there is not only the external agent (the outer world), but also the limitation and modification of ourselves. This is the nature of corporeal feeling, always double, made up of that which feels and that which is felt. But feeling and intellective perception are different in nature. Notwithstanding that two beings concur in feeling, perception limits itself to one of them at a time. It is by this means that it distinguishes the one from the other. Perception terminates in what it affirms; when it affirms the external world it terminates in that. If the case were otherwise, it would confound the external world with itself, instead of separating the two, as it does. I say separate, and not distinguish. In order to separate the external Perception world, it is enough to have perceived it and reflection nothing else, whereas in order to distinguish it must negate ourselves, which implies that must have perceived ourselves, since we cannot negate what we do not know. And it was nothing else but the misuse of the word distinguish that rendered Fichte's sophism plausible. The truth is that, when we perceive one thing, entirely ignoring all the rest, it is already thereby separated from all the others, without our being obliged positively to negate them or distinguish them from it. Fichte's error, therefore, arose from a confusion between feeling and sense-perception-another error to be laid at the door of sensism. separates, distin we guishes, its object we from "Fichte, a disciple of Kant's," says Rosmini, "undertook to evolve everything from the subject. . . . Kant had divided the activity of the spirit into so many forms or others. partial activities. He had even admitted passivity in thought (perhaps without observing that he did so), and had excluded from it noümena, things as they are in themselves. Fichte concentrated anew the action of thought, considered it in its unity, and propounded the doctrine that everything was pure activity. In this system the activity of the Ego was the beginning, the middle, and the end of the philosophy which was called Transcendental Idealism. The Ego, according to Fichte, posits itself, which is equivalent to, creates itself. But this first act, which the Ego performs in positing itself, though simple, is, nevertheless, complex. The Ego does not posit itself without positing, in opposition to itself, the non-Ego. This identical act, which renders it conscious of itself, is that which renders it conscious of the external world and the things outside of itself, collected under the designation of non-Ego, or, to speak more correctly, the act which renders it conscious of something different from itself renders it also conscious of itself. Now, to be self-conscious, in this system, is the same thing as to be. Before being conscious, therefore, the Ego is not, since the essence of the Ego is to be conscious. Ego, therefore, by the act of its own consciousness, posits, creates itself.* But the act of its own consciousness, which constitutes the Ego, cannot, according, to Fichte, take place without the act whereby the external world, or the other of the subject Ego, that is, the non-Ego, is known. Hence in the first act of the Ego, in that first act in which the Ego feels itself, it also feels, or, to use Fichte's expression, thinks, the eternal world. All that man knows is the Ego and the non-Ego. Now, the non-Ego does not exist before the Ego, but at the same time with it. . . . 'The act of my spirit,' said Fichte, justly, 'is anterior to the fact of consciousness. We must not, therefore, set out with the fact of conscious The * In a note to this, Rosmini says, "Fichte's error here consists in not having observed that the first act whereby the Ego exists, and, in general, the first act whereby anything exists, though an act of the thing itself, is nevertheless an act created by a cause antecedent to the thing." It is almost incredible nowadays, but Fichte actually says, "The Ego originally absolutely posits its own being" (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, Leipzig, 1794, p. 13. On page II may be found some of the most puerile logical fallacies on record). ... ness, but with the activity of the thought, which returns upon itself, that is, upon its own consciousness.' . . . But here there is a manifest ambiguity. The point of departure of the reasoning and the point of departure of the human spirit are two different things.* Reasoning cannot set out from anything but the fact of consciousness, because reasoning, especially philosophic reasoning, sets out, not from what a man knows, but from what he observes or knows that he knows. Now, the chronological order of observations or reflections is the inverse of that of direct consciousness. Man, therefore, reflects first on the fact of his own consciousness, and then on the act by which he reflects: hence this reflexive act of the spirit is observed after, although it exists before, the observance of the act of consciousness. The first thing, therefore, observed by the philosopher who meditates on himself is the fact of consciousness; this, therefore, is the point of departure in reasoning. But afterwards the philosopher asks himself, 'How did I observe the fact of my own consciousness?' Then he replies to himself, 'By an act of reflection on it.' This act of reflection, therefore, is a point of departure in thought higher than the fact of consciousness known by reflection. "Be it observed, I have said, 'a point of departure in thought,' not 'a point of departure in the spirit.' This distinction escaped Fichte's notice. He set out from the reflection of the thought upon itself, as the first radical act whereby all the acts of the human spirit may be explained. Hence he reduced everything to thought and even confounded thought and feeling, ... which shows that even in the bowels of Transcendental Idealism sensism has laid its egg. If Fichte had not made this confusion, he would not have used this formula to indicate the point of departure of the human spirit, 'the activity of thought which reflects upon itself,' but would have used this other, 'the activity of thought which falls upon * See under § 9, where four points of departure are distinguished. † Cf. Aristotle, “ οὐ γὰρ ταὐτὸν πρότερον τῇ φύσει καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς πρότερον οὐδὲ γνωριμώτερον καὶ ἡμῖν γνωριμώτερον” (Anal. Fost., i. 1 ; 71 b, 34 sq.). feeling,' and in this latter it would have been impossible for him to place the point of departure of the spirit, because he would at once have observed that feeling must precede the act of thought which observes it. On the other hand, the thought which reflects upon itself,' as the point of departure of the human spirit, involves a contradiction in terms, inasmuch as it makes the thought which reflects identical with the thought upon which the reflection is made. It, therefore, concentrates and confounds the active and the passive in a single essence, even making the passive active and the active passive, which is a clear contradiction. . . ... "If Fichte had been properly acquainted with the act of reflection, he would have seen that no act really returns upon itself, but always upon a previous act, which becomes its object. Let us consider an act of reflection. This returns upon another act, which may likewise be an act of reflection, in which case this latter is likewise reflected upon another act, and so on. Finally, however, we must come to an act of first reflection, and this must reflect itself upon a direct act of thought, otherwise we should go on ad infinitum, which is absurd. Now, the direct act of thought is intuition and perception. Perception is an act of thought in which are united two affections: first, corporeal sensation; second, the intuition of universal being. Previously, therefore, to any reflection, there exist feeling and intuition, which are the foundation of everything; in other words, first, an intellective intuition; second, a corporeal sensation. And these two affections, united by the single activity of the spirit, form the most simple perception, and upon this the reflection of thought begins to act. But this analysis was omitted by Fichte, and herein, in my opinion, lies the source of his errors. "When I perform an act with my thought, with this act I know the object in which my act terminates; but the act itself remains unknown to me. In order that I may know it, I must perform a second reflex act on the first act, so that the latter may become an object; but then, in the same way, the second reflex act remains unknown to me. If I reflect on the second act, I perform a third act, enabling me to know the second, which makes itself the object of the third, but not to know itself; and in this way we may go on as long as we choose, so that we may lay down, as the law of our manner of knowing, this great canon Every act of our understanding makes us know the object in which it terminates, but no act makes us know itself.* Seeing that this is the case, we are met with the question Are we not, then, conscious in the act by which we know an object? We must observe that this question differs from this other: In the act in which we know an object have we a feeling? To have consciousness is to have knowledge of an act as ours, that is, of our act, and, at the same time, of ourselves as performing it. And this knowledge we cannot have save through another act of reflection. Feeling, on the contrary, does not require any operation on our part; but feeling is blind. Most men, however, find it impossible to persuade themselves that we may perform an act without even having a consciousness of it. The reason why most men think in this way is, that *It follows from this that the first act of knowledge, viz., intuition, is not knowledge, that is, does not know itself. + Sir W. Hamilton says, An act of knowledge may be expressed by the formula I know, an act of consciousness by the formula I know that I know; but as it is impossible for us to know without at the same time knowing that we know ; so it is impossible to know that we know without our actually knowing." That the former of these acts is impossible is clearly not true. Sir William overlooked the fact that to know, and to know that we know, are two distinct and separate acts. Children know very many things; but so long as they do not clearly know what knowing is, they cannot know that they know. Much confusion has arisen from confounding consciousness of knowledge with knowledge itself. Herbert Spencer, who is fond of confounding the different acts of the mind, says, in so many words, "To be conscious is to think; to think is to put together impressions and ideas" (Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. ch. xxvi. § 377). Now, if to think be merely to put together impressions and ideas, it is plain that the impressions and ideas themselves are not thought, and that we are not conscious of them. Thinking consciousness, therefore, is the putting together of things that are unknown. In this view, consciousness would be a mere mechanical force acting blindly, and ideas having an existence outside of it and independent of it, would become real entities-in a word, Platonic ideas. But any one who has ever seriously reflected upon mental processes knows that all consciousness takes the form of judgment, and that judgment is the analysis of a synthesis formed previously in thought but outside of consciousness. Consciousness, therefore, is only one |