It has already been pointed out, that Hume must have admitted, and in
fact does admit, the possibility that the mind is a Leibnitzian monad,
or a Fichtean world-generating Ego, the universe of things being merely
the picture produced by the evolution of the phenomena of consciousness.
For any demonstration that can be given to the contrary effect, the
"collection of perceptions" which makes up our consciousness may be an
orderly phantasmagoria generated by the Ego, unfolding its successive
scenes on the background of the abyss of nothingness; as a firework,
which is but cunningly arranged combustibles, grows from a spark into a
coruscation, and from a coruscation into figures, and words, and
cascades of devouring fire, and then vanishes into the darkness of the
night.
On the other hand, it must no less readily be allowed that, for anything
that can be proved to the contrary, there may be a real something which
is the cause of all our impressions; that sensations, though not
likenesses, are symbols of that something; and that the part of that
something, which we call the nervous system, is an apparatus for
supplying us with a sort of algebra of fact, based on those symbols. A
brain may be the machinery by which the material universe becomes
conscious of itself. But it is important to notice that, even if this
conception of the universe and of the relation of consciousness to its
other components should be true, we should, nevertheless, be still bound
by the limits of thought, still unable to refute the arguments of pure
idealism.
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