each Christian disciple, as an individual, see to it that they are fulfilled in his own person. Then, let each do his utmost to urge others up to that higher type of Christian living, that better style of thought and experience which is essential to spiritual power. It is for all who would see Christendom attain to this advanced position to hold the matter ever in their thoughts; to talk of it at their firesides and to each other by the way; to impress the truth in relation to it in the places of social worship and in the pulpit; and, especially, to ask of Christ, who left to his own the promise of the Comforter, that the mission of the Holy Ghost may be speedily developed in the fulness of a power such as has not as yet been witnessed in the world. The day of triumph for Christianity waits, we believe, for such a manifestation of the sons of God as this. ART. III.-CONSCIOUSNESS: WHAT IS IT? IF THERE is any one characteristic of mental facts, in distinction from all other facts, it is consciousness. Concerning this feature of the mind, so peculiar and prominent, there still remains considerable diversity of sentiment; a proof, perhaps, that the true view has not yet been presented. Having briefly stated some of the opinions held as to the nature of consciousness, we wish to present a new theory in regard to it. According to Hamilton, Descartes is the first philosopher of the West who uses this term to designate the mind's knowledge of its own action. Previous to him, this form of knowledge was comparatively indirect in its method of expression, and obscure in thought. Locke blends consciousness and reflection, and seems to have regarded consciousness as a distinct power. In the last particular he was followed by Reid and Stewart. Professor Porter, in his new work, defines consciousness as" the power by which the soul knows its own acts and states." More singularly, he divides consciousness into two forms or species, natural consciousness and reflective consciousness. This view, then, that consciousness involves a distinct act, is one that arose early, and has remained historically strong; nevertheless, it seems to us to be easily confuted. In the first place, every act of mind, that it may be an act of mind,—at least a known act of mind-must be accompanied by this farther act of consciousness. Each thought, each feeling, each volition, must have this inseparable attendant; and what, pray, is it without this? A thought that is not known is no thought; a feeling that is not felt is no feeling; and a volition that is not consciously made is not made at all. Hence the very marrow and pith of each mental act, is this common act of consciousness; and to talk of acts whose substance and centre have thus been analyzed out of them and assigned a distinct, additive office, is to mistake the effigy of a man for the man himself, the form of thought for the act and power of thought. Consciousness is the pervasive characteristic, the peculiar quality and feature, the common ground and condition of every mental act and state; and not, therefore, something which can be separated from any and all of them, and leave an intelligible remainder of action, to be called, respectively, thinking, feeling, willing. Moreover, this act of consciousness, as an act of mind, must itself be known, and is, therefore, to be known directly, or by a second act of consciousness, of which it is made the object. If it, as an act, can be known directly, why may not every other act of mind? and why are we compelled to accept a complex, double-headed movement in the case of thought, while left at liberty to conceive the act of consciousness itself as a single, translucent effort, known to the mind in the first instance? If an act of consciousness, as an act, can be comprehended as directly intelligible to the mind, equally well can one of thought, or of feeling. Or, if an act of thought is not immediately cognizable, and requires the intervention of a second act, to wit, one of consciousness; then should this act require a third act to reveal it, and this a fourth, till the power of the mind to know at all is lost in the absurd pursuit of a power to know that power wherewith it knows. If the first act is not an act of knowing, no second act can make it one. If we can see and not see, feel and not feel, will and not will, then it will be in vain that we create another "inner sense” to overlook the mind itself, and report the mind to the mind, and tell the mind what, moment by moment, the mind is about. If the mind can not know, it can not inform itself what is knowledge. Knowledge can not be made up of two acts. In the last analysis it is simple, and failing once it fails 'forever. Another class of philosophers, less definite in their language, have contented themselves with a figurative designation of the office of consciousness, and have not told us in set phrase what it is. Thus Cousin speaks of it as a witness, and Dr. Hickok as an inner light. These images may aid us in conceiving what portion of our knowledge we owe to consciousness; but can do nothing by way of philosophical explanation of it. The view of Sir William Hamilton seems to us peculiarly wavering and indistinct. He explicitly rejects the idea, that consciousness is a faculty. He occasionally defines it in language that approaches closely what we regard as the true idea; yet, more frequently, he speaks of it in a way that seems peculiarly to identify it with knowing, and to give it the breadth which belongs to the cognitive faculties. Thus he very correctly speaks of consciousness as the "one necessary condition" of all mental phenomena; yet at once proceeds to mar the statement by saying, this "condition is consciousness, or the knowledge that I-that the Ego-exists, in some determinate state." Herein he makes consciousness something more than a general condition of all mental acts, and attributes to it a knowledge of that which is not phenominal, to wit, the ego. In giving the special conditions of consciousness, this enlargement, and at the same time limitation, of the word more manifestly appear. First, he says, "consciousness is an actual, and not a potential, knowledge." "The second limitation is that consciousness is an immediate, not a mediate, knowledge." To us a certain truth seems to belong to these statements, while the form of them is objectionable. The obscurity of the form of the language here employed per tains, we believe, to the thinking of Hamilton, and of many other philosophers. The truth of the statements is, that consciousness is involved in, is the condition of, all actual, immediate knowledge; as, indeed, it is of all knowledge, and all feeling, and all volition. The error of the statements lies in the affirmation, that consciousness is such knowledge, in contradistinction to any other knowledge; or in any other sense than that it is its essential form or condition. This error appears more plainly when Hamilton proceeds to give as a third, fourth, and fifth condition of consciousness, contrast, judgment, and memory. Here, then, certain forms of thought are made the conditions of consciousness; whereas consciousness is the absolutely universal condition of every mental state or act. If contrast is a condition of consciousness, and consciousness a condition of feeling, contrast is also a condition of feeling, and there can be no feeling without contrast, judgment, memory. A simple, passing sensation would thus be impossible; and also a first sensation, since such a sensation could not arouse memory. What a sensation may give rise to, and what are its antecedent conditions, are very different inquiries. Hamilton further urges, that consciousness is "the genus under which our several faculties of knowledge are contained as species;" that "consciousness constitutes, or is coextensive with, all our faculties of knowledge, these faculties being only special modifications under which consciousness is manifested." Now, a genus is nothing aside from the species which it includes, and consciousness must not only be each and every known power, it must equally be each and every susceptibility and volition; since these stand in exactly the same relation to it, are in the same degree dependent on it, as are thoughts. Hence consciousness, ceasing to be a single power, has become all the powers, or the mind itself. Thus it is virtually lost as an element, being made to include all elements; lost as a condition, being itself the thing, the entire activity conditioned. To these varying and confused views, we wish to oppose another. Consciousmess is inseparable from all mental action. It is its peculiar condition. It is not itself a single form of activity; it is not the entire activity of the mind taken collectively, it is the antecedent ulterior condition of that activity. Each act of the mind implies an independent power; but, that it may be an act of mind, it must be characterized by consciousness, assume this form, come under this condition. We know, we feel, we will. In each case we know that we know, we know that we feel, we know that we will. We do not, however, by this double form of expression, intimate that each of these acts is double, that there underlies the first knowing a second knowing; that there may be found under the feeling and the willing, respectively, a cognition. Each act is simple, primary, original, and involves the same condition, that of consciousness. Consciousness, then, is a regulative, an intuitive, an a priori idea, under which we explain all mental phenomena. It stands in the same relation to these that space does to physical existences. There is no material event or being which is not referable to some place or space in which it has occurred, or where it exists; there is no mental phenomenon that has not arisen in some consciousness, that has not, in the very fact and act of being, met with this indispensible condition of its being. Knowledge, feeling, volition, that are not known to him whose they are, that have not assumed this generic form, consciousness, are utterly unintelligible. What is an intuitive idea? It is one necessary and universal for the phenomena to which it pertains; and one which itself has no phenomenal existence, but is antecedently requisite for the apprehension of the facts that come under it. Thus time is not this or that series of events, is not found as a quality in any succession, but is the condition involved in the unfolding of every train of facts. Time can not be arrived at as a sensation; since it is not phenominal, but is brought by the mind to phenomena for their apprehension. Thus it is with space, and thus it is also with consciousness. Consciousness is not, as we have seen, a single power, neither is it all the powers of the mind; it is a necessary and universal condition of all states and acts of mind, something without which no act or state is one of mind. Neither is consciousness the direct object itself of any form |
