16 
no experience has been able fully to analyze, though forced 
to admit. 
Should any objection be taken to our use of the word 
“ conscious 39 agent, we pretend to no technical meaning 
in it. We take the word as expressing the fact, and 
no more, that there are beings in the universe 
scim^ness °im- who not only know things, but know that they 
stated finaUy know; i.e., they look at themselves as agents — 
while some agents do not so look at themselves. 
A conscious agent is what is meant commonly by a Mind — 
(without questioning other kinds of intelligence). He is and 
knows that he is ; acts, and knows it. — To be conscious of 
itself, the mind asks no other principle than itself — i. e. it 
knovjs that itself is a being (§ 23). To affirm any other being, 
we must, as Berkeley said, look to the phenomena. But to 
(pcuvo/uLevov presupposes a being, to whom (paivzTcu . Conscious- 
ness recognizes from the first anterior possibility of being. 
Y. 
27. We have arrived, then, at a more advanced conclusion as 
to the “ conscious agent.” His action is recognized by others 
Next, if the as praiseworthy or not, as good or evil, according as 
referable at aU k as k een its determiner, unrestrained by external 
to the agent,— compulsion of any kind, and not fixed to action by 
Ixamine itTn internal law or constitution. But this determining 
him. agentdoes not make Right ; otherwise every act would 
be right. We have still something to define if possible, as to 
“ the good 33 itself — the deed per se , as distinct from the 
doer — either a parte ante or ct parte post. To this, then, we 
briefly return. [See § 14, There are some actions , fyc. 33 ~\ 
For if any action be good or evil in bearing a certain inner 
character as it comes from the doer, it follows that we must 
pursue the action back to the agent, and there contemplate and 
distinguish it , as well as him. 
If we think of the conscious agent, or “ mind 33 (as we may 
now say), it is a simple fact that a thinker and his thought 
The con- are not the same — not identical: we recognize at 
^ious agent,— once a at least, viz. “ subject” and “ ob- 
pnsea duality, j ect.” (P. Lombard would add “ relation.”) 
28. Looking then at this intelligence, mind, conscious being, 
or Agent, as ideally prior to and apart from all phenomena of 
external being, what shall we find ? Evidently, ex vi termini , 
its object would then be the abstract, or the infinite; and 
