TKE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 359 



no real tie. But whereas Hume was contented to say that 

 there might after all he no ' real tie,' Mill, unwilling to ad- 

 mit this j)ossibility, is driven, like any scholastic, to place it 

 in a non-j)henomenal world. 



John Mill's concessions may be regarded as the defini- 

 tive hankruptcy of the associationist description of the con- 

 sciousness of self, starting, as it does, with the best 

 intentions, and dimly conscious of the path, but ' perplexed 

 in the extreme ' at last with the inadequacy of those * simple 

 feelings,' non-cognitive, non-transcendent of themselves, 

 which were the only baggage it was willing to take along. 

 One muse heg memory, knowledge on the part of the feel- 

 ings of something outside themselves. That granted, every 

 other true thing follows naturally, and it is hard to go 

 astray. The knowledge the present feeling has of the past 



bility, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when 

 we reach ultimate facts ; and in general, one mode of stating it only appears 

 more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human lan- 

 guage is accommodated to the one. and is so incongruous Avith the other 

 that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The 

 real stumbliug-block is perhaps not in anj^ theory of the fact, but in the fact 

 itself. The true incomprehensiblity perhaps is, that something which has 

 ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a manner, present; that a 

 series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can 

 be gathered up, as it were, into a simple present conception, accompanied 

 by a belief of reality. I think by far the wisest thing we can do is to accept 

 the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place ; and when 

 we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them 

 with a reservation as to their meaning." 



In a later place in the same book (p. 561) Mill, speaking of what may 

 rightly be demanded of a theorist, says : ' ' He is not entitled to frame a 

 theory from one class of phenomena, extend it to another class which 

 It does not tit, and excuse himself by saying that if we cannot make it tit, 

 it is because ultimate facts are inexplicable." The class of phenomena 

 which the associationist school takes to frame its theory of the Ego are feel- 

 ings unaware of each other. The class of phenomena the Ego presents are 

 feelings oi which the later ones are intensely aware of those that went be- 

 fore. The two classes do not 'tit,' and no exercise of ingenuity can ever 

 make them fit. No shuffling of unaware feelings can make them aware. 

 To get the awareness we must openly beg it by postulating a new feel- 

 ing which has it. This new feeling is no ' Theory ' of the phenomena, 

 but a simple statement of them ; and as such I postulate in the text the 

 present passing Thought as a psychic integer, with its knowledge of sa 

 much that has gone before. 



