SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 81 



another ; were we without feelings of movement we could distinguish 

 only different sensations. This is the germ of the distinction between 

 self and not self; to develop it something more is required. This requi- 

 site is found in the distinction between impression and idea, between 

 the state of things called the present or actual and the subsequent state 

 of things called the ideal. Actual impressions vary with our move- 

 ments, and, to be obtained or retained, require that certain movements 

 be performed, so that the actual state comes to be associated with our 

 feelings of movement. In passing to the ideal state, on the other hand, 

 the bodily movements necessary to secure the actual may be dispensed 

 with. There thus arises a contrast very marked, between the actual 

 and the ideal, a contrast such as that of which we are conscious between 

 the reality and the bare imagination, for example, of a feast. This 

 antithesis between the ideal and the actual, between imagination and 

 reality, is expressed in such terms as internal and external, subject and 

 object, self and not-self."* 



Here certainly there is no shrinking from the conclusions to which 

 a general theory of mind has led. We feel ourselves in the pre- 

 sence of the same unhesitating and unswerving directness with which 

 Hume advances to his results. It is well for us that Professor Bain has 

 unambiguously proclaimed the ultimate issue of a psychological analysis 

 which professes the strictest adherence to the methods of modern 

 science, even though we may be obliged, since our dreaming and our 

 waking consciousness are made up of the same materials, to accept in 

 their most literal signification the words of Prospero : ''We are such 

 stuff as dreams are made of.'' Yet one can scarcely avoid feeling that 

 there are various grounds on which it is impossible to regard the above 

 analysis of self-consciousness as fulfilling the requirements which modern 

 science has taught us to recognise as essential to the scientific establish- 

 ment of any theory. 



It is, in the first place, a circumstance suggestive of doubt, that 

 Professor Bain's analysis is not the analysis adopted even by those 

 psychologists who maintain the possibility of decomposing self-consci- 

 ousness. It must always remain extremely questionable, whether self- 

 consciousness admits of analysis at all, as long as scarcely two of those 

 who attempt the analysis ever arrive at the same elementary constituents. 

 But, in the second place, an obstacle to the acceptance of such an 



* See The Emotion,^ and the Will, pp. 593-8, 2nd edition. 



