35. Philosophy, as we know, leads to a complete reversal of this primitive conclusion, and shows that the _contemplated_ is a _synthesis of contemplations_, the Physis being _also_ the Æsthesis. Psychological investigation shows that the objects supposed to _have_ forms, colors, and positions within an external hemisphere, have these only in virtue of the very feelings from which they are supposed to be separated. The _visible_ universe exists only _as seen_: the objects are Reals conditioned by the laws of Sensibility. The space in which we see them, their geometrical relations, the light and shadows which reveal them, the forms they affect, the lines of their changing directions, the qualities which distinguish them,--all these are but the externally projected signs of feelings. They are signs which we interpret according to organized laws of experience; each sign being itself a feeling connected with other feelings. We project them outside according to the “law of eccentric projection”--which is only the expression of the fact that one feeling is a sign of some other, and is thereby _ideally detached_ from it. According to this law I say, “my Body”; just as I say, “my House”; or, “my Property.” Misled by this, Dualism holds that in the very fact of detaching my Body from my Self, calling it _mine_, is the revelation of a distinct entity within the body. But that this is illusory, appears in the application of this same law of eccentric projection to sensations and thoughts, which are called _mine_, as my legs and arms are mine. If it is undeniable that I say _my_ Body--and thus ideally detach the Body from the Soul--it is equally undeniable that I say _my_ Soul; and from what is the Soul detached? In presence of this difficulty, the metaphysician may argue that neither Body nor Soul can be coextensive with its manifestations, but demands a noumenal Real for each--a _substratum_ for the bodily manifestations, and a _substratum_ for the mental manifestations. This, however, is an evasion, not a solution of the difficulty. If we postulate an unknown and unknowable noumenon, we gain no insight: first, because Philosophy deals only with the known functions of unknown quantities, and therefore leaves the _x_ out of the calculation; secondly, because, granting the existence of these noumena, we can have no rational grounds for asserting that they are not of one and the same nature; for we have no grounds for _any_ assertion whatever about them. And if it be urged against this, that Consciousness testifies to a distinction, I answer that on a closer scrutiny it will be found to testify to nothing more than a diversity of manifestation. All therefore that comes within the range of knowledge is, How does this diversity arise?