Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/43

18 say how, at any one instant, taken, so far as possible, by itself, my words are present as facts in my own consciousness. Nor can I easily verify how far I just then realize what I mean by them, or how far their sound, their connection, or the act of uttering them is emphasized or obscured in consciousness by my concern that you should hear me, or by my chance consciousness of how the light of yonder window falls upon this paper, or by my muscular sensations as I turn the leaves of my manuscript. Ask me, then, to tell what is now present to my consciousness, and the notorious difficulty of every introspective problem reminds me that by what now is actually present to my consciousness, I mean much more than I can be said, in every sense, now consciously to verify. Even my verification itself occurs in degrees. I may verify without being clearly conscious that or what I verify.

And thus the present moment has about it all the mystery that everywhere clouds finite facts. I am conscious just now, but I am not wholly conscious of my consciousness. If I were, I should be capable of verifying an infinity of facts; for, as the Supplementary Essay, published with the former series of these lectures, has shown at length, to be self-conscious, in any complete sense, would be to be aware of the completion of an infinite series of presented facts. But if, as is true, I am not completely self-conscious, then I never completely verify what it is that I am just now verifying.

“But,” you may insist, “surely I can now verify some present fact of experience, the sound of this word, the presence of this feeling of discomfort, or of this intel-