258 Mr. J. J. Woodward on the Modern 
with regard to consciousness of perception, the form of con- 
sciousness by which we become acquainted with the non ego, 
—and then he concludes that there can be no consciousness of 
the ego because it cannot fulfil these conditions. That is, in 
a word, he denies consciousness of the ego, because it is not 
consciousness of the non ego. Really it appears to me that, 
as against such a philosophy as this it is not amiss to appeal 
to “the unsophisticated sense of mankind,” of which Mr. 
Mansel speaks*. But there is fortunately a better philosophy 
than this—a philosophy which recognizes the validity of the 
mind’s self-consciousness as at least fully equal to the validity 
of its consciousness of the conditions of the body by which it 
obtains a knowledge of the external world. By this self- 
consciousness [ know, with a certainty which no doubt can 
ever disturb, that [ have a mind ; and by rightly applying my 
reasoning powers to the data of my self-consciousness, 1 can 
learn much that will be useful to me with regard to my mental 
processes and the methods of employing them. But here I 
have to stop. I can learn nothing, whether by consciousness 
or by reasoning, with regard to the real nature of my con- 
scious mind, and however much it may long for immortality, 
neither philosophy nor science affords any foundation of proof 
upon which it might build its hopes. 
I have already said that I know mind only as a manifesta- 
tion of life. Its operations are intimately connected with the 
chemical and physical phenomena of living beings, and it 
exercises over them a certain directing influence, the nature 
of which we do not understand. The obedience of our volun- 
tary muscular actions to the mandates of the guiding will is 
a tamiliar illustration of this directing influence. On the 
other hand, all the knowledge of the external world on which 
the mind exerts its reasoning power reaches it through the 
organs of sense and the nervous system. Indeed, our studies 
of the phenomena of sensation compel us to conclude that 
what our mind really perceives, when it takes cognizance of 
the external world, is merely the ever-changing panorama of 
our own cerebral states. It should be anticipated therefore 
that disturbed or morbid conditions of the brain would lead to 
irregular or disorderly mental operations; and the circum- 
stance that this really happens affords no better proof of the 
materiality of thought than is afforded by the circumstances of 
our ordinary normal thought. 
So, too, since the cerebral changes, which the mind per- 
ceives, are themselves of a purely chemico-physical nature, it 
should be anticipated that, like the metabolic processes in 
* Ascited by Mr. Herbert Spencer, /oc. cit. last note. 
