SECTION I.

THE EXISTENCE OF AN EGO.

Cogito ergo sum it is necessary that I who think should be somewhat."1 In other words, thought is inconceivable without a thinker: the existence of my thought is inconceivable without the existence of myself to think it. Even if I were the work of a demon who was always imposing on me and deceiving me, I must still exist; for false thoughts, as much as true thoughts, require a thinker to think them. Gassendi and others have said that it might be as justly argued, ambulo ergo sum. Now it is quite true that, in order to perceive or imagine I walk, it is necessary that I exist to perceive or imagine it. But motion does not imply a correlative subject in the same way that

1 Descartes went too far when he proceeded to interpret "sum as meaning "I am a being that has nothing in common with extension." This cannot be deduced from "sum," nor even from "memini."

thought does. We cannot argue from the existence of motion to the existence of something which apprehends it in the same way as we can from the existence of a thought to the existence of some one who thinks it. We can conceive, or we think we can conceive, of a moving object existing without being actually perceived; but we cannot conceive, and do not think we can conceive, of a sensation existing unless some one actually feels it. It is true that in imagining an object, I give it a subject, namely, myself; but in imagining a sensation not my own, I have to imagine it as subject plus object -that is, to give a subject to an object that has already a subject. In the one case there is subject other there is subject plus (subject plus object). Sensation, in truth, is a single abstract word for a concrete double fact. Sensation means something felt by some one.

plus object, in the

It is possible that vegetable life may result merely from a particular combination and location of the molecules of a body; it is impossible that such combination or location can ever account for sensibility, not to say intelligence. The triumphs of physiology have tended rather to obscure, than throw light upon, the processes of sensation and thought. It has been argued that, because certain conditions of the brain and nerves are

the invariable antecedents of certain mental states, in the former we have an explanation of the latter. So entirely has the brain been identified with consciousness, that the late Professor Clifford seemed. to think the non-existence of a divine brain sufficient argument for the non-existence of a Deity. Mill and Tyndall, it is true, have perceived clearly enough the difference between sensation and neural process. The latter says, "We have not an organ, nor apparently the rudiments of an organ, by which to apprehend how a motion in the brain becomes a sensation in consciousness." Maurice puts the difficulty thus: "The casuist, having done homage to all the instructions of the physiologist, will say, 'Yes, that is very remarkable indeed; and do all these emotions make me? Did you not say I had them? You might think it worth while to tell me who I am." This the physiologist cannot do, nor even the psychologist, in Mill's sense of that term, because "I" am not a phenomenon.

The fact that every feeling involves some one to feel it, has never been, in so many words, denied. The most zealous opponents of an ego avail themselves of ambiguities by which the existence of an ego can, at pleasure, be tacitly assumed. Mr Lewes, for instance, says that the molecular motion in the nerves, and the experi

enced sensation in the mind, are only the objective and subjective phases of one and the same thing. He is thus enabled, whenever necessity requires, to treat the neural process as actually identical with the sensation; and any difficulty as to how a sensation could feel itself is provided against, a sentient subject being implied in the word "subjective." As Professor Green says,"We shall not expect to find any philosophical writer who, having distinctly asked himself whether or no experience is a mere succession of feelings, void of a unifying principle, has distinctly answered 'yes.' By help of sundry familiar figures -those of the thread, the stream, &c.-our psychologists avoid the ultimate analysis by which the question is necessarily raised, and are able, by turns, to avail themselves of a virtually affirmative and a virtually negative answer to it. The phrase 'states of consciousness,' as equivalent to feelings, has come conveniently into fashion as a further shelter for the ambiguity. We cannot employ this phrase for feelings without implying the persistence of a subject throughout them, their relation to which forms their nexus with each other. Thus, by the use of it the physical psychologist can disguise that disintegration of experience which is logically involved in its reduction to a succession of

feelings corresponding to a series of occurrences in the nervous organism. The embarrassment which might be caused by a demand for a physiological account of this persistent subject, he can avoid by saying that to him experience is merely the succession of feelings. The question which might then arise as to the possibility of the successive feelings being also an experience of succession, he can take out of his critic's mouth by the assumption that feelings are states of consciousness— states of a subject which recognises them as its successive modes." It is sometimes ludicrous to observe how, after denying a possible ego, writers are obliged to resort to an impossible one. Mr Lewes in his first volume of the Problems,' seems inclined to make the ego consist of a mass of "systemic" sensations-those, namely, of nutrition, respiration, generation and the muscles, which, he says, constitute a stream of sentience, upon which each external stimulus forms a ripple, consciousness being caused by the consequent breach of equilibrium. But it is manifest that this illustration goes for nothing without the presupposition of a sentient observer. A mass of feeling, however large, cannot apprehend a feeling. It is the nature of a feeling to be felt, not to feel; and no addition to the number or volume of sensations