THE CONSCIOUSNESS OP SELF. 855 



openly what lie needs. "All states of consciousness," he 

 says, "imply and postulate a subject Ego, whose sub- 

 stance is unknown and unknowable, to which [why not say 

 hy which ?] states of consciousness are referred as attri- 

 butes, but which in the process of reference becomes ob- 

 jectified and becomes itself an attribute of a subject Ego 

 which lies still beyond, and which ever eludes cognition 

 though ever postulated for cognition.' * This is exactly 

 our judging and remembering present ' Thought,' described 

 in less simple terms. 



After Mr. Thompson, M. Taine and the two Mills deserve 

 credit for seeking to be as clear as they can. Taine tells us 

 in the first volume of his * Intelligence ' what the Ego is, — 

 a continuous web of conscious events no more really dis- 

 tinct from each other f than rhomboids, triangles, and 

 squares marked with chalk on a plank are really distinct, 

 for the plank itself is one. In the second volume he says 

 all these parts have a common character embedded in them, 

 xhat of being internal [this is our character of ' warmness,' 

 otherwise named]. This character is abstracted and iso- 

 lated by a mental fiction, and is what we are conscious of as 

 our self — ' this stable icithin is what each of us calls I or 

 we.' Obviously M. Taine forgets to tell us what this * each 

 of us' is, which suddenly starts up and performs the ab- 

 straction and ' calls ' its product I or me. The character 

 does not abstract itself. Taine means by 'each of us' 

 merely the present ' judging Thought ' with its memory and 

 tendency to appropriate, but he does not name it distinctly 

 enough, and lapses into the fiction that the entire series of 

 thoughts, the entire ' plank,' is the reflecting psychologist. 



James Mill, after defining Memory as a train of associ- 

 ated ideas beginning with that of my past self and ending 

 with that of my present self, defines my Self as a train of 

 ideas of which Memory declares the first to be continuously 

 connected with the last. The successive associated ideas 



* System of Psychology (1884) vol. i. p. 114. 



f ' Distinct only to observation,' be adds. To whose observation? the 

 outside psychologist's, the Ego's, their own, or the plank's? Daraiif 

 kommt es an t 



