begin and end in thinking of the seeing of light. You think of light by and through the thought of seeing, and you can think of it in no other way. By no exertion of the mind can you separate these two. They are not two, but one. The objective light, therefore, when thought, ceases to be purely objective; it becomes both subjective and objective—both light and seeing in one. And the same truth holds good with regard to all lighted or coloured objects, such as trees, houses, &c.; we can think of these only by thinking of our seeing of them.
But you will perhaps say that, by leaving the sunshine, and going into a dark room, you are able to effect an actual and practical separation between these two things—light and seeing. By taking this step, you put an end to your perception; but you do not put an end, you say, to the real objective light which excited it. The perception has vanished, but the light remains—a permanent existence outside of your dark chamber. Now, here we must beware of dogmatising, that is, of speaking either affirmatively or negatively, about anything, without first of all having thought about it. Before we can be entitled to speak of what is, we must ascertain what we can think. When, therefore, you talk of light as an outward permanent existence, we neither affirm nor deny it to be so. We give no opinion at all upon the matter. All that we request and expect of both of us is, that we shall think it before we talk of it. But we shall find, that, the moment we think this outward permanent existence, we are forced, by the most stringent law of our intelligence, to think sight along with it; and it is only by thinking these two in inseparable unity, that light can become a conceivability at all, or a comprehensible thought.
Perhaps you will here remind us that light exists in many inaccessible regions, where it is neither seen nor was ever thought of as seen. It may be so; we do not deny it. But we answer that, before this light can be spoken of, it must be thought; and that it cannot be thought unless it be thought of as seen—unless we think an ideal spectator of it; in other words, unless a subjective be inseparably added unto it. Perhaps, again, in order to show that the objective may be conceived as existing apart from the subjective, you will quote the lines of the poet—
"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
We reply, that it may be very true that many a flower is born so to do. We rather admit the fact. But we maintain that, in order to speak of the fact, you must think of it; and in order to think of the fact, you must think of the flower; and in order to think of the flower, and of its blushing unseen, you must think of the seeing of the flower, and of the seeing of its blushing. All of which shows that here, as in every other supposable case, it is impossible to think the objective without thinking the subjective, as its inseparable concomitant—which is the only point we are at present endeavouring to establish.
It will not do to say that this light may be something which may exist, outwardly, and independently of all perception of it—though, in consequence of the limitation of our faculties, it may not be possible for us to conceive how, or in what way, its existence is maintained. Reader! put no faith in those who preach to you about the limited nature of the human faculties, and of the things which lie beyond their bounds. For one instance in which this kind of modesty keeps people right in speculative matters, there are a thousand in which it puts them wrong; and the present case is one of those in which it endeavours to prevail upon us to practise a gross imposition upon ourselves. For this light, which is modestly talked of as something which lies, or may lie, altogether out of the sphere of the subjective, will be found, upon reflection, to be conceived only by thinking back, and blending inseparably with it the very subjective (i.e., the seeing) from which it had been supposed possible for thought to divorce it.
Precisely the same thing holds good in the case of sound and hearing. Sound is here the objective, and hearing the subjective; but the objective cannot be conceived, unless we comprehend both the subjective and it in one and the same conception. It is true that sounds may occur (thunder, for instance, in lofty regions of the
