314 Heredity. 



thought. But when we say, in a purely relative sense, that our 

 thought is for us the measure of being, we enunciate an un- 

 questionable truth, almost a truism ; and from this purely human 

 point of view we may affirm that the world has no existence for 

 us, except in so far as it is thinkable. The world is a system of 

 unknown qualities which we explain with the assistance of another 

 unknown quality, thought ; the latter, however, still remains the x 

 of an unsolvable equation. 



If, then, we see that thought is both an ultimate cause in meta- 

 physics and an ultimate principle in logic, we must not be surprised 

 at finding it impossible to answer that apparently simple question, 

 What is thought ? We are utterly unable to go beyond external 

 and superficial explanations, and to get at the essence of thought. 



Under its phenomenal form, thought is a simplification. To 

 think is to simplify, to reduce plurality to unity. All the objects 

 of our states of consciousness must be either concrete or abstract, 

 and we cannot get at either of these but by a process of simpli- 

 fication. In the first place, those objects which we call concrete 

 a house, a man, a star are extended, and yet can enter into our 

 thought only under the form of a simple series, only under the 

 condition of time. We know not how an act which has no ex- 

 tension can represent an extended object how time can for us 

 take the place of space. But it is certain that concrete objects 

 are knowable for us only on this condition, and that to refer space 

 to time is to refer the complex to the simple to simplify. 



To obtain our abstract cognitions we must abstract, generalize, 

 induce and deduce, and all these operations in the last analysis 

 amount to classification according to resemblances and differences, 

 or to simplification. Thought, therefore, is the unifying principle 

 which reduces to order the chaos of the universe. To think is 

 to unify. 



But this unification is but the process, the mechanism of thought. 

 When we speak of our cognition of thought, we mean only the 

 forms of thought. We cannot go beyond this, nor can we know 

 how, by means of our consciousness, there is formed in our minds 

 a world answering to, though not resembling, all that is without 

 us. All discussion, therefore, with regard to the nature of 

 thought, is concerned only with its forms; and when we assert 



