PROLEGOMENA TO ETHICS. 117 



consciousness cannot be a part of the process 

 of nature. Popular psychology has, indeed, 

 familiarized us with the term "phenomena of con- 

 sciousness." Knowledge may be of phenomena, 

 but phenomena are related in time to other phe- 

 nomena, the consciousness is not. Few better 

 instances of Mr. Green's psychological analysis 

 can be found than the sections (58-64) which he 

 devotes to the theory of perception adopted by 

 Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes, and the result of his 

 analysis is the conclusion that 



"A sensation excited by an external irritant is not a per- 

 ception of the irritant or (by itself) of anything at all ; every 

 object we perceive is a congeries of related facts, of which 

 the simplest component, no less than the composite whole, 

 requires in order to its presentation the action of a principle 

 of consciousness, not itself subject to conditions of time, upon 

 successive appearances, such action as may hold the appear- 

 ances together, without fusion, in an apprehended fact " 

 (p. 70). 



But our consciousness seems to admit of growth. 

 How is this to be explained ? Probably what 

 seems to be a growth of consciousness is really a 

 process by which the animal organism becomes 

 " a vehicle of the eternal consciousness : " 



" We must hold that there is a consciousness for which 

 the relations of fact which form the object of our gradually 

 attained knowledge already and eternally exist ; and that 

 the growing knowledge of the individual is a progress 

 towards this consciousness." 



The system of related facts which we call the 



