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HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



tence outside myself. If, now, I know that I am, 

 that I think, that I will, then I know that con- 

 cerning the fundamental questions consciousness 

 is a reliable witness. But if consciousness tells 

 me that I will, it at the same instant assures me 

 that I am free ; I believe in my freedom on the 

 same authority that I believe in my existence. It 

 may seem to be abandoning the field of science to 

 fall back in this discussion on the testimony of 

 consciousness, but, however much we may try to 

 escape from it, consciousness always asserts itself, 

 and never utters one uncertain sound concerning 

 fundamental questions. I recognize the force of 

 all that Dr. Maudsley says : "A state of conscious- 

 ness that is at all definite, whether of internal or 

 external origin, cannot certainly be either the sub- 

 jective or the objective thing in itself : it is a rela- 

 tion of self and not-self, and implicates the one as 

 necessarily as the other term. Cogito, ergo s?im, 

 ' 1 think, therefore I am,' has a ring of transcen- 

 dental authority, until we interpolate after ' I ' the 

 quietly suppressed, but none the less surreptitiously 

 understood, 'who am,' and let it read, as it should 

 read, thus, — ' I (who am) think, therefore I am ' ; 

 after which it does not appear to carry us beyond 

 the simple and subjectively irreducible fact of 

 consciousness, beneath which, it must not be for- 



