iiv.J ON DESCARTES' "DISCOURSE." 327 



space which could not "be occupied, at the same time, by 

 anything else. In other words, the marble has the 

 primary quality of matter, extension. Surely this quality 

 must be in the tiling, and not in our minds? JJut the 

 reply must still be ; whatever may, or may not, exist in the 

 thing, all that we can know of these qualities is a state of 

 consciousness. What we call extension is a consciousness 

 of a relation between two, or more, affections of the 

 sense of sight, or of touch. And it is wholly incon- 

 ceivable that what we call extension should exist inde- 

 pendently of such consciousness as our own. Whether, 

 notwithstanding this inconceivability, it does so exist, or 

 not, is a point on which I offer no opinion. 



Thus, whatever our marble may be in itself, all that 

 we can know of it is under the shape of a bundle of our 

 own consciousnesses. 



Nor is our knowledge of anything we know or feel 

 more, or less, than a knowledge of states of consciousness. 

 And our whole life is made up of such states. Some of 

 these states we refer to a cause we call " self ; ; others to 

 a cause or causes which may be comprehended under 

 the title of "not-self." But neither of the existence of 

 'self, ;; nor of that of "not-self," have we, or can we by 

 any possibility have, any such unquestionable and im- 

 mediate certainty as we have of the states of conscious- 

 ness which we consider to be their effects. They are not 

 immediately observed facts, but results of the application 

 of the law of causation to those facts. Strictly speaking, 

 the existence of a " self" and of a "not-self " are hypo- 

 theses by which we account for the facts of consciousness. 

 They stand upon the same footing as the belief in the 

 general trustworthiness of memory, and in the general 

 constancy of the order of nature — as hypothetical 

 assumptions which cannot be proved, or known with 

 that highest degree of certainty which is given by im- 



