COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



perience of fire. You may, like a mediseval sor- 

 cerer, envelop your hand in a soapy substance 

 which will, for a few moments, check oxida- 

 tion of the epidermis ; or you may insert your 

 hand in the blaze and withdraw it again so 

 quickly that, since chemical action takes time, 

 oxidation will not have a chance to begin, and 

 your skin will escape ; — these are disturbing 

 conditions. But to say that, in the absence of 

 such conditions, the blaze will not burn your 

 inserted hand, is to state a proposition which is 

 unthinkable, — a proposition of which the ele- 

 ments cannot be united in thought save by their 

 mutual destruction. Why is this proposition un- 

 thinkable ? It is because not only the material 

 of our knowledge but our very mental structure 

 itself, as I shall hereafter show, is due solely to 

 that perpetual intercourse between subject and 

 object which we call experience, — so that, what- 

 ever verbal feats we may succeed in accomplish- 

 ing, we can unite in thought no subject and 

 predicate for the union of which experience has 

 not in some way or other supplied the condi- 

 tions. I do not mean to say that the proposi- 

 tion in question is not one which some ingenious 

 person might stoutly maintain as a theory. We 

 might, no doubt, hold the theory that Fire does 

 not burn, just as we might espouse the doctrine 

 that Triangles are circular, or that Matter is de- 

 structible. But as was sufficiently proved in the 

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