Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/437

 424 S. H. HODGSON : but to its product, its concomitant and dependent consciousness, its cogitatio. What then is the Object? Here we come to the distinction which is in question this evening ; and this distinction is a dis- tinction of philosophy. Object means object of thought, of perception, of imagination, memory, and so on, or briefly of consciousness, of Descartes' cogitatio. The role of the Subject is here altered. It is cogitatio which is subjective to its objects ; they are objects of it. The res cogitans, the Subject in psychology, is an object, among others, in philosophy. And as already said, the question is still open, whether this object of thought, the Subject in psychology, is material or immaterial, an organism or a soul. Observe the confusion which is thus brought to light in the conflicting meanings of the term Subject, the reversal of the part which it plays, first as Subject of its own function, consciousness, then as Subject of the things known by means of its function, itself included. It appears to exist at a deeper depth in sub- jectivity than consciousness, cogitatio, itself, seeing that this depends upon and accompanies its action ; it seems to be the source of consciousness, the source of itself as known to itself in and by consciousness ; the perennially active but necessarily hidden fountain which throws up, and as it were objectifies itself in the form of consciousness and all its content, all its objects. The psychological view of the Subject, when not corrected by the philosophical distinction of Subject and Object, thus leads directly to a conception which is essentially the same as that of the Transcendental Idealism which sprang from Kant, and which has ever since deluged Germany. But it is not with the results of this neglect of a philosophical distinction that we have now to do. We are concerned to-night rather with its cause than its consequences how more particu- larly is the confusion brought about ; at what point in the chain of thought does the departure from logical rigour occur, which leads ultimately to the monstrosity of the self-creation of the Subject ? Now, the precise flaw, or point of divergence from logic, at least as it seems to me, is this. The Subject in psycho- logy is carelessly and inaccurately identified with the Ego, and moreover with the popular or unanalysed conception of the Ego, as it appears in common parlance. We always think of our self as having something, doing something, or aware of something ;. as possessing faculties ; as willing, thinking or feeling. This identification is clearly seen in Descartes' argument, cogito ergo sum I think, therefore I am the word am meaning, with him,, am a soul or Subject, a res cogitans. But what is the fact, what is the truth about this inference ? Let us see. The Ego, the " I," does not belong primarily to psychology at all. Its meaning, its characteristic, is derived entirely from cogitatio ; it is that feature of unity of consciousness which accom-