THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 163 



attributes in too small a compass, but it is a pure metaphysical or 

 ontological predication, from which reason defend us ! As to the ex- 

 istence of any Spinozistic substance holding in itself the irreconcilables 

 thought and extension, how can it any longer be worth while to ex- 

 press an opinion ? Perhaps matter is double-faced. This is a specu- 

 lation which, as it transcends, contradicts experience. 



If I mistake not, Mr. Mill and Mr. Bain have themselves refuted 

 their position with regard to the development of personality from im- 

 personal feeling. Mr. Mill ("Examination of Hamilton," page 242) 

 says : " If, therefore, we speak of the mind as a series of feelings, we 

 are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series which is 

 aware of itself as past and present ; and we are reduced to the alter- 

 native of believing that the mind or ego is something different from 

 any series of feelings or possibilities of them, or of accepting the para- 

 dox that something which, by hypothesis, is but a series of feelings, 

 can be aware of itself as a series." In his edition of " The Analysis 

 of the Human Mind" (i, 230) he further says, "There is no mean- 

 ing in the word ego, or I, unless the I of to-day is also the I of yester- 

 day." This mast be taken as an admission that personality is an essen- 

 tial for personal identity. 



Mr. Bain says : " We may be in a state of pleasure with little or 

 nothing of thought " (personal consciousness) " accompanying. We 

 are still properly said to be conscious or under consciousness. It is 

 thus correct to draw a line between feeling and knowing that we feel, 

 although there is great delicacy in the operation. [Italics are the 

 writer's.] It may be said in one sense that we can not feel without 

 knowing that we feel ; but the assertion is verging on error, for a feel- 

 ing may be accompanied with a minimum of cognitive energy or, as 

 good as, none at all." I am unable to appreciate this passage as other 

 than an abandonment of the development theory applied to personality. 

 The language of Professor Calderwood seems just when he writes, 

 " If in every sensation, every feeling, there is a particle of cognitive 

 energy " (if the sensation be known as mine in any sense) " the devel- 

 opment theory as an account of personality fails." 



Under the influence of the a priori procedure, both metaphysical 

 and theological, most of us flee with raised hands of horror at sound 

 of the word will. Recollections of " you shall and you sha'n't, you can 

 and you can't, you will and you won't," crowd round in ever-thicken- 

 ing confusion. Still, it must be said that, apart from all talk about 

 freedom and bondage, volition is a decidedly large fact in human ex- 

 perience. Though Goethe is right in saying, " Ein kleiner Ring 

 begranzt unser Leben," a ring of circumstance, of inheritance, yet 

 within the circle of that ring a measure of action prevails which no 

 word describes save the word willed. The action is determined by 

 personality. It is impossible to find provision for this in the nervous 

 system. Inhibitory nerves there may be, but the experience of our- 



