On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology — trans. C. E. Rolt
The translator’s English as printed (C. E. Rolt). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
The paradox that our true existence is (in a sense) outside ourselves is the paradox of all life. We live by breath and food, and so our life is in these things outside our individual bodies. Our life is in the air and in our nourishment before we assimilate it as our own. More astonishing still, Bergson has shown that our perceptions are outside us in the things we perceive? When I perceive an object a living current passes from the object through my eyes by the afferent nerves to the brain, and thence by the efferent nerves once more to the object from which it started, causing a mere sensation in me (i.e. in my body) but causing me also by that sensation to have a perception outside me (i.e. outside my body) in the thing I look at. And all who gaze upon the same object have their perceptions outside themselves in that same object which yet is indivisibly one. Even so are we to find at last that we all have our true selfhoods in the One Super-Essence outside us, and yet each shall all the time have a feeling in himself of his own particular being without which the Super-Essence could not be his.
1 Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, especially in chaps. ii. and iii,
The paradox that our true existence is (in a sense) outside ourselves is the paradox of all life. We live by breath and food, and so our life is in these things outside our individual bodies. Our life is in the air, and in our nourishment before we assimilate it as our own. More astonishing still, Bergson has shown that our perceptions are outside us, in the things we perceive?
When I perceive an object, a living current passes from the object through my eyes along the afferent nerves to the brain, and from there along the efferent nerves back to the object from which it started. It causes a mere sensation in me (i.e. in my body), but by that sensation it also causes me to have a perception outside me (i.e. outside my body), in the thing I look at. And all who gaze on the same object have their perceptions outside themselves in that same object, which is nevertheless indivisibly one. Even so we are to find at last that we all have our true selfhoods in the One Super-Essence outside us; and yet each will all the while have a feeling in himself of his own particular being, without which the Super-Essence could not be his.
1 Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, especially chaps. ii. and iii.