THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY. 157 



differences among manifestations. Indeed, thought exists 

 only through that kind of act which leads us, from moment 

 to moment, to refer certain manifestations to the one class 

 with which they have so many common attributes, and 

 others to the other class with which they have common 

 attributes equally numerous. And the myriad-fold repeti- 

 tion of these classings, bringing about the myriad-fold asso- 

 ciations of each manifestation with those of its own class, 

 brings about this union among the members of each class, 

 and this disunion of the two classes. 



Strictly speaking, this segregation of the manifestations 

 and coalescence of them into two distinct wholes, is in 

 great part spontaneous, and precedes all deliberate judg- 

 ments; though it is endorsed by such judgments when they 

 come to be made. For the manifestations of each order 

 have not simply that kind of union implied by grouping 

 them as individual objects of the same class; but, as we 

 have seen, they have the much more intimate union implied 

 by actual cohesion. This cohesive union exhibits itself 

 before any conscious acts of classing take place. So that, 

 in truth, these two contrasted orders of manifestations are 

 substantially self-separated and self-consolidated. The 

 members of each, by clinging to one another and parting 

 from their opposites, themselves form these united wholes 

 constituting object and subject. It is this self -union which 

 gives to these wholes formed of them, their individualities 

 as wholes, and that separateness from each other which 

 transcends judgment; and judgment merely aids the pre- 

 determined segregation by assigning to their respective 

 classes, such manifestations as have not distinctly united 

 themselves with the rest of their kind. 



One further perpetually-repeated act of judgment there 

 is, indeed, which strengthens this fundamental antithesis, 

 and gives a vast extension to one term of it. We continually 

 learn that while the conditions of occurrence of faint mani- 

 festations are always to be found, the conditions of oc- 



