysis. The analytical 

 method is the only one possible, and here the analytical method is 

 illusory. We think we have explained a complex fact, when, by 

 successive simplifications, we have reduced it to its constituent 

 elements. And this is generally true ; but in the biological and 

 psychological order, the synthesis made after analysis is not iden- 

 tical with the synthesis that existed prior to analysis. Here the 

 whole is not equal to the sum of the parts. Chemistry, by its syn- 

 thesis and analysis, enables us to understand this apparent paradox. 

 It shows that if two or more simple bodies, each having special 

 properties, combine, the resulting whole usually possesses physi- 

 cal, chemical, and physiological characteristics altogether different 

 from those of its constituent parts ; thus, sulphuric acid resem- 

 bles neither sulphur nor oxygen. In the mental order there are 

 analogous combinations, and possibly our ego is one which is 

 made and unmade every moment. But we cannot know this. 

 We must, then, be on our guard against supposing that we have 



