Note (return) — Chapter XI

This passage from psychology to ontology is not achieved per saltum, or effected by any arbitrary or unwarrantable assumption. There are principles revealed in the centre of our consciousness, whose regular development carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and attain to the knowledge of actual being. The absolute principles of causality and substance, of intentionality and unity, unquestionably give us the absolute Being. Indeed the absolute truth that every idea supposes a being in which it resides, and which is but another form of the law or principle of substance, viz., that every quality supposes a substance or being in which it inheres, is adequate to carry us from Idea to Being. "There is not a single cognition which does not suggest to us the notion of existence, and there is not an unconditional and absolute truth which does not necessarily imply an absolute and unconditional Being." 589