Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/101

 GREEN'S METAPHYSICS OF KNOWLEDGE. 89 then we may be after all a series of mental phenomena. If we cannot be identical with that from which we thus distin- guish oui-selves, then we cannot be a mode of the eternal consciousness. In the first case we must give up our author's theory of nature, in the second his theory of God. It seems probable that both the opinions_I_ajQijeombating, namely the opinion that conscipjisiifisa. .in not in time, and jBe opinion 1 hat our consciousness is a mode of the eternal ^consciousness^arise from the too abstract theory of the "Ego", which Green held, or at all events occasionally suggests to his reader. On page 72 he asserts that we "only" know the eternal consciousness as " a principle of unity in relation ". It seems natural to argue from this that, in proportion as this eternal consciousness succeeds in reproducing itself in us, we also approach the condition of being mere " principles of unity " ; and that if any one of us reach the stage of being a " completed consciousness " he would then be a principle of unity and nothing more. If this was his opinion it is not difficult to see how he arrived at the further view that we are, qua knowing, both out of time and also a mode or manifestation of the eternal consciousness. For it may be admitted, Jn the_first place^ that what is only "a prin- ciple of unity " can have no history, and, being a mere logical or metaphysical abstraction, is abstracted, among other things, from the notion of time. It may be admitted, jn the second place, that two "principles of unity" can hardly be distinguished except by differences in that which they have unified, i.e., in their thoughts. And it may be admitted, in the third place, that thoughts which are not in time, and which have the same content, must be re- garded not only as familiar but, for want of any principle of distinction between them, as absolutely identical. In so far therefore as our thoughts are true and thus the same as those of the universal consciousness, we may no doubt be described as its mode or manifestation, and could we become a " completed consciousnesses," i.e., could the " content of our knowing consciousness " be precisely assimilated to that of the universal consciousness, then all difference between it and us would be totally obliterated. But such a theory as this is in truth (as I have just said of a cognate error) the result of illegitimate abstrac- tion. We are essentially more than mere " principles of unity ". Consciousness is something besides the bare geometrical point through which must pass all the threads which make up the web of nature. And this somtthing, though to each man unique, and therefore incapable of de- scription, is that " self" whose being can never be in any