THE REALITY OF THE SELF. 5-I 



soul cannot be made a proof of its immortality ; 

 such juggling with ideas cannot afford any real 

 certainty of a future life. 



But Kant's own doctrine is of a^ more dubious 

 character. The question is, whether our conscious- 

 ness of our own existence cans be made the basis 

 of theoretical inferences.-^ Kant puts it as the 

 Cogito ergo sum of Descartes, and denies that it is 

 the basis of any knowledge. For^ he says, self- 

 consciousness is a mere form, indifferent to its 

 matter, the actual contents which fill it (cf. § 14), 

 and utterly empty in itself. The Self is a mere 

 "synthetic unity of apperception," which. unites and 

 binds together " the manifold of perception " into a 

 whole, and thus makes experience and knowledge 

 possible. But it does no more ; it is a paralogism 

 to regard our own existence as the one certain fact 

 and the basis of all knowledge. 



This argument depends on the substitution of the 

 Cogito ergo sum, i.e. the explicit assertion of exist- 

 ence, for the implicit conviction which we feel. It 

 assumes that thought can be put = consciousness, 

 and that that which cannot be stated in terms of 

 thought, e.g. feeling, is nothing. 



But as a matter of fact, the Cogito ergo sum can- 

 not be regarded as the ratio essendi, but only as the 

 ratio cognoscendi of our existence. It is not that 

 we are because we think, but we are able to think 

 because we are. And we not only think, but will 



^ On theoretical grounds his verdict about the existence of the 

 soul is non liquet. But this, of course, does not hinder him, here 

 as elsewhere, from reversing the agnosticism of the Theoretic 

 Reason by means of the Practical Reason. So he asserts that 

 the moral consciousness does establish the reality of the Self. 

 " I am, because I ought," as it were. Only, he says, this does 

 not suffice for any theoretic inference. 



