Consciousness

Clear and conclusive as this statement of the case appears when carefully studied, it is expressed in so abstract a manner as to be not very intelligible to the general reader. A more popular presentation of it, with illustrative applications, as given by Mr Mansel in his “Limits of Religious Thought,” will make it more fully understood. The following extracts, which I take the liberty of making from his pages, will suffice. “The very conception of consciousness, in whatever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies _distinction between one object and another_. To be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known, as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not. But distinction is necessarily limitation; for, if one object is to be distinguished from another, it must possess some form of existence which the other has not, or it must not possess some form which the other has. But it is obvious the Infinite cannot be distinguished, as such, from the Finite, by the absence of any quality which the Finite possesses; for such absence would be a limitation. Nor yet can it be distinguished by the presence of an attribute which the Finite has not; for, as no finite part can be a constituent of an infinite whole, this differential characteristic must itself be infinite; and must at the same time have nothing in common with the finite. We are thus thrown back upon our former impossibility; for this second infinite will be distinguished from the finite by the absence of qualities which the latter possesses. A consciousness of the Infinite as such thus necessarily involves a self-contradiction; for it implies the recognition, by limitation and difference, of that which can only be given as unlimited and indifferent. * * *

“A second characteristic of Consciousness is, that it is only possible in the form of a _relation_. There must be a Subject, or person conscious, and an Object, or thing of which he is conscious. There can be no consciousness without the union of these two factors; and, in that union, each exists only as it is related to the other. The subject is a subject, only in so far as it is conscious of an object: the object is an object, only in so far as it is apprehended by a subject: and the destruction of either is the destruction of consciousness itself. It is thus manifest that a consciousness of the Absolute is equally self-contradictory with that of the Infinite. To be conscious of the Absolute as such, we must know that an object, which is given in relation to our consciousness, is identical with one which exists in its own nature, out of all relation to consciousness. But to know this identity, we must be able to compare the two together; and such a comparison is itself a contradiction. We are in fact required to compare that of which we are conscious with that of which we are not conscious; the comparison itself being an act of consciousness, and only possible through the consciousness of both its objects. It is thus manifest that, even if we could be conscious of the absolute, we could not possibly know that it is the absolute: and, as we can be conscious of an object as such, only by knowing it to be what it is, this is equivalent to an admission that we cannot be conscious of the absolute at all. As an object of consciousness, every thing is necessarily relative; and what a thing may be out of consciousness, no mode of consciousness can tell us.

In the antithetical notion of the Unlimited, the consciousness of limits is abolished; but not the consciousness of some kind of being. It is quite true that in the absence of conceived limits, this consciousness ceases to be a concept properly so called; but it is none the less true that it remains as a mode of consciousness. If, in such cases, the negative contradictory were, as alleged, “_nothing else_” than the negation of the other, and therefore a mere nonentity, then it would clearly follow that negative contradictories could be used interchangeably: the Unlimited might be thought of as antithetical to the Divisible; and the Indivisible as antithetical to the Limited. While the fact that they cannot be so used, proves that in consciousness the Unlimited and the Indivisible are qualitatively distinct, and therefore positive or real; since distinction cannot exist between nothings. The error, (very naturally fallen into by philosophers intent on demonstrating the limits and conditions of consciousness,) consists in assuming that consciousness contains _nothing but_ limits and conditions; to the entire neglect of that which is limited and conditioned. It is forgotten that there is something which alike forms the raw material of definite thought and remains after the definiteness which thinking gave to it has been destroyed.

And here we come face to face with the ultimate difficulty—How can there possibly be constituted a consciousness of the unformed and unlimited, when, by its very nature, consciousness is possible only under forms and limits? If every consciousness of existence is a consciousness of existence as conditioned, then how, after the negation of conditions, can there be any residuum?. Though not directly withdrawn by the withdrawal of its conditions, must not the raw material of consciousness be withdrawn by implication? Must it not vanish when the conditions of its existence vanish? That there must be a solution of this difficulty is manifest; since even those who would put it, do, as already shown, admit that we have some such consciousness; and the solution appears to be that above shadowed forth. Such consciousness is not, and cannot be, constituted by any single mental act; but is the product of many mental acts. In each concept there is an element which persists. It is alike impossible for this element to be absent from consciousness, and for it to be present in consciousness alone: either alternative involves unconsciousness—the one from the want of the substance; the other from the want of the form.

Now as in this case we form a definite concept of a special existence, by imposing limits and conditions in successive acts; so, in the converse case, by taking away the limits and conditions in successive acts, we form an indefinite notion of general existence. By fusing a series of states of consciousness, in each of which, as it arises, the limitations and conditions are abolished, there is produced a consciousness of something unconditioned. To speak more rigorously:—this consciousness is not the abstract of any one group of thoughts, ideas, or conceptions; but it is the abstract of _all_ thoughts, ideas, or conceptions. That which is common to them all, and cannot be got rid of, is what we predicate by the word existence. Dissociated as this becomes from each of its modes by the perpetual change of those modes, it remains as an indefinite consciousness of something constant under all modes—of being apart from its appearances. The distinction we feel between special and general existence, is the distinction between that which is changeable in us, and that which is unchangeable. The contrast between the Absolute and the Relative in our minds, is really the contrast between that mental element which exists absolutely, and those which exist relatively.

Life or consciousness unites what sense and reason disunite. — Sir William Hamilton's curious theory of the causal judg- ment. — He finds the cause of a thing in the thing's own en- trails. — Thus he thinks saltpetre is not merely constituted but caused by K O and N 06. — Cause evoked only to explain some breach of natural order. — We never ask the cause of Things, but only of their mutations. — Sir W. Hamilton stul- tifies intelligence by confounding Finiteness with Phenomenal- ity. — They are as distinct as sense and reason. — Cause is adduced to explain ^cts of phenomenal not of fixed existence. — It is not a sensible but a rational inquest. — Cause is a sci- entific rudiment of the philosophic idea of creation. — The force of the caus,al judgment is in its educating or disciplining the intellect 299 CHAPTER XIX.

his optics, to the contemplation of death instead : only unfor- tunately he misnamed that death life; and so, by his great au- thority over men of thought, not of life, stirred up any amount of dreary sepulchral literature. — His pretension to be the Co- pernicus of Philosophy. — His German and Scotch disciples* • 32a CHAPTER XX. The fundamental misconception of the Critical Philosophy. — Kant's dread of Philosophy, lest it plainly avouch creation. — Common sense affirms creation. — Pseudo Philosophy denies it. — Kant's fatal philosophic delinquency, in exteriorating ob- ject to subject. — The extraordinary performances of Fichte, ■ Schelling, and Hegel thereupon. — The testimony of sense one thing ; that of consciousness another. — Kant confounds them. — He thought finite and relative to be one and the same con- c/— ception. — Sense divorces what consciousness marries. — Kant

Cambkidge, Mass., January, 1869, CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Creation the fundamental problem of philosophv. — Difficulties of the problem. — Kant's attempt to reconcile them. — A supernatural creation, that is, a creation which does not conform to the order and methods of nature, inconceivable. — The moral h}-pothesis of creation untenable. — Morality not a creative end, but only a creative means. — Swedenborg and Hegel contrasted. — Swedenborg's analysis of consciousness, establisning the superiority of its objective to its subjective element, and giving the key to the philosophy of creation, in his doctrine of the lord, or maximus homo. 1-11 CHAPTER I. Swedenborg's private history and intellectual character. — His biography, by "William White. — His doctrine of the lord, or divine natural human- ity, briefly stated 11-15 CHAPTER n.

The same subject continued and illustrated. — Swedenborg's vindication of nature and the part it plays in creation. — The divine love and wisdom can- not but be and exist in other beings or existences created from itself; and nature is the logical background of such existences, as giving them self- consciousness. — Remarkable definition of love. — Consists in one's wil- ling what is one's own to be another's, and feeling another's delight as one's own. — Other quotations from Swedcnborg. — If love be of this essentially unselfish quality, the creative love must be infinitely pure; binding the creator to make himself over without stint to the creature, or to allow the latter to effloresce in all his native selfishness and worldliness, to the utmost limit compatible with liis eventual spiritual reaction towards the creator. — Creation is the practical immersion consequently of crea- tive perfection in created imperfection, so that the more the creator alone is, the more the creature alone appears.. Hence the origin of nature. It expresses the obligation the creature is under to appropriate the creator, or to make him his own. It is the nuptial couch of creator and creature ; the marriage ring that consecrates the espousals of infinite and finite. Thus its virtue is purely ceremonial, shadowy, reflective, as giving the creature — not being — but self-consciousness, or such an appearance of being as may eventually induct him into the acquaintance of being itself 25-31

This, however, is an argumentum an hominem which need not detain us. The theory itself is an inevitable consequence of the extension of the notion of reflex action to the higher nerve-centres. Prof. Huxley starts from a decapitated frog which performs rational-seeming acts although probably it has no consciousness, and passing up to the hemispheres of man concludes that the rationality of their performances can owe nothing to the feelings that co-exist with it. This is the inverse of Mr. Lewes's procedure. He starts from the hemispheres, and finding their performances apparently guided by feeling concludes, when he comes to the spinal cord, that feeling though latent must still be there to make it act so rationally. Clearly such arguments as these may mutually eat each other up to all eternity.