These substrata were but the ghosts of the phenomena
themselves; behind the tree or the mountain a sort of phantom tree or
mountain, which persists after the body of perception has gone away with
the departure of the percipient mind. Clearly this is no scientific
interpretation of the facts, but is rather a specimen of naive barbaric
thought surviving in metaphysics. The tree or mountain being groups of
phenomena, what we assert as persisting independently of the percipient
mind is a something which we are unable to condition either as tree or as
mountain.
"And now we come down to the very bottom of the problem. Since we do
postulate Absolute Existence, and do not postulate a particular occult
substance underlying each group of phenomena, are we to be understood as
implying that there is a single Being of which all phenomena, internal and
external to consciousness, are manifestations? Such must seem to be the
inevitable conclusion, since we are able to carry on thinking at all only
under the relations of Difference and No-difference.... It may seem that,
since we cannot attribute to the Absolute Reality any relations of
Difference, we must positively ascribe to it No-difference. Or, what is the
same thing, in refusing to predicate multiplicity of it, do we not
virtually predicate of it unity? We do, simply because we cannot think
without so doing."[38]
A single Absolute Reality being thus posited, our author proceeds, towards
the close of his work, to argue that as this Reality cannot be conceived as
limited either in space or time, it constitutes a Being which corresponds
with our essential conception of Deity.
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