Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/97

 GREEN'S METAPHYSICS OF KNOWLEDGE. 85 which implies that past stages of the " becoming are present to it as known facts ; yet is it not itself coming to be what it has not been ? It will be found that this apparent state of the case can only be explained by suppos- r ing that in the growth of experience, in the process of our learning to know the world, an animal organism, which has its history in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness. What we call our mental history is not a history of this consciousness, which in itself can have no history, but a history of the process by which the animal organism becomes its vehicle." It must not be supposed however that, because we have a consciousness which, since it apprehends succession in time, is itself out of time, and also a consciousness which "varies from moment to moment, which is in succession, and of which each successive state depends on a series of ' external ' and ' internal ' events," there- fore we have a double consciousness. On the contrary, we possess but a single consciousness : l " only 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 of view, do not admit of being united, any more than do our impressions of opposite es of the same shield ". Such is Green's solution of the problem which has to be dealt with by every system which distinguishes between the " pure " and the " empirical " Ego, the universal reason which is not in time and the individual consciousness which has a history. The difficulties which beset this solution are, however, not fully apparent either in Green's exposition or in niy abstract of it. For it requires us to believe that to learn is an event, to forget is an event, to know is not an event ; that knowledge therefore, though its beginning is in time, and though its ending is in time, is itself not in time. It requires us further to hold that the universal consciousness, which is not in time and which has no his-^ tory, yet carries on a gradual process of self-manifestation which is in time and which has a history. In other words, that that which is timeless and immutable is at different times at different stages of development. And lastly it calls upon us to accept two contradictory accounts of our own consciousness, with no more satisfactory attempt at their re- conciliation than that which is provided by the assurance that only by holding them together can we form an adequate ac- count of the truth as seen from two different points of view. Before, however, we accept doctrines which, whether true or not, in their form appear rather to resemble theological 1 Here and elsewhere Green causes much difficulty to the reader by not distinguishing accurately between a physical phenomenon and its physical or physiological condition. He tells us (p. 72), that " the consciousness^ .which varies from moment to moment . . . consists in . . . suc- cessive modifications of the animal organism ". Of course lie cannot mean this The crudest school of materialism would scarcely accept it I have therefore refrained in the text from crediting him with the doctrine.