THE MIRROR OF CONSCIOUSNESS 137 



not only the forces which act upon us, but our 

 behaviour under their influence, and (to use a 

 homely comparison) the spectacle gives us such 

 assistance as we derive from a looking-glass 

 when dressing ourselves. 



Consciousness marshals our perceptions and 

 recollections for reasoning analysis. It converts, 

 so to speak, a disorderly pile of literature into a 

 well-arranged library, classifying a store of desul- 

 tory information into definite knowledge, which 

 can be used to correct the instinctive propensity 

 to link together, as cause and effect, events that 

 are not essentially connected, merely because one 

 has followed the other in our experience. We owe 

 it to knowledge, for instance, that we can deny 

 that the state of the atmosphere upon St. Swithin's 

 day determines the course of the weather during 

 the forty days following. 



Consciousness, further, sharpens the edge of the 

 reasoning faculty by which we appreciate the 

 properties of things. We perceive that a red flower 

 is not an indivisible whole to be taken as it 

 stands but is a flower that possesses the prop- 

 erty of redness. Our grasp of this property 

 is styled " conception " as opposed to our 

 " perception " of the flower as a whole. Con- 

 sciousness enables reason to go further and 

 to apprehend that properties may have prop- 

 erties of their own. Reason sees that a flight 

 of three birds has the property of " threeness " : 

 assisted by consciousness it sees that "threeness" 

 has the property of being number, and can be 

 classed with " fourness " and " fiveness " : so 

 also it can distinguish the property of shape in 

 roundness and squareness, of colour in redness 

 and blueness. Properties are, in fact, figured as 

 abstract ideas, and we gain such concepts as those 

 of sweetness, bitterness, virtue, and vice. Nor 



