ALYSIS OF THE DATA OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

We may now proceed

to see what objectively true and valid judgments are yielded by

psychological reflection on the facts of consciousness, (a) They

yield first of all the immediate judgment that "something really

exists" vis. the total, concrete, unanalysed content of the present

conscious state or condition of the conscious subject aware of

something. No sceptic can deny, or ever has denied, the exist-

6 THE OR V F KNO W LEDGE

ence of something in and for his consciousness. Sceptics have

doubted or denied that they can know whether there is any

thing that has a reality or real existence other than the esse ideale

which the facts of their consciousness have for them in the actual

conscious state. But since this esse ideale evidently involves the

real existence of the concrete consciousness, or conscious being,

nay, since this esse ideale is itself something, since it is a real state

or manifestation of some reality, it follows that even if such

sceptics take up the position of solipsism they must at least

admit the real existence of the concrete conscious self or subject :

not of course as distinct from a non-self or object, but simply as

something real, .and as something revealing this distinction or

duality as a problem for investigation.

(b] The data of my consciousness yield as certainly valid and

objectively true the judgment " /, the thinking or conscious being,

really exist as subject and agent of my conscious states and activ

ities ". For my consciousness * reveals these states and activities

as different from one another, seeing, thinking, speaking, de

siring, grieving, rejoicing, etc., but all in the concrete as states,

conditions, activities of one single being, subject, or agent : which

I call myself, the Ego, self, or person.

No doubt, what consciousness, as a mere faculty of awareness

or apprehension, reveals, is one really existing, concrete, complex,

heterogeneous whole of subject and states, agent and activities,

substance and accidents, etc. My consciousness of my existence

does not commence with abstract concepts of "self," "existence,"

"subject," "states," "agent," "activities"; or with a formal act

of judgment affirming the "self" to "exist," or the "states,"

"activities," "accidents," to be those of the "subject," " agent,"

"substance". But all this rational or intellectual process of

analysis and synthesis, of isolating abstract concepts and syn

thesizing them in judgments, merely expresses and interprets for

me intellectually what was really and implicitly given to me in

the primitive conscious intuition of the self, consciously existing

and acting.

Descartes rightly pointed out that the Cogito, ergo sum, is not an infer

ence (31). It is the expression of a self-evident judgment, " I exist," which is

virtually contained in the direct intuition of consciousness. And the same is

true of the other immediate interpretations of the content of this intuition,

1 Or my consciousness pins my memory, if we take into consideration not only

simultaneous but successive states. Cf. infra, 98.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY 7

such as "These are conscious states of which I am the subject," "These

are activities of which I am the agent or cause," "These are inhering or

accident -entities of which I am the substantive or substance -entity ".

Descartes was right, too, in accepting the evidence, or " clear and distinct

idea," of his existence, as objectively valid, i.e. as revealing to him a really

existing being, though he was inconsistent in questioning the equally cogent

evidence in the case of first principles (31). He was right as against the

phenomenism of sensists and positivists in their unintelligible and self-contra

dictory assertion that the Ego revealed in consciousness is a mere bundle of

" states " without a subject of these states ; or a mere stream of " processes "

or " activities " without an agent or cause of these processes or activities ;

or a mere ebb and flow of "phenomena," "appearances," or "accidents,"

without any substantial Ego or being of which they are the phenomena,

appearances, or accidents. And he was right, as against the phenomenism

of Kant, in holding that what the conscious thinking subject apprehends is the

real Ego, at once phenomenal and noumenal, at once sensible and intelli

gible, at once object of sense and object of intellect, and not merely a

"phenomenal" or empirically "appearing" product of a real but "trans

cendental," "unknowable" Ego, for ever hiding itself behind its own mis

called "appearances ". 1 The Ego or conscious subject which is revealed in

consciousness is identical with the self which our intellect sees to be a

necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge. According to Kant,

this latter self, in which all our apperceptions must have their unity, 2 can in

deed be thought as real, as a necessary, a priori, transcendental condition of

knowledge ; but it cannot be known as real, because we have no intuition of

it : " The consciousness of myself, in the representation of the ego, is not an

intuition, but a merely intellectual representation of the spontaneity of a

thinking subject". 3 In other words, the "I" of the "I think" or "I am

aware," which is an essential concomitant of all cognition (and which, for

intellectual consciousness, is implicitly "I am" or "I exist"), though it is

thought as really existing, cannot be known as really existing : we know it

merely to be something which we are compelled to think as a formal, a priori

condition or unifying principle of all our conscious apperceptions : " No

doubt the representation of / am, which expresses the consciousness that can

accompany all thought, is that which immediately includes the existence of a

subject : but it does not yet include a knowledge of it, and therefore no

empirical knowledge, that is, experience. For that we require, besides the

thought of something existing, intuition also, and in this case internal intuition

in respect to which, that is, to time, the subject must be determined." 4 Thus

1 Cf. infra, 134. * Cf. supra, 89, vol. i., p. 337, n.

3 Critique (tr. MULLER), p. 781.

*Ibid., p. 680. " For that purpose [time determination of the subject in internal

intuition]," Kant continues (arguing against the " idealism " of Descartes, cf. vol. i.,

p. 214, n. i), " external objects are absolutely necessary, so that internal experience

itself is possible, mediately only, and through external experience ". In the same

context he speaks of " the immediate consciousness of the existence of external

things" (ibid., n.), an expression which is intelligible only when we remember

that for him " external things" are mental phenomena. Again, what this " immedi

ate " " external experience " renders possible, is not " the consciousness of our own

8 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Kant repeatedly denies that intellectual consciousness, or introspection, or

psychological reflection on the self or Ego as consciously functioning in the

concrete, gives us any intuition, any direct grasp or apprehension, of the real

Ego as thus existing and acting. But such denial is purely gratuitous ;

and can be directly met by the positive counter-assertion, not gratuitous,

but forced upon us both by the most cogent evidence of consciousness and by

the most absolute necessity of thought itself, that consciousness does reveal

to us intuitively the real existence of the real, consciously acting self or Ego,

as subject and agent of our conscious states and activities.

(c) By reflecting on the conscious and cognitive acts of which

I am the conscious subject, and on the objects of these acts, I see

both acts and objects to be of various kinds, and I classify them

accordingly. The feelings and sensations which I call organic

(e.g. muscular and motor feelings, bodily aches and pains, hunger,

thirst, physical pleasure or discomfort, etc.), and their contents,

I am aware of not merely as different from one another, but, in

the case of some of them at least, as having extensity or spatial

continuity of parts outside parts, and as spatially distant from

others (as e.g. headache and lumbago), and yet all of them as

mine, as affections, states, conditions of myself, and myself the

conscious subject as spatially extended in and with them. No

doubt, this element of extensity or extendedness, directly re

vealed in the conscious content of organic feelings, is vague and

ill-defined : the definite localization of these feelings being, as

psychologists explain, a result of sense development or sense

"education" through association of the accumulated sense ex

periences of the individual, and involving intellectual interpreta

tion and inference. But the element of extensity is there in the

concrete from the beginning ; and thus it reveals the self or con

scious subject as a something which we intellectually apprehend

and designate as a substantive reality having an extended or cor

poreal mode of being, or, in other words, as a living, conscious,

corporeal substance.

Hence Descartes completely misread the immediate data of

existence," but the " determination " of this consciousness " in time," or in other

words "internal experience" (ibid.): this latter, of course, not attaining to reality

but only to mental appearances. And what is it that renders the consciousness itself

of our own existence possible? Nothing; for on Kant s theory consciousness of our

own real existence is impossible. We can only think this latter as an a priori, trans

cendental condition of knowledge ; but we cannot have knowledge, or empirical

consciousness, or, if we might so put it, conscious consciousness as distinct from

the Kantian figment of " transcendental consciousness" or "transcendental apper

ception," of our own real existence.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY 9

human consciousness when he regarded them as revealing, or

at least as furnishing grounds for interpreting, the conscious

human subject or self or Ego, as a simple, unextended, incorporeal,

conscious principle which he identified with soul or spirit.

It is a point of minor importance to observe that it is not

consciousness itself, but intellect interpreting its data, that infers

the nature of the human soul to be simple, spiritual, immortal,

etc., and the nature of the human self or Ego to be a being com

posed of body and soul. But it is important to insist, against

Descartes and ultra-spiritualists, 1 that among the immediate data

of human consciousness is the directly apprehended spatial datum

of extensity or voluminousness of the conscious subject, which

latter the intellect must therefore interpret as having the corporeal

mode of being, as having in its nature or constitution that which

we call body or matter. 2 Whether the distinction which we draw

between our own bodies and external bodies be valid or not, it is

a fact of consciousness that we draw the distinction, and that it

is grounded in the consciously apprehended features of internality

and externality attaching respectively to two classes of directly

apprehended objects. 3 But if Descartes contention were true,

that the consciously revealed self or Ego is a simple, unextended,

spiritual substance or soul, then, even though we might perhaps

be able to infer the real existence of a material reality, it is im

possible to see how we could apprehend our bodies as our own

and as distinct from external bodies : if consciousness did not re

veal our own bodies as our own no other faculty or mode of cog

nition could reveal them as such.

Those, then, are the main immediate interpretations of the

facts of consciousness that have a direct bearing on epistemology.

It must be borne in mind, in reference to them, that mere (sense)

consciousness, apart from intellect, simply makes us aware of

subjective facts, without interpreting them. But in man this

1 Cf. JEANNIERE, op. cit., pp. 358, 364-5.

2 Similarly, it must be emphasized later (116) that in external sense perception

we are made directly aware of extension, occupation of space, impenetrability, in that

domain of direct sense cognition or awareness, which, by reason of its apprehended

feature of externality to the self or Ego, each of us marks off from the portion (viz.

his own body) apprehended by internal sense perception as characterized by inter

nality, and which each of us designates as the (to him) external material universe.

Here, again, the interpretation of these features of " internality " and " externality "

in the data of direct awareness, as revealing a real universe really distinct from the

self or Ego, is the work of intellect and must be justified by intellect.

S C/. preceding note.

i o THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

awareness is always accompanied by the spontaneous formation

of judgments whereby we interpret the facts. These judgments

impose themselves on us with spontaneous certitude by a psycho

logical necessity. But we have now seen, by reflection, that these

spontaneous assents are not blind or instinctive. " The facts of

my consciousness have a real existence in and for my conscious

ness ;" J "My conscious states are real states" ; "/ myself, the

conscious subject, really exist" ; "My conscious states reveal me

to myself as having not alone the mode of being which thinks,

reasons, judges, but also the mode of being which perceives, and

which 1 mean by corporeal being" these judgments impose

themselves upon my reflecting reason with such cogent objective

evidence that I must accept them with reflex, reasoned certitude

as indubitably true : on the assumption, already justified as

against Kant, that my intellect in its processes of conception and

judgment attains not to a subjective, phenomenal disfigurement

of reality, but to reality itself.

We may now proceed

to see what objectively true and valid judgments are yielded by

psychological reflection on the facts of consciousness, (a) They

yield first of all the immediate judgment that "something really

exists" vis. the total, concrete, unanalysed content of the present

conscious state or condition of the conscious subject aware of

something. No sceptic can deny, or ever has denied, the exist-

6 THE OR V F KNO W LEDGE

ence of something in and for his consciousness. Sceptics have

doubted or denied that they can know whether there is any

thing that has a reality or real existence other than the esse ideale

which the facts of their consciousness have for them in the actual

conscious state. But since this esse ideale evidently involves the

real existence of the concrete consciousness, or conscious being,

nay, since this esse ideale is itself something, since it is a real state

or manifestation of some reality, it follows that even if such

sceptics take up the position of solipsism they must at least

admit the real existence of the concrete conscious self or subject :

not of course as distinct from a non-self or object, but simply as

something real, .and as something revealing this distinction or

duality as a problem for investigation.

(b] The data of my consciousness yield as certainly valid and

objectively true the judgment " /, the thinking or conscious being,

really exist as subject and agent of my conscious states and activ

ities ". For my consciousness * reveals these states and activities

as different from one another, seeing, thinking, speaking, de

siring, grieving, rejoicing, etc., but all in the concrete as states,

conditions, activities of one single being, subject, or agent : which

I call myself, the Ego, self, or person.

No doubt, what consciousness, as a mere faculty of awareness

or apprehension, reveals, is one really existing, concrete, complex,

heterogeneous whole of subject and states, agent and activities,

substance and accidents, etc. My consciousness of my existence

does not commence with abstract concepts of "self," "existence,"

"subject," "states," "agent," "activities"; or with a formal act

of judgment affirming the "self" to "exist," or the "states,"

"activities," "accidents," to be those of the "subject," " agent,"

"substance". But all this rational or intellectual process of

analysis and synthesis, of isolating abstract concepts and syn

thesizing them in judgments, merely expresses and interprets for

me intellectually what was really and implicitly given to me in

the primitive conscious intuition of the self, consciously existing

and acting.

Descartes rightly pointed out that the Cogito, ergo sum, is not an infer

ence (31). It is the expression of a self-evident judgment, " I exist," which is

virtually contained in the direct intuition of consciousness. And the same is

true of the other immediate interpretations of the content of this intuition,

1 Or my consciousness pins my memory, if we take into consideration not only

simultaneous but successive states. Cf. infra, 98.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY 7

such as "These are conscious states of which I am the subject," "These

are activities of which I am the agent or cause," "These are inhering or

accident -entities of which I am the substantive or substance -entity ".

Descartes was right, too, in accepting the evidence, or " clear and distinct

idea," of his existence, as objectively valid, i.e. as revealing to him a really

existing being, though he was inconsistent in questioning the equally cogent

evidence in the case of first principles (31). He was right as against the

phenomenism of sensists and positivists in their unintelligible and self-contra

dictory assertion that the Ego revealed in consciousness is a mere bundle of

" states " without a subject of these states ; or a mere stream of " processes "

or " activities " without an agent or cause of these processes or activities ;

or a mere ebb and flow of "phenomena," "appearances," or "accidents,"

without any substantial Ego or being of which they are the phenomena,

appearances, or accidents. And he was right, as against the phenomenism

of Kant, in holding that what the conscious thinking subject apprehends is the

real Ego, at once phenomenal and noumenal, at once sensible and intelli

gible, at once object of sense and object of intellect, and not merely a

"phenomenal" or empirically "appearing" product of a real but "trans

cendental," "unknowable" Ego, for ever hiding itself behind its own mis

called "appearances ". 1 The Ego or conscious subject which is revealed in

consciousness is identical with the self which our intellect sees to be a

necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge. According to Kant,

this latter self, in which all our apperceptions must have their unity, 2 can in

deed be thought as real, as a necessary, a priori, transcendental condition of

knowledge ; but it cannot be known as real, because we have no intuition of

it : " The consciousness of myself, in the representation of the ego, is not an

intuition, but a merely intellectual representation of the spontaneity of a

thinking subject". 3 In other words, the "I" of the "I think" or "I am

aware," which is an essential concomitant of all cognition (and which, for

intellectual consciousness, is implicitly "I am" or "I exist"), though it is

thought as really existing, cannot be known as really existing : we know it

merely to be something which we are compelled to think as a formal, a priori

condition or unifying principle of all our conscious apperceptions : " No

doubt the representation of / am, which expresses the consciousness that can

accompany all thought, is that which immediately includes the existence of a

subject : but it does not yet include a knowledge of it, and therefore no

empirical knowledge, that is, experience. For that we require, besides the

thought of something existing, intuition also, and in this case internal intuition

in respect to which, that is, to time, the subject must be determined." 4 Thus

1 Cf. infra, 134. * Cf. supra, 89, vol. i., p. 337, n.

3 Critique (tr. MULLER), p. 781.

*Ibid., p. 680. " For that purpose [time determination of the subject in internal

intuition]," Kant continues (arguing against the " idealism " of Descartes, cf. vol. i.,

p. 214, n. i), " external objects are absolutely necessary, so that internal experience

itself is possible, mediately only, and through external experience ". In the same

context he speaks of " the immediate consciousness of the existence of external

things" (ibid., n.), an expression which is intelligible only when we remember

that for him " external things" are mental phenomena. Again, what this " immedi

ate " " external experience " renders possible, is not " the consciousness of our own

8 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Kant repeatedly denies that intellectual consciousness, or introspection, or

psychological reflection on the self or Ego as consciously functioning in the

concrete, gives us any intuition, any direct grasp or apprehension, of the real

Ego as thus existing and acting. But such denial is purely gratuitous ;

and can be directly met by the positive counter-assertion, not gratuitous,

but forced upon us both by the most cogent evidence of consciousness and by

the most absolute necessity of thought itself, that consciousness does reveal

to us intuitively the real existence of the real, consciously acting self or Ego,

as subject and agent of our conscious states and activities.

(c) By reflecting on the conscious and cognitive acts of which

I am the conscious subject, and on the objects of these acts, I see

both acts and objects to be of various kinds, and I classify them

accordingly. The feelings and sensations which I call organic

(e.g. muscular and motor feelings, bodily aches and pains, hunger,

thirst, physical pleasure or discomfort, etc.), and their contents,

I am aware of not merely as different from one another, but, in

the case of some of them at least, as having extensity or spatial

continuity of parts outside parts, and as spatially distant from

others (as e.g. headache and lumbago), and yet all of them as

mine, as affections, states, conditions of myself, and myself the

conscious subject as spatially extended in and with them. No

doubt, this element of extensity or extendedness, directly re

vealed in the conscious content of organic feelings, is vague and

ill-defined : the definite localization of these feelings being, as

psychologists explain, a result of sense development or sense

"education" through association of the accumulated sense ex

periences of the individual, and involving intellectual interpreta

tion and inference. But the element of extensity is there in the

concrete from the beginning ; and thus it reveals the self or con

scious subject as a something which we intellectually apprehend

and designate as a substantive reality having an extended or cor

poreal mode of being, or, in other words, as a living, conscious,

corporeal substance.

Hence Descartes completely misread the immediate data of

existence," but the " determination " of this consciousness " in time," or in other

words "internal experience" (ibid.): this latter, of course, not attaining to reality

but only to mental appearances. And what is it that renders the consciousness itself

of our own existence possible? Nothing; for on Kant s theory consciousness of our

own real existence is impossible. We can only think this latter as an a priori, trans

cendental condition of knowledge ; but we cannot have knowledge, or empirical

consciousness, or, if we might so put it, conscious consciousness as distinct from

the Kantian figment of " transcendental consciousness" or "transcendental apper

ception," of our own real existence.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY 9

human consciousness when he regarded them as revealing, or

at least as furnishing grounds for interpreting, the conscious

human subject or self or Ego, as a simple, unextended, incorporeal,

conscious principle which he identified with soul or spirit.

It is a point of minor importance to observe that it is not

consciousness itself, but intellect interpreting its data, that infers

the nature of the human soul to be simple, spiritual, immortal,

etc., and the nature of the human self or Ego to be a being com

posed of body and soul. But it is important to insist, against

Descartes and ultra-spiritualists, 1 that among the immediate data

of human consciousness is the directly apprehended spatial datum

of extensity or voluminousness of the conscious subject, which

latter the intellect must therefore interpret as having the corporeal

mode of being, as having in its nature or constitution that which

we call body or matter. 2 Whether the distinction which we draw

between our own bodies and external bodies be valid or not, it is

a fact of consciousness that we draw the distinction, and that it

is grounded in the consciously apprehended features of internality

and externality attaching respectively to two classes of directly

apprehended objects. 3 But if Descartes contention were true,

that the consciously revealed self or Ego is a simple, unextended,

spiritual substance or soul, then, even though we might perhaps

be able to infer the real existence of a material reality, it is im

possible to see how we could apprehend our bodies as our own

and as distinct from external bodies : if consciousness did not re

veal our own bodies as our own no other faculty or mode of cog

nition could reveal them as such.

Those, then, are the main immediate interpretations of the

facts of consciousness that have a direct bearing on epistemology.

It must be borne in mind, in reference to them, that mere (sense)

consciousness, apart from intellect, simply makes us aware of

subjective facts, without interpreting them. But in man this

1 Cf. JEANNIERE, op. cit., pp. 358, 364-5.

2 Similarly, it must be emphasized later (116) that in external sense perception

we are made directly aware of extension, occupation of space, impenetrability, in that

domain of direct sense cognition or awareness, which, by reason of its apprehended

feature of externality to the self or Ego, each of us marks off from the portion (viz.

his own body) apprehended by internal sense perception as characterized by inter

nality, and which each of us designates as the (to him) external material universe.

Here, again, the interpretation of these features of " internality " and " externality "

in the data of direct awareness, as revealing a real universe really distinct from the

self or Ego, is the work of intellect and must be justified by intellect.

S C/. preceding note.

i o THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

awareness is always accompanied by the spontaneous formation

of judgments whereby we interpret the facts. These judgments

impose themselves on us with spontaneous certitude by a psycho

logical necessity. But we have now seen, by reflection, that these

spontaneous assents are not blind or instinctive. " The facts of

my consciousness have a real existence in and for my conscious

ness ;" J "My conscious states are real states" ; "/ myself, the

conscious subject, really exist" ; "My conscious states reveal me

to myself as having not alone the mode of being which thinks,

reasons, judges, but also the mode of being which perceives, and

which 1 mean by corporeal being" these judgments impose

themselves upon my reflecting reason with such cogent objective

evidence that I must accept them with reflex, reasoned certitude

as indubitably true : on the assumption, already justified as

against Kant, that my intellect in its processes of conception and

judgment attains not to a subjective, phenomenal disfigurement

of reality, but to reality itself.