Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/45

20 so, then the fact that I verify my utterance of words is as much a fact as is the fact verified, viz. the utterance itself. For the whole fact defined is, by hypothesis, the fact of my verification of my utterance of words. But to be conscious of my consciousness involves something more than merely to be conscious without such self-consciousness. In general, unless a philosophical argument calls my attention to the matter, I shall verify the fact of my utterance of the words without verifying, i.e. without consciously observing the first verification itself. That is, I shall verify without being aware that I do so. Now not only is this the case, but to deny that our verifications, whatever they are, always are facts that in their turn contain more Being than we at present verify, would be to assert that at present we consciously verify an infinity of facts. For to verify the fact that we make verifications, and to verify again this verification, and so on, all at the present moment, would indeed involve a present and completed infinite complexity of consciousness. Whoever asserts the thesis, however, that no fact is “accredited” from my point of view unless I now verify it, asserts a fact, viz. the fact of my verification of facts, while not meaning to attribute to me the infinite present knowledge that would be implied in declaring that my verification itself is reflectively and exhaustively verified.

Moreover, whoever asserts this same thesis defines as real the fact that “I” experience. “I,” then, am a fact. But at this moment, unless I have completely solved the problem of self-consciousness, I am in some respects, yes, obviously in nearly all respects, ignorant of who I really am, or of what the true nature of the Ego is. What