Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/438

 SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN PSYCHOLOGY. 425 panies, or is bound up with, all distinct consciousness whatever. It is an inference, an ergo, that consciousness with its unity re- quires a Subject, a res cogitans, to sustain it. But this inference cannot be an immediate inference, a consequentia immediata, though Descartes himself, no doubt, supposed that it was so. (See MIND i. 568-70.) The only immediate inference from / think would be there- fore my thought exists. That cogitatio requires a res cogitans, or my thought a " me," to possess it or exercise it, this inference is derived from something in the content of the cogitatio over and above the mere fact that cogitatio takes place. The perception or idea of a res cogitans exercising or possessing the cogitatio is no necessary or universal feature of cogitatio simply. It belongs to the popular, pre-philosophic, and unanalysed conception of the Ego, which is the fruit of long association hardened into habit. As M. Fouillee well puts it, in La Liberte et le Determinisms (2nd ed., p. 82) : "Ce qu'il y a de certain dans le je pense, c'est le penser, ce n'est pas le je. Le vrai et seul evident principe est le suivant : la pensee est ; il y a de la pensee, il y a de I'etre, il y a de la conscience" This part of the content of the cogito is the only thing warranted by immediate inference, the existence of my consciousness, of my cogitatio itself. And why is this warranted? Because in consciousness or cogitatio the consciousness or cogitatio is immediately perceived, is its own object or content, every moment of it, as it becomes past, becoming also content or object of the then passing or present moment ; of which again, in the next moment, the same thing will be true. Then it is that, from the experiential point of view, we say that it exists. (See MIND ii. 128-30.) Here, in my opinion, is the precise source of the fallacy. First, the Ego, the "I," is identified, unanalysed, with the Subject in psychology. And secondly, the Ego, the "I," is in popular, pre-philosophic, that is, pre-analytic thought, a double-mixed, or two-fold something. It is agent and action, conscious agent and consciousness, in one. This popular, pre-philo- sophic, and pre-analytic conception of the "I" is carried over unanalysed into psychology, when the ' ' I " is identified with the Subject. Whereas logically, what ought to be carried over into psychology under the name of the Subject, of course after analysis instituted, is the agent or agency in the popular conception of the " I," minus the function, the cogitatio, the consciousness. The consciousness is opposed properly to its objects, and the distinction of Subject and Object, meaning knowing and that which is known, remains with philosophy, the institutor of the analysis. The idea of thought, cogitatio, con- sciousness, as well as that of the Subject, evolving its objects out of itself is then seen to be utterly baseless and unwarranted, so far as experience goes. It will repay us to compare Kant's proceeding in this matter