THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 367 



acter of an Experience conceived as absolute really annihi- 

 lates psycliology as a distinct body of science. 



Psycliology is a natural science, an account of particu- 

 lar finite streams of tliouglit, coexisting and succeeding 

 in time. It is of course conceivable (though far from clearly 

 so) that in the last metaphysical resort all these streams 

 of thought may be thought by one universal All-thinker. 

 But in this metaphysical notion there is no profit for psy- 

 chology ; for grant that one Thinker does think in all of us, 

 still what He thinks in me and what in you can never be de- 

 duced from the bare idea of Him. The idea of Him seems 

 even to exert a positively paralyzing efi"ect on the mind 

 The existence of finite thoughts is suppressed altogether. 

 Thought's characteristics, as Professor Green says, are 



"not to be sought in the incidents of individual lives which last 

 but for a day. ... No knowledge, nor any mental act involved in 

 knowledge, can properly be' called a ' phenomenon of consciousness.' 

 . . . For a phenomenon is a sensible event, related in the way of 

 antecedence or consequence to other sensible events, but the conscious- 

 ness which constitutes a knowledge ... is not an event so related 

 nor made up of such events." 



Again, if 



" we examine the constituents of any perceived object, ... we 

 shall find alike that it is only for consciousness that they can exist, and 

 that the consciousness for which they thus exist cannot be merely a 

 series of phenomena or a succession of states. ... It then becomes clear 

 that there is a function of consciousness, as exercised in the most rudi- 

 mentary experience [namely, the function of synthesis] which is incom- 

 patible with the definition of consciousness as any sort of succession of 

 any sort of phenomena." * 



Were we to follow these remarks, we should have to 

 abandon our notion of the * Thought ' (perennially renewed in 

 time, but always cognitive thereof), and to espouse instead of 



an unpardonable logical sin, when talking of a thought's knowledge (eithei 

 of an object or of itself), to change the terms without warning, and, sub- 

 stituting the psychologist's knowledge therefor, still make as if we were 

 continuing to talk of the same thing. For monistic idealism, this is the 

 very enfranchisement of philosophy, and of course cannot be too much in- 

 dulged in. 



* T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §^ 57, 61, 64. 



