72 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



and a uonego, are in our consciousness now, and are, or seem to be, 

 inseparable from it, there is no reason for believing that the latter of 

 them, the nonego, was in consciousness from the beginning; since, 

 even if it was not, we can perceive a way in which it not only might, 

 but must have grown up .... I now propose to carry the in- 

 quiry a step further, and to examine whether the ego, as a deliverance 

 of consciousness, stands on any firmer ground than the nonego; whether, 

 at the first moment of our experience, we already have in our conscious- 

 ness the conception of self as a permanent existence ; or whether it is 

 formed subsequently, and admits of a similar analysis to that which we 

 have found that the notion of notself is susceptible of." Obviously it 

 is here taken for granted that the consciousness of self may possibly be 

 an original factor of the human consciousness, even though the con- 

 sciousness of the notself arise only after a more or less prolonged pro- 

 cess. In the sense in which nonego and notself are used by Mr. Mill, 

 and which may be vindicated by a prevalent usage, this assumption 

 may be perfectly justifiable ; for, though it is impossible to discover the 

 self and the notself in our consciousness, using these terms in their 

 most general, which is also their etymological, signification, yet it is 

 possible that the self may appear in consciousness before a certain special 

 form of the notself, before that special form which is distinguished by 

 the characteristic of extension, and which we name matter. It is ex- 

 tremely natural that matter should thus be identified, in ordinary philo- 

 sophical language, with the nonego. There is no commoner figure 

 of speech than that in which a characteristic belonging to the most 

 prominent part of any whole is taken to denominate the whole itself; 

 and the most numerous, certainly the most obtrusive, portion of the 

 nonegos presented in consciousness is made up of material things, that 

 is, of things existing in space. It not to be overlooked, moreover, that 

 there may be sound philosophical reasons for using the word viatter to 

 designate the nonego in general, or in other words for describing objects 

 known as constituting the matter of knowledge; for it may prove to be 

 a result of mental inquiries, that all objects, that the whole matter of 

 knowledge is formed by projecting our own mental states and thus 

 making them things that may be contemplated by us as different from 

 ourselves. But it must not be overlooked, that the question in debate 

 with regard to external perception concerns those nonegos which are 

 presented to the ego under the conditions of space; and the qualities 

 which are usually regarded as e&sential to matter, and which are accord- 



