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Memory and combination would also be im- possible ; for there would be within us only a succession of unconnected phenomena. Thinking is impossible without something which thinks and remains identical under the variety of the forms of thought. There is, therefore, with- in us a simple subject which connects all the changes which occur in it : there is a substance. In it there is unity : the unity which we only find in corporeal substances after an infinite series of decompositions, is presented to us in the spiritual substance, at the first instant, as a simple internal fact, without which, all the phenomena which we perceive within us are absurd, and all experience of the external world impossible. Without the unity of the me there can be no sensation, and without sensation no experience of the beings around us. prev next |