simply bringing out and expressing what is embraced in our primitive cognition. No account which falls short of this can be regarded as a full exhibition of the facts falling under our eye when we look within. If any man maintain that all we can discover is a mere idea, impression, phenomenon, or quality of an unknown thing, I ask him for his evidence, and he must, in replying, call in the internal sense, and I can then show him that this sense, or cognitive power (for it is not a sense except in an abusive application of the term), declares that we know a something, or thing with a positive existence.

This is a knowledge which cannot be explained, nor defined in the sense of being resolved into anything simpler or founded on anything deeper. It is a simple element implied in every intelligent act, and not derived from any other act or exercise. It is a basis on which other knowledge may be reared, and not a superstructure standing on another foundation.

As it is a primitive, so it is a necessary conviction. We cannot by any other supposed knowledge undermine or set aside this fundamental knowledge. We cannot be made by any process of speculation or ratiocination to believe that we have not being. The process of reasoning which would set aside this cognition can plead no principle stronger than the conviction which we have in favour of the reality of self.

In saying that we know self as possessed of being, we do not mean to affirm that we know all about self, or about our spiritual nature. There are mysteries about self, as about everything else we know, sufficient to awe every truly wise man into humility. All that is meant is, that, whatever may be unknown, we always wird, folglich wie es sich erscheint, nicht wie es ist” (Zw. Aufg. p. 718). He says that by the inner sense we know the subject self as phenomenon, and not as it is in itself: "Was die innere Anschauung betrifft, unser eigenes Subject nur als Erscheinung, nicht aber nach dem, was es an sich selbst ist, erkennen" (Ibid. p. 850). Dr. Mansel has done great service to philosophy by maintaining so clearly and resolutely, in his Prolegomena Logica and Metaphysics, that we intuitively know self. "I am immediately conscious of myself seeing and hearing. willing and thinking" 1 (Prol. Log. p. 129). Hamilton speaks of our being con scious every moment of our existence, and of the ego as a "self-subsistent entity' (Metaph. Lect. 19).

1 At the time that Dr. Mansel published this statement I was compounding the same doctrine which is a very important one, in Queen's College, Belfast.

know being whenever we know any of the objects presented to us from within or from without. This subject will be resumed in a more special manner in next Chapter.

II. We know self as not depending for its existence on our observation of it. Of course we can know self only when we know self; our knowledge of self exists not till we have the knowledge, and it exists only so long as we have the knowledge. But when we come to know self, we know it as already existing, and we do not look on its continued existence as depending on our recognition of it.

III. We know self as being in itself an abiding existence. Not that we are to stretch this conviction so far as to believe in the self-existence of mind, or in its eternal existence. We believe certainly in the permanence of mind independent of our cognition of it, and amidst all the shiftings and variations of its states. Yet this does not imply that there never was a time when self was non-existing. For aught this conviction says, there may have been a time when self came into existence-another conviction assures us that when it did, it must have had a cause. It must be added that this conviction does not go the length of assuring us that mind must exist for ever, or that it must exist after the dissolution of the body. Intuition does indeed seem to say that, if it shall cease to exist, it must be in virtue of some cause adequate to destroy it; and it helps to produce and strengthen the feeling which the dying man cherishes when he looks on the soul as likely to abide when the body is dead. But as to whether the dissolution of the bodily frame is a sufficient cause of the decease of the soul,-as to whether it may abide when the bodily frame is disorganized,-this is a question to be settled not altogether by intuition, but by a number of other considerations, and more particularly by the conviction that God will call us into judgment at last, and is most definitely settled, after all, by the inspired declarations of the Word of God. But it is pleasant to observe that there is an original conviction altogether in unison with this derivative belief, a conviction leading us to look on self as permanent, unless there be a cause working adequate to its dissolution.

According to the views presented under these heads, the exist

ence of self is a position to be assumed, and not to be proven. It does not need proof, and no proof should be offered; no mediate evidence could possibly be clearer than the truth which it is brought to support. It has been keenly disputed how we are to understand the "Cogito, ergo sum," of Descartes. Are we to regard it as a process of reasoning? If it be so, it is either a petitio principii, or its conclusiveness may be doubted. If the cogito be understood as embracing ego, that is, be understood as ego cogito, then the ego is evidently involved in it, is in fact assumed. If it means anything short of this, then it might be difficult to establish the accuracy of the inference; thus, if the cogito does not embrace the ego, it is not clear that the conclusion follows.1 Or are we to regard the statement as a sort of primitive judgment, not implying mediate reasoning or a middle term? Taken in this sense, I would reckon that the connexion between thought and existence is involved in our knowledge of self as existing, rather than that the knowledge of self issues from the perception of the connexion between thought and personal existence. Or are we to look on the expression as simply a mode of stating an assumption? In this case the word ergo, the usual symbol of inference, comes in awkwardly; and besides, the truth to be assumed is not the complex judgment, cogito, ergo sum, but the fact revealed at once to consciousness of ego cogitans.3 This primitive cognition may bo the ground of a number of judgments, but it is to reverse the order of things entirely to make any one of these judgments the ground of the cognitions.

The cognitions which have been unfolded in this chapter, form, when memory begins to be exercised, the ground of our recognition of our personal identity, and lead us to believe in a self which abideth

1 Kant has a powerful criticism of the "Cogito, ergo sum," considered as an argument, in his Paralogismen in the Kritik.

2 In answering the objections of Gassendi, Descartes says: "Cum advertimus nos esse res cogitantes, prima quædam notio est quæ et nullo syllogismo concluditur; neque etiam quis dicit 'Ego cogito, ergo sum, sive existo,' existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismunı deducit, sed tanquam rem per se notam simplici mentis intuitu agnoscit." See the subject discussed by Cousin, Prem. Sér. tom. i. Leç. vi.

3 "C'est par une même perception de notre âme que nous éprouvons le sentiment intime et de notre pensée et de notre existence" (Buffier, Prem. Vér. p. i. c. i.).

amid all changes of thought and mood and feeling. This subject will be resumed by us under the head of Primitive Judgments.

IV. We know self as exercising potency. We have seen that we know it as having being; but we know it further as having active being. We know it as acting, we know it as being acted on, we know it as the source of action. Even in sense-perception we know it as being acted on from without; nay, we know it as itself acting in producing the result. So far as we know objects acting on it, we know it as capable of being influenced; in other words, as having a capacity of a particular description. So far as we know it acting in producing changes in itself or other things, we know it as a potency, as having power. When we recollect, when we fix the thoughts on a particular object, when we fondly dwell on a particular scene, we are exercising power, and by consciousness we know that we are doing so. When in consequence of coming to know of events bearing upon us personally,-say of some blessing about to descend, or calamity about to befall,—we rejoice or grieve, we experience an effect. This conscious potency is especially felt in all exercises of the will, whether it be directed to the mental action which we wish to stay or quicken, or the bodily organism which we propose to move. I demur, indeed, to the view maintained by some philosophers of eminence, that our idea of power is obtained exclusively from the consciousness of the power of will over the muscles. But I am persuaded that our most vivid conviction of power is derived from the influence of the will both on bodily and mental action,' and that the influence

1 Sir W. Hamilton admits all I am pleading for. "I know myself as a force in energy, the not-self as a counter-force in energy" (Note D, p. 666, of Ap. to Reid). And again: "We have a perception proper, of the secundo-primary quality, of resistance in an extra-organic force as an immediate cognition" (p. 883). Is this statement an essential part of his doctrine, or an incidental admission? If part of his system, it should modify the view he has given elsewhere of our conviction of power as being a mere impotency (see Appendix to Discuss.). If it be inadvertent, it is a proof that truth will come out of honest men, in spite of the errors of their system.

2 This is substantially the view of Locke, who says, "Bodies by our senses do not afford us so clear and distinct an idea of active power as we have from reflection on the operations of our own mind." In deriving our idea of Power from Sensation and Reflection, he supposes the mind to be actively and intelligently ex

of the will on the organism is what enables us to connect mental with bodily action.

But here it will be necessary to offer an explanation to save ourselves from obvious difficulties, which many have not seen their way to overcome. We shall find, under another head, that while we believe intuitively that every effect has a cause, we do not know by intuition what the cause is apart from experience; and that while we are convinced that the cause produces the effect, it is only by experience we know what the effect is. It follows that we do not know intuitively what or how many powers must concur to produce a given effect. This qualification will be found to have a great significance imparted to it by the circumstance to be afterwards noticed, that in order to most creature effects there is need of a concurrence of causes, or of a concause. When I will to move my arm, I know that the will is one of the elements in producing the effect, but I do not know, till physiology tells me, how many others must coöperate. It follows that one of the elements of a complex cause may act and no effect follow, because one part of the concause is absent. I may will to take a cheerful view of everything, and yet not be able owing to the rise of gloomy thoughts. I may will to move my arm, and yet the arm may not move, because paralysis has cut off the concurrence of the organism. This subject will again come before us under various aspects.

V. We know the knowing mind to be different from the material object known, whether this be the organism as affected or the object affecting it. Not that we know by intuition wherein the difference lies; not that we are in a position to say whether they may not, after all, have points of resemblance, and a mutual dependence, and a reciprocal influence on these points our only guide must be a gathered experience. But in every act in which we know a bodily object, we know it to be different from self, and self to be different from it. This is a conviction which we can never lose, and of which no sophistry can deprive us. We carry it with us at all times, and wherever we go.

It makes it impos

ercised. "Whatever change is observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere to make that change" (Essay, I. xxi. 4). But Locke has omitted to inquire what it is in the mind which insists that it must collect a cause wherever there is a change.