SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 20$ 



much more than this : it is the separately constructed vehicle 

 for the conveyance of a particular meaning, which may never 

 have been conveyed by that or by any other phrase before. 

 But while we thus attach due importance to so great an 

 advance towards the faculty of true predication, we must 

 notice, on the one hand, that as yet it is not true predication 

 in the sense of being the expression of a true or conceptual 

 judgment ; and, on the other hand, we must notice that the 

 power of thus using words as movable types does not deserve 

 to be regarded as any wonderful or unaccountable advance in 

 the faculty of sign-making, when we pay due regard to the 

 several considerations above stated. The really important 

 point to notice is that, notwithstanding this great advance 

 towards the faculty of predication, this faculty has 7iot yet 

 been reached: the propositions which are made are still 

 unattended by self-consciousness : they are not conceptual, 

 but pre-conceptual. 



Given, then, this stage of mental evolution, and what 

 follows ? Be it remembered I am not endeavouring to solve 

 the impossible problem as to the intrinsic nature of self- 

 consciousness, or how it is that such a thing is possible. I 

 am merely accepting its existence (and therefore its pos- 

 sibility) as a fact ; and upon the basis of this fact I shall now 

 endeavour to show how, in my opinion, self-consciousness 

 may be seen to follow upon the stage of mental evolution 

 which we have here reached. 



The child, like the animal, is supplied by its logic of 

 recepts with a world of images, standing as signs of outward 

 objects ; with an ejective knowledge of other minds ; and 

 with that kind of recognition of self as an active, suffer- 

 ing and accountable agent which, following Mr. Chauncey 

 Wright, I have called "outward self-consciousness." But, over 

 and above the animal, the child has at its command, as we 

 have just seen, the more improved machinery of sign-making 

 which enables it to signify to other minds (cjectivcly known) 

 the contents of its receptual knowledge. Now, among these 



