De Animalibus Insectis Libri Septem

of immanent emanations. And there is indeed a reason why such a reduction of all finite things to an infinite unity should greatly please the intellect or the logical faculty. The act of thinking, of course, consists uniquely in the thinker perceiving the unity of those things which, in another respect, are diverse—or indeed can be most diverse. a is predicated of b insofar as it is understood that to a the a is in b in that sense under which the question arises. Hence it is clear, and has long since been shown, that the formal or logical investigation of truth is to be compared with arithmetical permutation, by which two numbers appearing under a different guise yet remain and are the same, such as 2 x 3 = 6. It follows spontaneously that in that very formal investigation of truth there can be no higher canon than this: that many things should always be reduced to one, whence thinkers not only do not cease, but cannot cease, to raise individuals to species, species to general classes, but also to refer all derived principles, or applied laws, to one principle in thought and to deduce them from there. Nor is it difficult to understand that everything about which thought is occupied, and which they call an object—not insofar as it exists outside of thought, but insofar as it is present to the mind (whether as something existing or as something merely thinkable), indeed, is now an ingrained part of the mind—can be reached and treated by thinking and willing. Whence, if the thinker is called the subject, it becomes clear that he himself, while he thinks, is entirely a subject-object, or that one [entity] of the subjective and objective.