AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 71 



can know a substance only through its qualities, and it is but 

 an absurdity to adduce this, our knowledge of it, only as the 

 proof and the guarantee of our ignorance of it. Consider this ! 

 We know substance only by reason of qualities, therefore we 

 do not know it. That is, we do not know by means of the very 

 reason through which we do know ! Is not this a mere paying 

 of ourselves with words'? A thing that does not act can 

 never be known, and is only equal to nothing. Is it reason- 

 able, then, to say that, precisely when it makes itself known by 

 acting, precisely then it makes itself unknown by acting, as if 

 it had never acted ? How else can a thing be known but by 

 acting by its qualities ? and is the only medium of admission 

 to be made also the single medium of exclusion ! We do not 

 know things in themselves, because we only know what they 

 are for us ! Well, but what they are for MS, is really what 

 they are in themselves ? A thing, a substance, is not a bundle, 

 is not a collection of qualities ; it is as much an intussusception 

 of its qualities as an ego is of its ideas. There is not greenness 

 here in this crystal, transparency there, and sourness yonder. 

 It is the substance, the single and individual unit, the it, that is 

 green, and likewise transparent, and also sour. Would you 

 have me, in independence of the greenness, and transparency, 

 and sourness, take you out the it, and show it you ? and even 

 then, would you be able to know it, but as otherwise or similarly 

 green, and transparent, and sour, etc. If you will blindfold yourself 

 then you must ; but it is your own act. I know the character of a 

 man only by knowing what this character is for me ; but do I not 

 also then know what it is in itself ? After I have thoroughly 

 put myself at home with Shakespeare, or Burns, or Cromwell, 

 am I immediately to turn round and stultify myself by figure- 

 ing some substance, some in itself that is only gratuitous and 

 foreign to the case. Mr Huxley is in his chamber : Does he 

 then mystify himself into an impossible chaos by muttering to 

 himself Ah, that fire, that carpet, that table, these chairs, these 

 books, they are really something quite else than what they are 

 for me what they are for me is a small matter nothing but 

 what they are not for me Ah ! that were something, did I but 

 know that ! Does Mr Huxley really hide from himself what 

 that picture on the wall is for him and in itself, by disconsolately 

 murmuring, I am absolutely ignorant I can never know what 

 canvas, what hemp is in itself? Is not all that talk about an 

 in itself that is not for him idle? Does he not inhabit the room? 

 and is it not a thoroughly-intelligible system? So with the 

 world : it is an intelligible external system. This stone 

 that I take up, am I really to mystify or stultify myself in its 

 regard by saying If my muscles were infinitely stronger, it 

 would dissolve in my grasp? It is black, it might be red. 



