AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 19 



only through the power of conception that the fact can 

 be seized in its relations and thus thoroughly compre- 

 hended. This remarkable power of the mind, then, 

 which we call conception, is found in its most elementary 

 character to be a subordinate phase of perception. And 

 yet, through its own expansion into its complete, explicit 

 significance and vigor, it transcends perception, includes 

 and subordinates it, and proves to be the mode of activity 

 by which the outer world of objects and relations is 

 brought together or comprehended as a harmonized, uni- 

 fied whole, completely within the grasp of the mind.* 



/. PRIMARY UNITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 



It will now be desirable to bring into more explicit 

 statement the significant fact already more than once 

 referred to : That in every act of knowing, whether that 

 act be predominantly perceptive or predominantly con- 

 ceptive, there is necessarily involved not merely a refer- 

 ence, implicit or explicit, of object to object ; but also a 

 reference of every object to a self as perceiving and as 

 conceiving. Thus every possible act of knowing necessa- 

 rily implies a self-reference as the fundamental character- 

 istic of the individual consciousness. 



Knowing is, first of all, ^//"-knowing a knowing- 

 together, as the word consciousness itself implies. And 

 this collectedness and vital unification of knowing in 

 selfhood has been further emphasized among English- 

 speaking people in the term se^-consciousness. It is, 



*It will be noticed that the term conception is here used in a sense so 

 wide as to include thought an extension of meaning not without prece- 

 dent, and not without psychological justification. For just as conception is 

 implicit in every act of perception, so thought, properly speaking, is implicit 

 in every act of conception. Hence the frequent use of the expression "to 

 conceive," meaning " to think." 



