Page:The British Controversialist - 1867.djvu/506

Rh as a fact; and hence all inferences drawn from this assumption have only the value and power of this fact in so far as it is one. But simultaneity or same-time-ness and necessity are also assumed in this proposition, and all inferences derived from it have value and power only so far as these two assumptions are valid. Selfhood as a cogitable subject, is also by implication assumed as the recipient or percipient of knowledge, and proposition is valid only so far forth as the assumption accords with the truth. He accepted therefore, of this first and foundation truth is embarrassed by four assumptions of grave import and incontrovertible credibility—a serious difficulty to begin with! But if we accept Professor Ferrier's statements that "perception is a synthesis of two facts, sensation, namely, and consciousness, or the realization of self in conjunction with the sensation experienced. The former of these is possessed in common by men and by animals; But if the latter is peculiar to man, and constitutes his differential quality, and is, therefore, the sole and proper fact to which our attention ought to direct itself when contemplating the phenomena of perception." "Perception, the perception of an external universe, is the groundwork and condition of all other mental phenomena. It is the basis of the reality of mind. It is the real this reality itself. Through its mind is what it is; and without it mind could not be conceived to exist." "There is a calm unobtrusive current of self consciousness flowing on in company with our knowledge, and during every moment of our waking existence; and this self consciousness is the ground or condition of all our other consciousness," —it follows certainly that perception and self-consciousness mutually conditioned each other, but this as concomitants only, not as composing the whole integer thought. But concomitancy is neither self sameness nor corporate individuality; concomitants do not necessarily integrate, for if they did it would be comitancy not concomitancy. For example, to use Ferrier's own illustration—one end of a stick is the concomitant of the other end but it is not that the other end, nor do they both together, though parts of that stick, form one end—neither does the one and necessarily interpret and explain the other; a centre implies a circumference, and of a circumference a centre is a necessary concomitant—the one it is unthinkable without the other, yet neither is the other. They are interinvolved, but they are not interchangeable; still less are they the selfsame. They are indispensable co-integrants, not identical and one.

Concomitancy (along-with-ness), is only affirmed of knowledge and self in prop. 1, while in prop. 2 this is silently changed into comitancy, (essential integration), a transition clearly seen in the words "self is an integral and essential part of every object of cognition,"—