one aspect of experience which has its origin only within that experience which in its wholeness constitutes the material of psychology. The distinction, as we shall immediately see, cannot be an absolute one: by no possibility or contingency can man be regarded as merely one of objects of experience; but so far as the distinction has relative validity it is a purely psychological one, originating because man in his experience, at different stages of it, finds it necessary to regard himself in two lights -- in one of which he is a particular space- and time-conditioned being (we cannot say object or event) or activity, and in the other the unconditioned eternal synthesis of all. At most the distinction is only one of various stages in one and the same experience, both of which, as stages of experience -- one, indeed, of experience in its partiality and the other of experience in its totality -- fall within the science of experience, viz., psychology. We will see how the question stands if we state it otherwise. Does or does not the self-consciousness of man fall within the science of psychology? What reason can be given for excluding it? Certainly few would be found so thoroughgoing as to deny that perception is a matter which that science must treat; those however who admit perception would find themselves hard put to it to give a reason for excluding memory, imagination, conception, judgment, reasoning. Why having reached the stage of reasoning, where the original implicit individual with which we began has been broken up into the greatest possible number of explicit relations, shall we rule out self-consciousness where these relations are again seen united into an individual unity? There is no possible break: either we must deny the possibility of treating perception in psychology, and then our "purely objective science of psychology" can be nothing more than a physiology; or, admitting it, we must admit what follows directly from and upon it -- self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is indeed a fact (I do not fear the word) of experience, and must therefore find its treatment in psychology.
But this is not all. Not only does self-consciousness appear as one of the stages of psychological experience, but the explanation of the simplest psychological fact -- say one of perception, or feeling, or impulse -- involves necessary reference to self-consciousness. self-consciousness is involved in every simpler process, and no one of them can be scientifically described or comprehended except as this involution is brought out. In fact, their comprehension or explanation is simply bringing to light this implication of self-consciousness within them. This would be the last thing that the upholders of self-consciousness as the final unity and synthesis, the absolute meaning of experience, could deny. The organic nature of self-consciousness being their thesis, it must indeed reveal itself in, or rather constitute, each of its members and phases. The very existence of any idea or feeling being ultimately its relation to self-consciousness, what other account of it can be given except its organic placing in the system? If there be such an act as perception, a candid, careful examination of it, not of its logical conditions, but of itself as matter of experienced fact, will reveal what it is; and this revelation will be the declaration of its relation to that organic system which in its wholeness is self-consciousness. We may then abstract from this relation, which constitutes its very being, and consider it as an object of perception, and, generalizing the case, produce a philosophy of nature; or, considering it as conditioned by thought, we may thus produce a logic. But both of these proceedings go on in abstraction from its real being, and cannot give the real method of philosophy. In short, the real esse of things is neither their percipi, nor their intelligi alone; it is their experiri. Logic may give us the science of the intelligi, the philosophy of nature of the percipi, but only psychology can give us the systematic connected account of the experiri, which is also in its wholeness just the experior -- self-consciousness itself.
We may see how the matter stands by inquiring what would be the effect upon philosophy if self-consciousness were not an experienced fact, i.e., if it were not one actual stage in that realization of the universe by an individual which is defined as constituting the sphere of psychology. The result would be again, precisely, that no such thing as philosophy, under any theory of its nature whatever, is possible. Philosophy, it cannot be too often repeated, consists simply in viewing things sub specie aeternitatis or in ordine ad universum. If man, as matter of fact, does not realize the nature of the eternal and the universal within himself, as the essence of his own being; if he does not at one stage of his experience consciously, and in all stages implicitly, lay hold of this universal and eternal, then it is a mere matter of words to say that he can give no account of things as they universally and eternally are. To deny, therefore, that self-consciousness is a matter of psychological experience is to deny the possibility of any philosophy.
What the denial comes to we have had historically demonstrated in Kant. He admits perception and conception as matters of experience, but he draws the line at self-consciousness. It is worth noticing that his reason for denying it is not psychological at all, but logical. It is not because self-consciousness is not a fact, but because it cannot be a fact according to his logical presuppositions. The results following the denial are worthy of notice as corresponding exactly to what we might be led to expect: first, with the denial of the fact of self-consciousness comes the impossibility of solving the problem of philosophy, expressed in the setting up of an unknown thing-in-itself as the ultimate ground and condition of experience; and, secondly, comes the failure to bring perception and conception into any organic connection with experience, that is, the failure to really comprehend and explain them, manifested in the limitation of both perception, through the forms of space and time, and thinking, through the categories, to phenomena which are in no demonstrable connection with reality. The failure to recognize self-consciousness as a stage of psychological experience leads not only to a failure to reach the alternate synthesis of experience, but renders it impossible to explain the simpler forms of psychological experience. This failure of Kant teaches us another lesson also, in that, as already stated, it was due to abandoning his real method, which was psychological, consisting in the self-knowledge of reason as an organic system by reason itself, and setting up a logical standard (in this latter case the principles of non-contradiction and identity), by which to determine the totality of experience. The work of Hegel consisted essentially in showing that Kant's logical standard was erroneous, and that, as matter of logic, the only true criterion or standard was the organic notion, or Begriff, which is a systematic totality, and accordingly able to explain both itself and also the simpler processes and principles. That Hegel accomplished this work successfully and thoroughly there can be to the writer no doubt; but it seems equally clear that the work of Kant is in need of another complement, following more closely his own conception of method and of philosophy, which shall consist in showing self-consciousness as a fact of experience, as well as perception through organic forms and thinking through organic principles. And it seems further that, only when this has been done, will, for the first time, the presuppositions latent in the work of Hegel, which give it its convincing force and validity, be brought out.
Again, it seems worthy of note that the late Professor Green (of whom the writer would not speak without expressing his deep, almost reverential gratitude), when following out Kant's work from its logical side, hardly escaped Kant's negative results. (By Kant's logical method we mean the inquiry into the necessary conditions of experience; by his psychological method the inquiry into the actual nature of experience.) After his complete demonstration of consciousness as the final condition, synthesis and unity of all that is or is knowable, he finds himself obliged to state (Prolegg. to Ethics, p. 54): "As to what that consciousness in itself or in its completeness is, we can only make negative statements. That there is such a consciousness is implied in the existence of the world; but what it is we can only know through its so far acting in us as to enable us, however partially and interruptedly, to have knowledge of a world or an intelligent experience." Had he begun from the latter statement, and shown as matter of fact that this universal consciousness had realized itself, though only partially and interruptedly, in us, he certainly would have been able to make very positive statements regarding it, and would also have furnished a basis in fact for his logical method, which now seems to hang upon nothing but a unity of which all that can be said is that it is a unity, and that it is not anything in particular. When one reflects that it is not only upon the existence of this unity, but upon its working in and through us, that all philosophy and philosophizing depend, one cannot conceal
