or of reflection." No one begins by expressly perceiving his perception a bit more than he begins by expressly adverting to the fact that it is he himself who perceives it. He begins (as before said) by having some other direct perception of acting or being acted on, in which perception both the "self" and the "states of feeling" are implicitly contained. To explicitly note that the "perception "feeling" exists, is, at least, just as secondary, just as indirect, just as reflex, and just as posterior an act as it is to explicitly note that the "self" exists which has the perception. We say "at least," but we believe that of the two perceptions~(1) “feelings," and (2) "self"—it is the self which is the more prominently given implicitly in our primary cognitions. We believe that a more laboured act of mental digging is requisite to bring explicitly to light the implicit "state," than to disclose the implicit "self" which has that state. Men are continually and promptly adverting to the fact that thoughts, feelings, actions, and sufferings are their own, but do not by any means so continually and promptly advert to the fact that the feelings which they experience are existing feelings. Therefore one A fundaof the greatest and most fundamental errors of our day is error and the mistake of supposing that we can know our states of sequences. feeling or their existence, more certainly, directly, and infallibly than we can know the existence of the substantial, continuous self which has those feelings. This great and fundamental error has arisen from a failure to note that though the existence of our feelings may be known with supreme certainty, yet their existence cannot be so known without a certain turning back of the mind on itself, and that this very same process of reflection suffices to give us supreme certainty of our own existence also. A recognition of that existence is indeed a necessary condition for our being able to affirm that there are such things as feelings at all, and-as was said at the beginning of this chapter-if we cannot be certain as to our own existence, our inquiry after truth may be given up as one essentially insoluble. We may give it up because if we can know nothing with certainty but the feeling of the passing moment, then most certainly we can have no mental its con certainty as to arguments or even words which have been used by ourselves or others, and so all reasoning must come to an end. More than this, we can have no certainty even with respect to our own past thoughts and we cannot therefore even think with any profit concerning such a matter as the pursuit of truth; we can but amuse ourselves with idle imaginings devoid alike of any certain aim or any trustworthy guidance. Let us, however, once see clearly-by the aid of such reflections as those offered in the preceding chapter and in this one-that not only does certainty exist, but that we may have complete certainty as to at least one supremely important fact, namely, the fact of our own existence, and most important consequences will follow. The certainty of this fact affords us a firm and solid foundation on which we may erect a temple of truth, and it is on this account that we have with so much-we hope pardonable-reiteration sought to make evident its certainty. How it is that this primary mental fact is so important, and how we may securely advance from it to the acquisition of other certainties to assist us in our quest, the following pages will show; and our next step will be to try and make clear the self-evident certainty of another fact, the certainty of which can be shown to be involved in the certainty we have of our own existence. CHAPTER III. MEMORY. The trustworthiness of our faculty of memory is a second fact which Second fundamental fact, the trustworthiness of memory-What the But damental fact, the trustworthi ness of memory. THE two preceding chapters have brought us thus far: "There is such a thing as certainty, and amongst those things which are supremely certain is the fact of our own existence." In our pursuit of truth, we may next consider Second funa second fact, the certainty of which is involved in that of our own persistent and continuous being. This second fact is the trustworthiness of our faculty of memory. many objections to the unqualified assertion of its trustworthiness will readily occur to the reader's mind. It is obvious that not only may we sometimes fail to recollect events in which we have borne a part, but that we may even fancy some circumstances to have been the very reverse of what in fact they were. We occasionally meet with people in a state of doubt as to whether they had or had not some particular past experience, and with others who feel confident they were witnesses of something which they were never near witnessing-as George the Fourth is said to. have made himself believe that he was present at the battle of Waterloo, or as women have died for their conviction that they had actually ridden through the air on broomsticks. It is plain that individuals may make mistakes as to what they remember, and defects of memory. which occasionally occur are very singular and surprising. Thus some persons may lose the recollection of particular parts of speech-as of all adjectives or all pronouns-and others, who have sustained some injury of the head, may find great gaps in their memory of the past, which gaps will gradually close up as they recover from the effects of the damage inflicted on them. But such exceptional phenomena do not tell against the fact of the general trustworthiness of memory. In the last chapter it was shown that the existence of idiots and of half demented persons unable to recognize. their own personal identity, did not tell against the certainty of our self-knowledge generally. It was also declared that this work is addressed to persons of ordinary capacity, and is not intended as a means for remedying any exceptional intellectual deficiency; and this, of course, also applies to any abnormal deficiency in, or perversion of, the power of memory. But an objection which seems at first to have much force in it may be made to memory's truthfulness. It may be said that our recollection as to anything whatever is less trustworthy than is our knowledge of what we are actually experiencing at the moment. Now, it is of course true that our knowledge of many past events is not so absolutely certain as is our knowledge of some present events; but what we are concerned with here is not the trustworthiness of particular facts of memory, but the veracity of our faculty of memory. It is to be freely conceded that individuals may make occasional mistakes as to this or that past event, but the trustworthiness of our faculty of memory, as a faculty, remains absolutely certain notwithstanding. It informs us as to some portions of the past as certainly as our consciousness informs us concerning some portions of the present. Such is the case, since we cannot have, even as to the present, that supreme certainty which accompanies our reflex con sideration about anything we may be actually experiencing word memory denotes. Let us first, however, see what the term "memory" What the really denotes. Evidently we cannot be said to remember anything unless we are conscious that the thing we so remember has been present to our mind on some previous occasion. An image might recur to our imagination a hundred times; but if at each recurrence it seemed to us something altogether new and unconnected with the past, we could not be said to remember it. It would, in fact, be rather an example of extreme “forgetfulness" than of "memory;" though we, of course, should not know that it was such, since we should not know that it had any relation whatever to the past. In "memory," then, there are and must be two distinct elements. The first element is the reproduction before the mind of what has been before it previously, and the second element is the recognition of what is so reproduced as something actually connected with the past. There is yet a further distinction which may be drawn between acts of memory. Every now and then we direct our attention to try and recall something which we know we have for the moment forgotten, and which we instantly recognize when we have managed to recall it to our recollection. But besides this voluntary memory, we are sometimes Recollections startled by the flashing into consciousness of something niscences. we had forgotten, and which we were so far from trying to recollect, that we were, when it so flashed into consciousness, thinking of something entirely different. A distinction, then, is to be drawn between those acts of memory in which, by a conscious direction of the will, we search for and find something we desire to recollect, and those acts of memory by which we have a spontaneous, unsought reminiscence in consciousness of some past experience. The former class may be conveniently distinguished and spoken of as "recollections," and the latter as "reminiscences." It is obvious, however, that neither of these kinds of memory can exist without consciousness. No repetition and remi |