Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/614

586 cognised in the present ? Thirdly, it would not be possible for a man to be cognisant of his past self unless he had been cognisant of his present self. What a man remembers is, that certain sensations were his, that certain events befell him; that is, he remembers both himself and those events, and the connection between him and them. If he had not been cognisant of himself in the present (which is now past) he either would remember only the events, and their having happened to nobody, at least not to him (which is absurd), or he would not have remembered them at all, which is the more probable alternative. But he does remember them; and he remembers, moreover, that they happened to him, which seems to me to prove that he was cognisant (however inexplicitly) of himself at the time. But I have exhausted my paper, and I daresay your patience, so I shall say no more at present, except that I cannot think that Mr G.'s position is not blasted, or that mine is shaken, by anything that has been as yet advanced. Perhaps he thinks that a contradiction is involved in supposing that the cognoscens can be in the same instant the cognition. But that is precisely the idea and definition of the ego, that it is at once its own subject and its own object—not, however, without a contrasting element, the non-ego.