144 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No 

 man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature 

 can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give 

 me such evidence as would justify me in believing 

 anything else, and I will believe that. Why should 

 I not ? It is not half so v/onderful as the conserva- 

 tion of force, or the indestructibility of matter. 



Whoso clearly appreciates all that is implied in 

 the falling of a stone can have no difficulty about 

 any doctrine simply on account of its marvellousness. 

 But the longer I live, the more obvious it is to me 

 that the most sacred act of a man's life is to say and 

 to feel, " I believe such and such to be true." All 

 the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of 

 existence cling about that act. The universe is 

 one and the same throughout ; and if the condition 

 of my success in unravelling some little difficulty of 

 anatomy or physiology is that I shall rigorously 

 refuse to put faith in that which does not rest on 

 sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great 

 mysteries of existence w^ill be laid open to me on 

 other terms. 



CCXCVIII 



I cannot conceive of my personality as a thing 

 apart from the phenomena of my life. When I try 

 to form such a conception I discover that, as 

 Coleridge would have said, I only hypostatize a 

 word, and it alters nothing if, with Fichte, I suppose 

 the universe to be nothing but a manifestation of my 

 personality. I am neither more nor less eternal than 

 I was before. 



ccxcix 



1 do not know whether the animals persist after 

 they disappear or not. I do not even know whether 

 the infinite difference between us and them may not 



