Therefore thou knowest of the existence of objects only by means of seeing, feeling them, &c.; and thou knowest that thou seest and feelest, only by means of an immediate consciousness of this knowledge.

​BOOK II.KNOWLEDGE.Chagrinand anguish stung me to the heart. I cursed the returning day which called me back to an existence whose truth and significance were now involved in doubt. I awoke in the night

I will do all for the best;—I will rejoice when I have done right, I will grieve when I have done wrong; and even this sorrow shall be sweet to me, for it is a mark of sympathy,—a pledge of future amendment.

These manifold possibilities are certainly possibilities within it, founded in its own peculiar character, but they are not ​possibilities for it, because it is incapable of such an idea, and cannot choose

I desire to possess an inward and peculiar power of manifold, infinite modes of manifestation, like those powers of Nature, and this power shall manifest itself in the particular way in which it does manifest

I may repent, and rejoice, and form good resolutions;—although, strictly speaking, I cannot even do this, for all these things come to me of themselves, when it is appointed for them to ​do so;—but most

Give to Nature the determination of one single element of a person, let it seem to be ever so trivial,—the course of a muscle, the turn of a hair,—and she could tell thee, had she a universal consciousness,

The powers in whose manifestation my personality consists,—the formative—the self-moving—the thinking powers,—are not these same powers as they exist in Nature at large, but only a certain definite portion

This, my inter-connexion with the whole system of Nature, it is, then, which determines what I have been, what I am, and what I shall be; and the same spirit would be able, from any possible moment of

There is in Nature an original thinking-power, as there is an original formative-power. This original thinking-power of the Universe proceeds and developes itself in all possible modes of which it is capable,

Suppose it to lie some few paces further inland than it does:—then must the storm-wind that drove it in from the sea have been stronger than it actually was;—then must the preceding state of the weather,

What I found myself compelled to assume in order to account for the gradual origin and the changes of those determinations, was an active power, peculiar to the object, and constituting its essential nature.

In like manner will Nature, in the succeeding moment, be necessarily determined to the particular forms which it will then assume—for this reason, that in the present moment it is determined exactly as

​I seize on Nature in her rapid and unresting flight, detain her for an instant, and holding the present moment steadily in view, I reflect upon this Nature by means of which my thinking powers have hitherto

​BOOK I.DOUBT.I believethat I am now tolerably well acquainted with no inconsiderable part of the world that surrounds me, and I have certainly employed sufficient labour and care in the acquisition of