78 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



from Mr. Mill's own admissions, a power of reminiscence witli all that 

 it implies. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that, in explaining the 

 origin of selfconsciousness in accordance with this theory, whatever 

 t^rms may be used in accommodation to the necessities of human 

 language, the theory supposes that mental phenomena, in their essential 

 and original nature, are not referred to a self or mind. It is of the first 

 importance to urge this precaution ; for, whatever may be the primitive 

 state of mental life in man, all language is adapted to the expression of 

 a mental condition in which selfconsciousness is an essential flictor, 

 and it is one of the most insuperable difficulties, if not a sheer impossi- 

 bility in this controversy, to find terms which do not take for granted 

 the very point at issue. 



What, then, has Mr. Mill contributed towards analysing the pheno- 

 menon of selfconsciousness? His analysis, imperfect as he admits it 

 to be himself, seems to me even more imperfect than he supposes. 

 Confessedly he accounts for nothing in selfconsciousness except the 

 notion of permanence, and it may be granted provisionally that so far 

 his account is satisfactory, as it is needless to raise any dispute on such 

 a point. We shall discover immediately the aspect in which he thinks 

 that his theory fails to explain selfconsciousness, but there is another 

 obtrusive aspect in which it is also unsuccessful. What it attempts to 

 account for is not the consciousness of self at all ! It explains, let it 

 be admitted, how the notion of a permanent something grows up in 

 the human consciousness; let it also be admitted that it explains how 

 the notion of a permanent something which is generated by sensations 

 alone becomes diflPerenced in consciousness from that notion of a per- 

 manent something which attaches itself to all mental states ; but how 

 the one notion is drawn to the one pole, while the other rushes to the 

 opposite pole, of an antithesis which runs through all subsequent con- 

 sciousness, is not explained in any form in which the existence of the 

 antithesis is not already assumed. Given the consciousness of myself, 

 which of course implies the consciousness of that which is not myself, 

 it becomes quite conceivable that I should refer to myself all my mental 

 states, while I connect with something that is not myself, the particular 

 group of phenomena called sensations ; but how the consciousness of 

 these two contradictories is in the first instance created, I cannot find 

 that Mr. Mill has made even an attempt to explain. He points out, 

 it is true, but his explanation goes no further than to point out, how 

 certain mental phenomena, namely the sensations, might, by the ac- 



