EXTERNAL UNIVERSE.

Since we become conscious of the self,

and its concrete time-duration, in and through the conscious

activities of the self, and since these conscious activities are in

large part cognitive of that domain of objects or data which we

interpret as the external, spatial, material universe, or the non-Ego,

the question may be asked, whether or how far self-conscious

ness is mediated by, and dependent on, our direct cognition of

the non-self or external universe.

Descartes, holding that the only immediate object of the

mind s awareness is itself, failed to explain satisfactorily the

possibility of our knowledge of spatial or material reality distinct

from the mind : and all subjective idealists we shall find to be

in the same condition. Kant made an attempt to prove, against

Descartes, that the possibility of empirical self-consciousness

presupposes and establishes " the existence of objects in space

outside" the mind. 1 But his attempt was futile inasmuch as

he, too, had accepted the idealist presupposition, 2 so that the

" outside " was for him on his own theory only a department of

mental, i.e. intramental, phenomena.

Had we no cognitive activities, and therefore no conscious

data, of the sentient order, it is impossible for us to form any

positive conception as to how self-consciousness would take

place, or what sort of self it would reveal : we have only a

negative and analogical knowledge of the modes of being and

knowing with which pure spirits or pure intelligences are

endowed. 3 It is in the exercise of cognitive activities of the

sentient order that we do de facto become directly and concomi-

tantly aware of ourselves as conscious beings. Nor, indeed, does

it seem possible that our intellects, in the total absence of all

data of the sort we call sense-data, from consciousness, could elicit

any act, or therefore become at all self-conscious. For in such

an hypothesis intellect would have no objects to apprehend, inas

much as all the objects of its direct activity (including the con

crete self or Ego] are given to it, and attainable by it, only in and

through the sentient mode of cognition which apprehends concrete,

1 Citique, pp. 799, 705 n. 2 Cf. 97, p. 7, n. 4.

3 According to scholastic teaching their knowledge of material things would be

got not by abstraction but by innate universal concepts. Cf. ST. THOMAS, De

Veritate, Q. viii., art. 9; Summa Theol., I., Q. lv., art. -2.

1 6 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

individual, actually existing sense-data. 1 Of course by reflex

action it recognizes itself as immediately given in its direct

functions of conceiving and judging those data of sense ; and it

does so directly and concomitantly even in these direct functions

themselves (95). But the possibility of these direct intellectual

processes is conditioned by the sense apprehension of concrete

data : Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu (71 , 74,

77). So, too, therefore is self-consciousness.

This expression, "self-consciousness," is perhaps ambiguous. It usually

means the consciousness of self, revealed in psychological reflection or the

deliberate introspective contemplation of our direct mental activities (95).

But these activities themselves are conscious : and all consciousness is in a

certain sense consciousness of self, con (cum}scire" : it is at least the

concomitant awareness of the self or subject together with awareness of an

object : not of course an awareness of the self as such, but an awareness

which reveals the self in the concrete as part of the whole conscious datum.

Reflex consciousness, then, in the sense of introspective contemplation, is not

the first or original revelation of the self ; it rather recognizes as the self the

subject which is already revealed, but not recognized as the self, in the direct

conscious processes of perceiving, conceiving, judging, reasoning, etc.

Now the functions of reasoning and judging are dependent on the

function of conceiving. And if we call all three functions by the common

name of "thinking" or "thought," then, since we cannot consciously

" think" in vacua? i.e., without thinking some object, and since we get the

original data or objects, on which to exercise the function of conscious thought,

only in and through sense perception, it can and must be asserted that

even when the self is concomitantly revealed in our direct thought processes,

and recognized in them as the self by reflex intellectual introspection, it is so

revealed and recognized only dependently on sense perception, and not other

wise ; unless, indeed, it be maintained that we do somehow, by direct or

reflex intellectual consciousness, become aware of our intellectual acts (and

of the self, in and through them) apart from and independently of the objects

of these acts.

Does consciousness, therefore, reveal our direct cognitive acts apart from

their objects ?

Direct concomitant consciousness certainly does not. This, however,

must be carefully noted, that in at least some of our processes of external

sense perception we become, through the functioning of the organic, mus

cular, or motor sense, or feeling of effort, directly and concomitantly aware

of what we regard as fa& perceptive act itself (e.g. of seeing, hearing, touch -

1 Cf. GENY, Une nouv ellc theoric de perception (pp. 10 scq., apttd JEANNIERK,

op. cit., p. 377 n.) : " No internal conception or perception can take place or have

meaning for us except dependently on an antecedent external perception ; the

Cogito itself is no exception. I do not apprehend myself/;) vacua, as it were, but

only as knowing an object and first of all an object which is not myself: the self

ne se pose q en s opposant ."

3 Cf. preceding note.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY 17

ing, etc.), at the same time as we become aware of the object of the latter. 1

And by an effort of attention we may more or less distinctly segregate the

perceptive act, as an organic event or object, from the object which as a

perceptive act \\. reveals to us. But this sort of apprehension of our perceptive

act itself as an organic event or object, is distinct from the concomitant con

crete consciousness or awareness of self which is an inseparable and essential

feature of that act as perceptive. For even if our acts of sense perception

did not thus reveal themselves to us, owing to their character as organic

functions of which we become aware through the internal organic and muscular

senses, they would still, as acts consciously perceptive of objects, make us con-

comitantly aware of themselves, or rather of ourselves, in the concrete : as

our direct intellectual acts must be held to do, though these are not organic ;

for every cognitive act as such, must, being conscious, reveal subject, act, and

object together in the concrete.

Neither, therefore, can reflex consciousness, or reflection on the whole

direct cognitive process, reveal the direct cognitive act as cognitive or per

ceptive (and with it the agent or subject), apart or in isolation from the ob

ject of that act. But reflex consciousness or psychological reflection can of

course recognize, more or less in isolation, the organic process which was

revealed more or less in isolation by the internal organic and muscular sense,

as accompanying the perception (hearing, seeing, touching, etc.), of some ob

ject. If, therefore, this concomitantly apprehended organic event be absent

from any cognitive act, as an index revealing the latter, then no conscious

awareness (whether direct or reflex) of such a cognitive act apart or in isola

tion from its object, would seem to be possible. And even when the organic

event is present, and apprehended by the internal organic and muscular sense,

it is apprehended not as a cognitive act but as an organic event or object

merely ; " nor can the act of the internal sense apprehending the organic event

reveal its own self (or its subject) apart or in isolation from this organic event

as object.

It is important to bear in mind that the concomitant ("direct") con

sciousness which is an inseparable and essential feature of all cognitive

awareness of any datum whatsoever does not reveal the self as formally dis

tinct from the non-self, or even the conscious subject as formally distinct from

the datum as object. Duality of subject and object is involved in all cogni

tion, but it is only by intellect that the distinction is apprehended. So, too,

some data of our conscious cognition are marked by a peculiar feature which

intellect interprets as internality or selfness, and others by an opposite feature

which intellect interprets as externality or non-selfness, ? but again it is in

tellect that interprets this internal or external reference of consciously appre

hended data as signifying that the former domain of data reveals the Ego or

self, and the latter domain the non-Ego or external universe. Psychologists,

moreover, prove that this explicit judgment, whereby the individual explicitly

1 In a similar way we become vaguely aware of the brain-effort, tension, fatigue,

etc., accompanying intense intellectual activity, owing to this latter being sustained

and subserved by the organic sense activity of the imagination.

2 Having of course the characteristic of internality or selfness, but not yet

judged by intellect to belong to the self in distinction from the non-self.

1 Cf. supra, 97, p. 9, n. 2 ; infra, 105, 109.

VOL. II. 2

1 8 THE OR V Of KNO W LEDGE

discriminates his own self or Ego from the remainder of the total content of

his consciousness, comes comparatively late in the gradual development and

growth of his mental experience : that in infancy there is no conscious dis

tinction of self from non-self: that the earlier cognitions and implicit judg

ments of childhood rather tend to regard all their contents indiscriminately

as objective and external. 1

1 Cf. MAHER, op. cit., pp. 361-7, 474-92; jEANNifeRK, op. cit., pp. 379-80;

infra, g 106, 107, 109, 116.

CHAPTER XIV.

EXTRAMENTAL REALITY. THE EXTERNAL UNIVERSE.

Since we become conscious of the self,

and its concrete time-duration, in and through the conscious

activities of the self, and since these conscious activities are in

large part cognitive of that domain of objects or data which we

interpret as the external, spatial, material universe, or the non-Ego,

the question may be asked, whether or how far self-conscious

ness is mediated by, and dependent on, our direct cognition of

the non-self or external universe.

Descartes, holding that the only immediate object of the

mind s awareness is itself, failed to explain satisfactorily the

possibility of our knowledge of spatial or material reality distinct

from the mind : and all subjective idealists we shall find to be

in the same condition. Kant made an attempt to prove, against

Descartes, that the possibility of empirical self-consciousness

presupposes and establishes " the existence of objects in space

outside" the mind. 1 But his attempt was futile inasmuch as

he, too, had accepted the idealist presupposition, 2 so that the

" outside " was for him on his own theory only a department of

mental, i.e. intramental, phenomena.

Had we no cognitive activities, and therefore no conscious

data, of the sentient order, it is impossible for us to form any

positive conception as to how self-consciousness would take

place, or what sort of self it would reveal : we have only a

negative and analogical knowledge of the modes of being and

knowing with which pure spirits or pure intelligences are

endowed. 3 It is in the exercise of cognitive activities of the

sentient order that we do de facto become directly and concomi-

tantly aware of ourselves as conscious beings. Nor, indeed, does

it seem possible that our intellects, in the total absence of all

data of the sort we call sense-data, from consciousness, could elicit

any act, or therefore become at all self-conscious. For in such

an hypothesis intellect would have no objects to apprehend, inas

much as all the objects of its direct activity (including the con

crete self or Ego] are given to it, and attainable by it, only in and

through the sentient mode of cognition which apprehends concrete,

1 Citique, pp. 799, 705 n. 2 Cf. 97, p. 7, n. 4.

3 According to scholastic teaching their knowledge of material things would be

got not by abstraction but by innate universal concepts. Cf. ST. THOMAS, De

Veritate, Q. viii., art. 9; Summa Theol., I., Q. lv., art. -2.

1 6 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

individual, actually existing sense-data. 1 Of course by reflex

action it recognizes itself as immediately given in its direct

functions of conceiving and judging those data of sense ; and it

does so directly and concomitantly even in these direct functions

themselves (95). But the possibility of these direct intellectual

processes is conditioned by the sense apprehension of concrete

data : Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu (71 , 74,

77). So, too, therefore is self-consciousness.

This expression, "self-consciousness," is perhaps ambiguous. It usually

means the consciousness of self, revealed in psychological reflection or the

deliberate introspective contemplation of our direct mental activities (95).

But these activities themselves are conscious : and all consciousness is in a

certain sense consciousness of self, con (cum}scire" : it is at least the

concomitant awareness of the self or subject together with awareness of an

object : not of course an awareness of the self as such, but an awareness

which reveals the self in the concrete as part of the whole conscious datum.

Reflex consciousness, then, in the sense of introspective contemplation, is not

the first or original revelation of the self ; it rather recognizes as the self the

subject which is already revealed, but not recognized as the self, in the direct

conscious processes of perceiving, conceiving, judging, reasoning, etc.

Now the functions of reasoning and judging are dependent on the

function of conceiving. And if we call all three functions by the common

name of "thinking" or "thought," then, since we cannot consciously

" think" in vacua? i.e., without thinking some object, and since we get the

original data or objects, on which to exercise the function of conscious thought,

only in and through sense perception, it can and must be asserted that

even when the self is concomitantly revealed in our direct thought processes,

and recognized in them as the self by reflex intellectual introspection, it is so

revealed and recognized only dependently on sense perception, and not other

wise ; unless, indeed, it be maintained that we do somehow, by direct or

reflex intellectual consciousness, become aware of our intellectual acts (and

of the self, in and through them) apart from and independently of the objects

of these acts.

Does consciousness, therefore, reveal our direct cognitive acts apart from

their objects ?

Direct concomitant consciousness certainly does not. This, however,

must be carefully noted, that in at least some of our processes of external

sense perception we become, through the functioning of the organic, mus

cular, or motor sense, or feeling of effort, directly and concomitantly aware

of what we regard as fa& perceptive act itself (e.g. of seeing, hearing, touch -

1 Cf. GENY, Une nouv ellc theoric de perception (pp. 10 scq., apttd JEANNIERK,

op. cit., p. 377 n.) : " No internal conception or perception can take place or have

meaning for us except dependently on an antecedent external perception ; the

Cogito itself is no exception. I do not apprehend myself/;) vacua, as it were, but

only as knowing an object and first of all an object which is not myself: the self

ne se pose q en s opposant ."

3 Cf. preceding note.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY 17

ing, etc.), at the same time as we become aware of the object of the latter. 1

And by an effort of attention we may more or less distinctly segregate the

perceptive act, as an organic event or object, from the object which as a

perceptive act \\. reveals to us. But this sort of apprehension of our perceptive

act itself as an organic event or object, is distinct from the concomitant con

crete consciousness or awareness of self which is an inseparable and essential

feature of that act as perceptive. For even if our acts of sense perception

did not thus reveal themselves to us, owing to their character as organic

functions of which we become aware through the internal organic and muscular

senses, they would still, as acts consciously perceptive of objects, make us con-

comitantly aware of themselves, or rather of ourselves, in the concrete : as

our direct intellectual acts must be held to do, though these are not organic ;

for every cognitive act as such, must, being conscious, reveal subject, act, and

object together in the concrete.

Neither, therefore, can reflex consciousness, or reflection on the whole

direct cognitive process, reveal the direct cognitive act as cognitive or per

ceptive (and with it the agent or subject), apart or in isolation from the ob

ject of that act. But reflex consciousness or psychological reflection can of

course recognize, more or less in isolation, the organic process which was

revealed more or less in isolation by the internal organic and muscular sense,

as accompanying the perception (hearing, seeing, touching, etc.), of some ob

ject. If, therefore, this concomitantly apprehended organic event be absent

from any cognitive act, as an index revealing the latter, then no conscious

awareness (whether direct or reflex) of such a cognitive act apart or in isola

tion from its object, would seem to be possible. And even when the organic

event is present, and apprehended by the internal organic and muscular sense,

it is apprehended not as a cognitive act but as an organic event or object

merely ; " nor can the act of the internal sense apprehending the organic event

reveal its own self (or its subject) apart or in isolation from this organic event

as object.

It is important to bear in mind that the concomitant ("direct") con

sciousness which is an inseparable and essential feature of all cognitive

awareness of any datum whatsoever does not reveal the self as formally dis

tinct from the non-self, or even the conscious subject as formally distinct from

the datum as object. Duality of subject and object is involved in all cogni

tion, but it is only by intellect that the distinction is apprehended. So, too,

some data of our conscious cognition are marked by a peculiar feature which

intellect interprets as internality or selfness, and others by an opposite feature

which intellect interprets as externality or non-selfness, ? but again it is in

tellect that interprets this internal or external reference of consciously appre

hended data as signifying that the former domain of data reveals the Ego or

self, and the latter domain the non-Ego or external universe. Psychologists,

moreover, prove that this explicit judgment, whereby the individual explicitly

1 In a similar way we become vaguely aware of the brain-effort, tension, fatigue,

etc., accompanying intense intellectual activity, owing to this latter being sustained

and subserved by the organic sense activity of the imagination.

2 Having of course the characteristic of internality or selfness, but not yet

judged by intellect to belong to the self in distinction from the non-self.

1 Cf. supra, 97, p. 9, n. 2 ; infra, 105, 109.

VOL. II. 2

1 8 THE OR V Of KNO W LEDGE

discriminates his own self or Ego from the remainder of the total content of

his consciousness, comes comparatively late in the gradual development and

growth of his mental experience : that in infancy there is no conscious dis

tinction of self from non-self: that the earlier cognitions and implicit judg

ments of childhood rather tend to regard all their contents indiscriminately

as objective and external. 1

1 Cf. MAHER, op. cit., pp. 361-7, 474-92; jEANNifeRK, op. cit., pp. 379-80;

infra, g 106, 107, 109, 116.

CHAPTER XIV.

EXTRAMENTAL REALITY. THE EXTERNAL UNIVERSE.