First Principles

“But,” it may be said, “though we cannot directly _know_ consciousness to be finite in duration, because neither of its limits can be actually reached; yet we can very well _conceive_ it to be so.” No: not even this is true. In the first place, we cannot _con_ceive the terminations of that consciousness which alone we really know—our own—any more than we can _per_ceive its terminations. For in truth the two acts are here one. In either case such terminations must be, as above said, not presented in thought, but represented; and they must be represented as in the act of occurring. Now to represent the termination of consciousness as occurring in ourselves, is to think of ourselves as contemplating the cessation of the last state of consciousness; and this implies a supposed continuance of consciousness after its last state, which is absurd. In the second place, if we regard the matter objectively—if we study the phenomena as occurring in others, or in the abstract, we are equally foiled. Consciousness implies perpetual change and the perpetual establishment of relations between its successive phases.