Note 420 — Chapter XIII

I fear that few will be converted by my words, so obstinately do thinkers of all schools refuse to admit the unmediated function of knowing a thing, and so incorrigibly do they substitute being the thing for it. E.g., in the latest utterance of the spiritualistic philosophy (Bowne's Introduction to Psychological Theory, 1887, published only three days before this writing) one of the first sentences which catch my eye is this: "What remembers? The spiritualist says, the soul remembers; it abides across the years and the flow of the body, and gathering up its past, carries it with it" (p. 28). Why, for heaven's sake, O Bowne, cannot you say 'knows it'? If there is anything our soul does not do to its past, it is to carry it with it.