* * * * *
What is always reckoned the mystery by pre-eminence is the union of BODY
and MIND. How, then, should we treat this Mystery according to the
spirit of modern thought, according to the modern laws of explanation?
The course is to _conceive_ the elements according to the only possible
plan, our own sensibility or consciousness; which gives us matter as one
class of facts--extension, inertness, weight, and so on; and mind as
another class of facts--pleasures, pains, volitions, ideas. The
difference between these two is total, diametrical, complete; there is
really nothing common to the experience of pleasure and the experience
of a tree; difference has here reached its _acme_; agreement is
eliminated; there is no higher genus to include these two in one; as the
ultimate, the highest elements of knowledge, they admit of 110 fusion,
no resolution, no unity. Our utmost flight of generality leaves us in
possession of a double, a _couple_ of absolutely heterogeneous elements.
Matter cannot be resolved into mind; mind cannot be resolved into
matter; each has its own definition; each negatives the other.
This being the fact, we accept it, and acquiesce.
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