Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/100

 ' 88 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR. specting an inconceivable form of consciousness a particular truth respecting our own consciousness, from which this general theorem, if it has any meaning at all, must itself be an inference. Passing by this question of method, however, let us ask whether Green is right in assum- ing that if the knowing subject is not a stream or pro- cession of thoughts it must, as the only alternative, be out of time and therefore without a history. That this, view leads to great difficulties, that it obliges us to hold two views of consciousness which Green admits cannot be united, and which are perhaps more accurately described as in flat con- tradiction, we have already seen. That the analysis of the " content of the knowing consciousness " gives no counten- ance to it I have attempted to show. Is it not also true that ordinary reflection suggests a view which, if not without its difficulties, is free from many of those which beset the theories we have been considering ? .Most persons unbiassed by system would, I suppose, agree with Green in thinking that we are something other than a mere pageant of passing thoughts and emotions. But they would differ from him in holding that this "something more," this self, persists through these unceasing changes, has a history and is in time. Consciousness which thus testifies against Green's ac- count of what it is in itself, testifies even more clearly against his theory of what it is in relation to the Eternal consciousness. This relation is, as we have seen, described as that of a "mode" or "manifestation". Now, whatever be the full meaning, in this connexion, of these terms, they must at all events signify that the thing which is a mode and manifestation is in some way a part of, and is so far identified with, that of which it is a mode and manifesta- tion. But this identification of the finite with the eternal consciousness, though it may doubtless have profound signi- ficance in the region of religious aspiration, has, I venture to think, no legitimate place in transcendental philosophy. The very foundation of Green's version of the Critical system is that in every act of knowledge the "I" distin- guishes itself from what it knows. How then can it know itself as identical with another consciousness, so long as it can know anything about this other consciousness only on condition of its knowing itself as distinct from it ? If this be not so, what becomes of the argument by which the doctrine that consciousness does not consist of changing phenomena is deduced from the fact of our necessary self- distinction from these changing phenomena (see e.g., p. 56)? If we can be identical wholly or partially with that from which in knowledge we necessarily distinguish ourselves,