194 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



CHAPTER X. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 



My contention in this chapter will be that, given the proto- 

 plasm of the sign-making faculty so far organized as to have 

 reached the denotative stage ; and given also the protoplasm 

 of judgment so far organized as to have reached the stage of 

 stating a truth, without the mind being yet sufficiently 

 developed to be conscious of itself as an object of thought, 

 and therefore not yet able to state to itself a truth as true ; by 

 a confluence of these two protoplasmic elements an act of 

 fertilization is performed, such that the subsequent processes 

 of mental organization proceed apace, and soon reach the 

 stage of differentiation between subject and object. 



And here, to avoid misapprehension, I may as well make 

 it clear at the outset that in all which is to follow I am in no 

 way concerned with the philosophy of this change, but only 

 with its history. On the side of its philosophy no one can 

 have a deeper respect for the problem of self-consciousness 

 than I have ; for no one can be more profoundly convinced 

 than I am that the problem on this side does not admit of 

 solution. In other words, so far as this aspect of the matter 

 is concerned, I am in complete agreement with the most 

 advanced idealist; and hold that in the datum of self- 

 consciousness we each of us possess, not merely our only 

 ultimate knowledge, or that which only is " real in its own 

 right," but likewise the mode of existence which alone the 

 human mind is capable of conceiving as existence, and there- 

 fore the co7iditio sine qud non to the possibility of an external 



