CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS POWERS. 11 



any of these faculties that they perceive, or are capable of 

 perceiving. While Consciousness, then, is a reality, and is 

 our primary perceptive faculty, the following propositions 

 are true in regard to it, and follow each other as conse- 

 quences and experiences from it. 



1. Each man has only one faculty of Consciousness, and 

 that Consciousness constitutes his primary identity to 

 himself, for in the course of life his body and other points 

 of temporary identity change from childhood to age and 

 lose all the features of literal identification. 



2. This faculty of Consciousness is not capable of doing 

 two things at a time, or receiving two or more simultaneous 

 sensations, but its acts and sensations are successive, one 

 following another : thus when the consciousness of hearing 

 is in action the consciousness of seeing, or anything else, 

 is for the moment suspended. 



3. This faculty of Consciousness, though not forming 

 any part of our bodies, nor inherent in the matter of them, 

 does, while we live in this world, reside for the time being 

 within our bodies and within and in actual contact with 

 the Matter of them, though not within any particular por- 

 tion of our bodies or of their material components ; for, 



4. The faculty of Consciousness is capable of pervading 

 every part of our body in the most rapid succession, changing 

 from head to foot, from hand to hand, from eye to ear, 

 from taste to smell or touch, and from any point of touch 

 to another over the whole surface of our bodies, and all 

 this with such celerity and ease as sometimes to deceive us 

 into the idea that we have received simultaneous instead of 

 merely rapid successive impressions or sensations. 



5. The faculty of Consciousness is therefore, and as 

 they are successively exercised in conjunction with it, in 

 actual contact with the impressions of all our faculties, and 

 can consequently place itself in actual though metaphysical 

 contact with every physical impression which our physical 



