The difference is merely nominal
between those two classes of thought which are vulgarly distinguished by
the names of "ideas" and of "external objects." Pursuing the same thread
of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to
that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise
found to be a delusion. The words "I, you, they," are not signs of any
actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus
indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different
modifications of the one mind. Let it not be supposed that this doctrine
conducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write
and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it.'
(2) 'Suppose however that the intellectual and vital principle differs
in the most marked and essential manner from all other known substances;
that they have all some resemblance between themselves which _it_ in no
degree participates. In what manner can this concession be made an
argument for its imperishability? All that we see or know perishes[18]
and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything else: but
that it survives that period beyond which we have no experience of its
existence such distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof,
and nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or
imagine.
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