CHAPTEE XII. 



EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 



93. AN entire history of anything must include its ap- 

 pearance out of the imperceptible and its disappearance into 

 the imperceptible. Be it a single object or the whole uni- 

 verse, any account which begins with it in a concrete form, 

 or leaves off with it in a concrete form, is incomplete ; since 

 there remains an era of its knowable existence undescribed 

 and unexplained. Admitting, or rather asserting, that 

 knowledge is limited to the phenomenal, we have, by impli- 

 cation, asserted that the sphere of knowledge is co-extensive 

 with the phenomenal co-extensive with all modes of the 

 Unknowable that can affect consciousness. Hence, wher- 

 ever we now find Being so conditioned as to act on our 

 senses, there arise the questions how came it thus condi- 

 tioned? and how will it cease to be thus conditioned? Un- 

 less on the assumption that it acquired a sensible form at the 

 moment of perception, and lost its sensible form the mo- 

 ment after perception, it must have had an antecedent exist- 

 ence under this sensible form, and will have a subsequent 

 existence under this sensible form. These preceding and 

 succeeding existences under sensible forms, are possible sub- 

 jects of knowledge; and knowledge has obviously not 

 reached its limits until it has united the past, present, and 

 future histories into a whole. 



The sayings and doings of daily life imply more or less 

 such knowledge, actual or potential, of states which have 



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