80 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



itself." "What I dissent from," he says,* "is the placing of self in 

 the relationship of a factor or foil in all our cognitions. I grant it to 

 the fullest extent in the great cardinal cognition, subject=object, mind 

 versus matter, internal and external. I maintain, however, that this is 

 only one of innumerable cognitions of the human mind, although a very 

 commanding one. Moreover, I grant that everything that vre know 

 ultimately takes a part in that great comprehensive antithesis, ranging 

 jtself with one or the other pole. Still things might have been known 

 although the subject-object distinction had never emerged at all; it 

 being enough for cognition that any sort of contrast should exist. I 

 can know light simply by the transition from it to darkness; light- 

 darkness is a veritable cognition, a genuine stroke of knowledge, even 



if carried no further We might remain for ever at this 



point, being distinctly aware of a number of qualities without attaining 

 the subject-object cognition. It is true that we do not remain in any 

 such narrow sphere, but carry on our knowledge further and further, 

 until at last every conceivable quality is arrayed round one or other 

 pole of the greatest cognition of all." 



The starting point, then, of Professor Bain's theory of the self is 

 obvious. The distinction, of which every knower is conscious, between 

 himself and all that is not himself, is maintained to be merely one, 

 though the most prominent, of the discriminations which arise in human 

 consciousness, discrimination being regarded as the fundamental con- 

 dition of all knowledge. But how does this, the most general of our 

 discriminations, in the first instance originate ? It is in reply to this 

 question that Professor Bain seems to me to be more explicit than Mr. 

 Mill. His theory, briefly stated, is as follows : The germ of the dis- 

 tinction between self and notself is to be found in the difference between 

 our feelings of movement and our sensations. There is a more marked 

 contrast between these two classes of phenomena than between any two 

 classes of sensations. In passing from the putting forth of energy to a 

 sensation we are conscious of a wider transition than in passing from a 

 taste to a smell or from a colour to a sound, and the result is a flash of 

 clearer cognition. We are thus enabled to distinguish sensation as a 

 whole from our feelings of movement as a whole, and our feelings of 

 movement as a whole from sensation as a whole ; whereas, if we had no 

 sensation, we could distinguish merely feelings of movement from one 



* The Emotions and the Will, p. 597, 2nd edition. 



