Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/78

 (54 HOWARD V. KNOX : itself become. The consciousness which varies from moment to moment, which is in succession, and of which each suc- cessive state depends on a series of ' external and internal ' events, is consciousness in the former sense. It consists in what may properly be called phenomena ; in successive modifications of the animal organism, which would not, it is true, be what they are if they were not media for the realisa- tion of an eternal consciousness, but which are not this consciousness. On the other hand, it is this latter conscious- ness, as so far realised in or communicated to us through modification of the animal organism, that constitutes our knowledge, with the relations, characteristic of knowledge, into which time does not enter, which are not in becoming but are once for all what they are. It is this again that enables us, by incorporation of any sensation to which atten- tion is given into a system of known facts, to extend that system, and by means of fresh perceptions to arrive at further knowledge." 1 No sooner, however, has Green put forward this explana- tion of the " apparent state of the case," than he is driven to acknowledge the purely formal character of the explanation to acknowledge, that is, that the explanation does not fulfil the function of explaining : "For convenience' sake," he continues, "we state this doctrine, to begin with, in a bald dogmatic way, though well aware how unwarrantable or unmeaning, until explained and justified, it is likely to appear. Does it not, the reader may ask, involve the impossible supposition that there is a double consciousness in man ? No, we reply, not that there is a double consciousness, but that the one indivisible reality of our consciousness cannot be comprehended in a single conception. In seeking to understand its reality we have to look at it from two different points of view ; and the different concep- tions that we form of it, as looked at from these different points, do not admit of being united, any more than do our im- pressions of opposite sides of the same shield ; and as we apply the same term ' consciousness ' to it, from whichever point of view we contemplate it, the ambiguity noticed necessarily attends that term." 2 The metaphor of the shield is unfortunate in the mouth of a philosopher who always insists, and rightly insists, that, in order to the possibility of knowledge, successive impres- sions must be held together in a single conception. But the 1 Prolegomena to Ethics, 66-67. 8 Op. cit., 68. (The italics are mine.)