82 SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 



analysis is to be found ia the want of definiteness as to the condition of 

 mind previous to the birth of self-consciousness. This seems to me to 

 affect peculiarly the theory of Professor Bain, from his very attempt to 

 be more explicit on the subject by means of his doctrine, which ascribes 

 consciousness to all the nerve-centres distributed throughout the nervous 

 system. This phenomenon, which he names consciousness, is distin- 

 guished, on the one hand, from that consciousness of which alone there 

 is any recollection, and, on the other hand, from purely nervous action. 

 The only consciousness, over which memory extends, and which can 

 therefore be described, not by hypothesis, but from knowledge, is a 

 consciousness in which the apprehension of self forms an universal 

 factor. Moreover, the usual descriptions of consciousness all assume 

 the presence of this factor; for it is commonly explained as the 

 knowledge which a mind possesses of the states in which it exists. If 

 I eliminate, from any of my -conscious states, the knowledge that I am 

 in that state, what is the residuum ? Nothing that I can conceive but 

 the current of nerve-force which formed the correlate of the conscious 

 state. But a nervous current is as destitute of all mental characteristics 

 as a current of electricity, a thermal vibration or a sonorous wave. 

 What then is this consciousness, which is neither consciousness, as 

 usually understood, nor yet a purely physical state ? It is not enough 

 to say, that it is something, but that what it is, cannot be defined. We 

 must know it at least sufficiently to be able to distinguish it from other 

 things, before we can assert that it is capable of generating the antithe- 

 tical notions of the self and the not-self. 



Finally, the notion, of which Mr. Bain gives an analysis, is not the 

 notion of self. Granting, in accordance with the admission already 

 made in the criticism of Mr. Mill's analysis, that the grouping together 

 of sensations in contrast with feelings of movement, of ideal states in 

 contrast with the actual, could take place before the appearance of self- 

 consciousness, it is a sheer begging of the question to claim for these 

 contrasted groups identity with the two terms of the great antithesis 

 which is now under consideration ; for there is in all this no light 

 thrown upon the problem, how ideas and impressions — how feelings of 

 movement and sensations — how, in short, all mental states come to be 

 felt as 77iine, — how "I" become conscious of mjself as existing in 

 these states. It is only by allowing the element sought to slip imper- 

 ceptibly into our analysis, that we can discover self-consciousness in the 

 synthesis described by Professor Bain. There is certainly nothing in 



