66 ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 



§ 20. Xor do we meet with any greater success when, in- 

 stead of the extent of consciousness, we consider its sub- 

 stance. The question — What is this that thinks? admits of 

 no better solution than the question to which we have just 

 found none but inconceivable answers. 



The existence of each individual as known to himself, 

 has been always held by mankind at large, the most incon- 

 trovertible of truths. To say — " I am as sure of it as I am 

 sure that I exist," is, in common speech, the most emphatic 

 expression of certainty. And this fact of personal existence, 

 testified to by the universal consciousness of men, has been 

 made the basis of sundry philosophies; whence may be 

 drawn the inference, that it is held by thinkers, as well as by 

 the vulgar, to be beyond all facts unquestionable. 



Belief in the reality of self, is, indeed, a belief which no 

 hypothesis enables us to escape. What shall we say of these 

 successive impressions and ideas which constitute conscious- 

 ness ? Shall we say that they are the affections of something 

 called mind, which, as being the subject of them, is the real 

 ego f If we say this, we manifestly imply that the ego is an 

 entity. Shall we assert that these impressions and ideas are 

 the mere superficial changes wrought on some thinking sub- 

 stance, but are themselves the very body of this substance — 

 are severally the modified forms which it from moment to 

 moment assumes? This hypothesis, equally with the fore- 

 going, implies that the individual exists as a permanent and 

 distinct being; since modifications necessarily involve some- 

 thing modified. Shall we then betake ourselves to the scep- 

 tic's position, and argue that we know nothing more than our 

 impressions and ideas themselves — that these are to us the 

 only existences; and that the personality said to underlie 

 them is a mere fiction ? We do not even thus escape ; since 

 this proposition, verbally intelligible but really unthinkable, 

 itself makes the assumption which it professes to repudiate. 

 For how can consciousness be wholly resolved into impres- 

 sions and ideas, when an impression of necessity implies 



