because in the first instant of our existence we have no conception of self, therefore the ego is a gratuitous fiction—a mere product of generalisation. Now, of course, we have no conception of anything in the first instant of our existence, nor in the first instant of its apprehension; inasmuch as a conception is only formed after several apprehensions have shown us what are the essential qualities of the object conceived. But a number of non-apprehensions of a thing could never lead to our forming a conception of it. Not even an infinite series of sensations or thoughts, in which no ego was present, could ever give us the conception of an ego that must be present to every sensation and thought. It is impossible to generalise something out of nothing. It is strange that Mill should have fallen into his present fallacy. He was a logician, and he knew well enough (though here he seems to have forgotten) that a conception-what in logical language is called a concept or notion or idea-can never coexist with the first apprehension of an object. It involves a comparison of various examples of that object, and an abstraction of the qualities in which they agree. For instance, we conceive of a man, according to the old scholastic definition, as "a rational animal." Mill might as well have argued that man is a pure fiction because,

the first time we saw a human being, we formed no conception of him. "Children," says Aristotle, "call all men father." It is not till after many presentations of the object, that we begin to distinguish the points which they have in common from those in which they differ, and out of the former to construct our idea.

It is to be observed, moreover, that picturableness is not necessary to the existence of a concept. Mill has himself strongly insisted upon the difference between imagination and conception. Conception is merely, he tells us, the attention which we pay to the common qualities of objects. The word man may suggest to our minds the image of one or more particular men; but in itself the mental conception, as he says, is nothing more than the two qualities of animality and rationality, united together, according to the laws of association, by the common term. Hence we may have conceptions not only of what is not, but of what cannot, be pictured in our minds. And, indeed, a little reflection will suffice to show that, in the last resort, everything of which we do form a conception, involves an unpicturable element. For a concept consists only of qualities; and qualities must be the qualities of something: but that of which they are the qualities has never been seen, and therefore can never be imagined.

Or as this mode of statement would be objected to by the Positivists, who think that qualities may be the qualities of nothing, let me put it thus. The various parts of a concept are bound together in the mind by the associative power of the word which stands for them all collectively. But we find that the qualities, which are united in the mind by means of language, are united in fact in the actual world. They cannot be bound together by nothing. There must be something which makes and keeps the combination of qualities in a pebble different from those in a diamond or a poodle. The complete analysis of a material object shows us that it is a something having, or combining, certain qualities. The complete analysis of a natural force. shows us that it is a something characterised by a certain combination of effects. The complete analysis of an ego shows that it is a something possessing a certain combination of faculties. The unpicturable element is present in all three cases alike. So far as it implies ignorance in the first two, so farand only so far-does it imply ignorance in the last.

Hence on many grounds we maintain that the ego is a real, though not a physical existence. Without a permanent subject there could never have existed a single remembrance or cognition,

nor even a sensation. So far negatively. But further positively: we are sometimes conscious of ourselves; apprehending ourselves along with our states in the same indivisible moment of time; and after reflection upon these past experiences, we are able to form a conception of self not less distinct, at any rate, than are our conceptions of material objects or of natural forces.

SECTION III.

THE FREEDOM OF THE EGO.

Now comes the question, Am I, or am I not, a free agent? Are my volitions made for me, or created by me? Am I conscious, in willing, merely that a volition has been formed, or that I have formed it?

The theory of a necessity in human actions, similar to the necessity obtaining in the external phenomena of nature, has been maintained by writers of very different schools upon most different grounds: some, like Jonathan Edwards, deducing it from the universality of the law of cause and effect; others, like Buckle, making it a matter of Baconian observation. We have the clearest and most elaborate explanation of the sensational doctrine of necessity in Bain's Emotions and Will.' The necessitarian theory of this school is based on the hypothesis that a human being consists only of a series of successive states, which cause one