ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 67 



something impressed? Or again, how can the sceptic who 

 has decomposed his consciousness into impressions and ideas, 

 explain the fact that he considers them as his impressions and 

 ideas? Or once more, if, as he must, he admits that he has 

 an impression of his personal existence, what warrant can 

 he show for rejecting this impression as unreal while he ac- 

 cepts all his other impressions as real? Unless he can give 

 satisfactory answers to these queries, which he cannot, he 

 must abandon his conclusions; and must admit the reality 

 of the individual mind. 



But now, unavoidable as is this belief — established 

 though it is not only by the assent of mankind at large, en- 

 dorsed by divers philosophers, but by the suicide of the scep- 

 tical argument — it is yet a belief admitting of no justifica- 

 tion by reason: nay, indeed, it is a belief which reason, 

 when pressed for a distinct answer, rejects. One of the most 

 recent writers who has touched upon this question — Mr 

 Mansel — does indeed contend that in the consciousness of 

 self, we have a piece of real knowledge. The validity of 

 immediate intuition he holds in this case unquestionable: 

 remarking that " let system-makers say what they will, the 

 unsophisticated sense of mankind refuses to acknowledge 

 that mind is but a bundle of states of consciousness, as mat- 

 ter is (possibly) a bundle of sensible qualities. 7 ' • On which 

 position the obvious comment is, that it does not seem alto- 

 gether a consistent one for a Kantist, who pays but small re- 

 spect to " the unsophisticated sense of mankind " when it 

 testifies to the objectivity of space. Passing over this, how- 

 ever, it may readily be shown that a cognition of self, prop- 

 erly so called, is absolutely negatived by the laws of thought. 

 The fundamental condition to all consciousness, emphatic- 

 ally insisted upon by Mr Mansel in common with Sir Wil- 

 liam Hamilton and others, is the antithesis of subject and 

 object. And on this " primitive dualism of consciousness," 

 " from which the explanations of philosophy must take their 

 start," Mr Mansel founds his refutation of the German 



