258 ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE 



Our knowledge of our own mental and bodily activity, 

 our consciousness, lies at the foundation of our whole 

 intellectual life, as the parallel affection of our lower 

 mental nature "consentience"* is at the foundation of 

 all our sense perceptions. That we are conscious, is an 

 ultimate fact of our being, our certain knowledge and 

 perception of which no one can dispute. In so far as it is 

 a fact a state or quality of our being it can, like other 

 qualities, be mentally abstracted, and " consciousness" is 

 thus both a fact and also an abstract idea gained from 

 our own perception of our own self-knowledge. 



Consciousness, though existing at each instant, is, in its 

 very essence, continuous and conscious of its own persist- 

 ence. We each of us know, and are conscious, not only 

 that we are doing whatever we may be doing (as the 

 reader is conscious that he is reading this page), but also 

 that we began to do it and were doing something else 

 before we so began. The supposition that consciousness 

 could be composed of an aggregate of different " states " of 

 consciousness is an absurdity. Such separate "states," 

 if each were aware only of itself, could not constitute that 

 consciousness which we know ourselves to possess, and 

 which is aware of itself as continuous and successive. 

 Consciousness is thus a persistent intelligence which, as 

 from a fixed point, reviews the procession of events, and 

 recognises them as severally belonging either to the 

 order of ideas, or to what it recognises as real, external 

 existences. 



It is thus manifest that we have a certain power 

 of directing our attention upon our feelings, or our 

 thoughts, and of reflecting on them and comparing 

 them, as well as of voluntarily attending to any ex- 



* See ante, pp. 227 and 252. 



