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'Though the absolute cannot in any manner or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness.
Such an objection seems to be well grounded, for it is instinctive adjustments and suggested action that give cognitive value to sensation and endow it with that transitive force which makes it consciously representative of what is past, future, or absent. If practical instinct did not stretch what is given into what is meant, reason could never recognise the datum for a copy of an ideal object.
And in consequence also reason can no longer appear anything but an original datum postulated as a simple fact, as a complete system come down ready-made from heaven, at bottom a kind of non-temporal essence, definable without respect to duration, evolution, or history, of which all genesis and all progress are absurd.
The pillars of Hercules, upon which rested the vast edifice of his scorn, were these two 1st, my physics; he denounced me for effeminacy; 2d, he assumed, and even postulated as a datum, which I myself could never have the face to refuse, my general idiocy.
But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary datum of consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged, furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of inspiration to reach it.
For a vehicle or locus exists only when it makes some difference to the thing it carries, presenting it in a manner not essential to its own nature. The qualification of being by the mental medium may be carried to any length. As the subject-matter recedes the mental datum ceases to have much similarity or inward relevance to what is its cause or its meaning.
But this truth remains quite apart from physical conceptions, not to speak of metaphysical materialism that whatever the historical conditions of any state of mind may be said to be, it exists, when it does exist, immediately and absolutely; each of its distinguishable parts might conceivably have been absent from it; and its character, as well as its existence, is a mere datum of sense.
This fact, however, cannot be used, as Watson would apparently wish, to extrude from science observations which are private to one observer, since it is by means of many such observations that correlations are established, e.g. between toothaches and cavities. Privacy, therefore does not by itself make a datum unamenable to scientific treatment.
What, Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who have such a fine nose are going to risk it against the big fists of that lout! Fool! Non cuiquam datum est habere nasum not every one is favored with a nose. You are really divine, Jacqueline Ronge-Oreille! 'tis a pity that you have no hair! Hola! my name is Jehan Frollo, and my brother is an archdeacon. May the devil fly off with him!
For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center. Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which are established." I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused, pipe in hand.
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