element of intermediate influence, and investigate the causes more closely. Nevertheless, I not only take for

pression," and so forth, I designate, not the impression made upon the organ of thought and feeling, but the picture or the sensation which the sentient and thinking being has conceived in consequence of the modification which the organ has undergone. The former is conveyed to the mind, the latter is originated by it; the process in either case being inscrutably mysterious. The mind is, so to speak, touched by matter (not necessarily ponderable), and the result is its activity. Nor is there action only, there is also reaction. Our experience of feeling and of thought has never yet transcended the conditions of animal life, but is still an experience to which the brain is indispensable. Accordingly, it is limited to such mental action as must be presumed to observe a precise and invariable correspondence with the variations which take place in the state of that organ, alike when the picture or sensation represents some impression immediately produced by an external stimulus, and when it presupposes the intentional or the seemingly fortuitous renewal of a past impression. In the operations which generate concepts, and still more in those which have their issue in trains of reasoning, the mind may easily discover that it supplies out of itself something over and above the sensations and pictures simply correspondent to the organic affections; but its activity (so far as recollected consciousness gives any knowledge of it) being inseparably associated with the use of the organ, of course no mental action can take place by which the latter is not correspondingly affected. The parenthetical limitation with which I have qualified this remark is by no means intended to suggest the probability that a thinking being endowed with an organ of thought does actually exercise its prerogative, not only by means of, but also secretly in independence of, the organ; I simply admit that no assertion by which I stood committed to a denial of the possibility of mental action on the condition last supposed would be tenable. In respect to this matter the most probable theory appears to me to be, that, whether in this life or in a future state of existence, man is never the subject of any experience of emotion or of any act of thought or will, except through media organically related to him-a theory which I find coincident with the Christian doctrine of a Resurrection after death. Vid. chap. xi. 9.

It will be observed in chapter v. I assert that cerebral impressions, in relation to the percipient subject, are objective. The remarks just made will show that I am precluded from applying this epithet, as Descartes has done, to the mental picture. The latter cannot strictly

granted the existence of an external world, but I conceive that its phenomena are subject to my cognition. What,

be regarded as either purely objective or purely subjective. It is a function of, so to speak, two quantities or values, one being psychical, the other physical. The former, a subject which, in the exercise of an innate power, creates for itself a picture, is constant; the latter, an affection of the sensorium, is of course variable. To the subject I ascribe an act which I represent as creative, yet without overlooking the fact that the form the creation takes is absolutely determined by something objective.

Descartes, it is true, contends that what he calls ideas are innate. This Locke denies. In respect to phraseology they flatly contradict one another; in their assertions, however, if rightly understood, will be found the exposition of two indisputable truths, each of which may be regarded as the complement of the other.

In denying that mental pictures, though due to affections of the sensorium, may be assumed to be fac-similes of things external to it, I express no doubt as to its being a designed medium for conveying to the mind so much reliable information as the latter in its present state of existence is capable of receiving in respect to its surroundings: whether the mental picture is rightly conceived as being simply objective to the mind's eye, or as involving some modification in the condition of the percipient subject, is a question which, as it seems to me, must remain unsolved until we have further data than are supplied by the phenomena of consciousness in our present state of existence.

Sir W. Hamilton ("Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 210) combats the doctrine that Consciousness is to be distinguished from the faculty through which we obtain a knowledge of the external world, and, on the ground that it necessarily comprehends every cognitive act, he objects to its being regarded as a special faculty cognizant, not of the objects of perception, but of mental operations only. The controversy, however, as it seems to me, will never be satisfactorily settled unless—which I think has not been the case-due attention be paid to the fact that the conditions under which all mental perception takes place are at once both psychical and physical. It is, of course, allowed that no one can experience any sensation whatever without being immediately sensible that he is experiencing it. Now, the sensation is not the function of the organic sensorium by means of which it comes to pass: it belongs to the soul, the yʊxh, although the consciousness (if it may be so called) involved in a mere sensation is of the lowest order. The moment, however, that the soul in this experience takes rational account of itself, the moment

then, if no affection of which my brain is susceptible constitutes an adequate representation of Infinity? True, I

it becomes truly conscious, the moment it assumes, as thus it does, a subject for the sensation, it begins to discharge a higher kind of function. It now takes for granted the existence of something of which it neither has, nor ever can have, an immediate sensuous perception. In like manner, if it attributes significance to any of the images which cerebral impressions have caused it to perceive, if they present to it the appearance of objective realities, if in this degree, or rather, in this, the true sense of the word, it perceives them, it makes assumptions for which, as simply experiencing such and such sensations, it has no warrant. The mere sense of the inward material for thought, although immediate, involves no knowledge whatever an object assumed to be known is no such object of perception, but something which, in the exercise of reason, has first been conceived. The sole faculty we have for perceiving an external world is an ineradicable propensity to accept as an authoritative and trustworthy indication in this matter the hypothesis which inevitably suggests itself and affords the only satisfactory interpretation of phenomena that must otherwise remain unaccountable and irreconcilably at war with our understanding. We have been otherwise constituted than to suspect, when in a normal state of mind, that our Creator is mocking us. We consider we are justified in crediting ourselves with the knowledge of things, in so far as we assume in reference to them a legitimate and successful use of our reasoning powers. Nothing simply objective may be regarded as the object of a more immediate kind of knowledge than this. If in any case God is represented as being more profoundly and intimately known, the notion is that in this case, besides being an object of contemplation, He has certain of His characteristics stamped upon the soul, so that in the sense it has of its more elevated experiences it to some extent sees and knows Him in the way of simple and immediate experience. loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God" (1 John iv. 7). These Every one that words indicate the possibility of what may be called in some sense a consciousness of Him in whom we live and move and have our being. It is impossible, however, to conceive of any kind of consciousness or of distinct perception that does not involve the exercise of reason. Our reason, and not an immediate sense, is what interprets for us the indications of perspective in our mental pictures and enables us to distinguish between the near and the distant. The experiences of a sentient subject constituting as such an indivisible unity, the sense which comprehends them in this unity inseparably attends them as an

have never yet escaped the perception of this inadequacy; and the possibility of ignoring it I find precluded by the

immediate sense of self, and therefore as implied and involved in every kind of knowledge. Not, however, on that account can the thing which may be properly represented as known be assumed to be an object of immediate perception.

In arguing that if consciousness be coextensive with the act of perception it must also be conversant with its object, Sir W. Hamilton uses the following illustration :-" For example," he says, "I see the inkstand. How can I be conscious that my present modification exists, that it is a perception, and not another mental state,—that it is a perception of sight to the exclusion of every other sense,—and finally, that it is a perception of the inkstand, and of the inkstand only, unless my consciousness comprehend within its sphere the object, which at once determines the existence of the act, qualifies its kind, and distinguishes its individuality? Annihilate the inkstand, you annihilate the perception; annihilate the consciousness of the object, you annihilate the consciousness of the operation" (p. 228). The fallacy, however, of this reasoning will be at once apparent, if account be taken of the possibility that the mental image of an inkstand, or of any other object, as of something actually seen and tangible, may be due to an abnormal condition of the brain, to say nothing of the phenomena of dreams. Such a possibility forbids the assertion that the conviction of the person who believes he sees something before him in the external world vouches for the reality of the object thus assumed to exist. By annihilating the object you do not of necessity annihilate the perception, or render it for the future impossible. The cerebral agitation which gave rise to the mental picture is not thereby of necessity precluded. It may be freely granted that under ordinary circumstances the apparent scene, with all its details, is with good reason taken to be real, and that the individual in whose mind it is pictured has considerations sufficient to justify him in distinguishing his mental condition from the state of trance, and in feeling perfectly sure that he is neither dreaming nor suffering from delirium tremens, nor in any way the sport of an hallucination; still, the immediate sense of the mental modification which these considerations imply is one thing, the immediate intuition of the objective causes of the phenomena to which they have reference-and that the mind of mortal man can compass this I deny is another. Between the soul and the external objects of its perceptions intervenes a sensorium with its organic system of avenues to perception; but the experiences which thence arise, in the way of

conditions of my mental constitution. But is this a reason why I should deny that my intellect apprehends the

sensation and mental scenery, as well as emotion and volition, together with the intuitions which come up into the mind in the exercise of intelligence and which underlie all reasoning, are indissolubly bound together in the immediate sense of a single and indivisible entity. This sense of self, this underlying sense of the Ego, is not necessarily attended either by conscious reflection upon the Ego or by a conception of the Non-Ego. Neither of these two operations is sensuous; nevertheless, in each the physically generated experiences of the soul constitute a medium, namely, between itself as the percipient subject and itself, or something external to itself, as the perceived object. The soul is immediately sensible of nothing more than the affections (mán) it experiences through its own organ; but these, as being itself intellective, it has the faculty of interpreting, and thus of becomingcognizant of the Non-Ego, and of perceiving that this includes something essentially dissimilar to itself. The conception it forms of the nonsentient element in its environment is indicated by the term Matter.

As regards the term consciousness, upon the application of which the question here discussed mainly hinges, I venture to think that it is misapplied except when used to denote the knowledge of such things as may be considered to belong to the conscious subject in the sense of being some personal quality or experience, or some aspect in which he regards himself. I freely concede, however—indeed, all along I have strenuously maintained—that his knowledge is by no means confined within this narrow sphere; that in virtue of an innate faculty of distinctively rational intuition he not only is conscious of the Ego, but assumes at once the existence of the Non-Ego; and that to discredit the authority of the intellectual instinct which leads him to adopt without suspicion this hypothesis, or rather to make this discovery, is to call in question the possibility of science. Sir W. Hamilton, it is true, is careful to explain that he extends the domain of consciousness no farther than the frontier on which the material organ is in contact with the external material world: we are not immediately conscious of the sun, he says; we perceive nothing but certain modifications of light in immediate relation to our organ of vision" (vol. ii. p. 153). Still, he appears to me to confound Consciousness with Sense. If I receive a violent blow on the eye, one of the immediate effects is that I seem to myself to see a dazzling flash of light. The optic nerve is affected by the concussion precisely as it would be were light under suitable conditions transmitted by the

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