identity of the mind. It is possible only to a mind of such attributes. The past guilty designs and volitions are gone, are extinct; but the agent that had them is not extinct, he survives, he has continued to the present; and in his permanent substance and permanent dispositions and potentialities, is the bearer of guilt from the past down to the present. A mind consisting of a pure succession of thoughts, or of a present fleeting thought, would seem to be entirely incapable of such moral experiences. It is incredible that a dying thought should pass on its guilt to its successor, or that a present thought should feel responsible for a past thought that has perished. As there could be no conviction at all of the past, there could be none of past wrong-doing. The descent of guilt seems impossible for the abstract stream of thoughts; unless the associate brain, by the permanence and identity of its substance, should bear guilt along for the mental stream.

Thirdly. Another primary property known of mind is Power. We are cognizant of this, for example, in the voluntary direction of the attention, and in striving to moderate or suppress a passion. Thus by volition the mind knowingly acts upon itself, or produces effects in itself.

One of the great principles of Hume's scepticism, and one of his most flagrant misrepresentations of mind, is the denial of mental power. He holds, as we have already noted, that our conception of mental power or causal connection in mind is quite fictitious; that what we take for causal connection is a pure succession of perceptions with absolutely no power, but yet a succession of a special sort, namely, a customary succession. Our sense of power is but the feeling arising from a constant or invariable succession. He denies

the existence of power or real causation as well inside the mind as outside. The advocates of the processmind or stream-mind in many instances give very inadequate recognition to the real character of volition and the exertion of mental power in it. They consider attentively the succession of our thoughts, but often bestow little or no consideration upon the actual causal relation within mind, upon the power of the mind involved in the action of thought upon thought. Among our primary and most certain experiences are indisputably both succession and succession with power. The consciousness of power in volition is the revelation and representation of a real power in the mind. The thought of power has its source and basis in the reality, and has a likeness to the reality.

We have claimed a direct knowledge of mind,—of its unity, ownership, power, amidst its varied simultaneous affections; and also a knowledge of the permanence and sameness of mind, which is not entirely a direct knowledge (for it involves a knowledge of the past), but is in part a belief, a mediate or indirect knowledge. But a very important question is here to be considered: Is the knowledge we thus have of mind a complete knowledge? is this knowledge coextensive with the mind's being? We cannot maintain that it is so; but must admit that there are elements, structure, processes, of mind which are not reached by it, are unconscious, subliminal, and which, so far as they are known, are known only by obscure inference. For instance, we know nothing, save by conjecture, of the elements and structure in the mind which are the ground of the mnemonic functions of retention and reproduction. Some, as observed before, suppose that we have much more full and certain knowledge of the corporeal con

ditions of memory-of the elements and motion-paths of the brain. But this seems to be a fundamental error. It is opposed to the priority and greater nearness and certainty of the knowledge of the mind over the knowledge of everything else.

Our knowledge of mind may be compared with our ordinary knowledge of a material object-as this rubber ball; but, as preliminary to the comparison, a question of the first consequence to be considered is, What do we really know of such an object? We certainly know the magnitude and shape of the ball. We certainly know its permanence and sameness. But we have But we have very little knowledge indeed of its ultimate elements and innermost structure. If the ball were divided to its last particles, we know not what these particles would be found in essence to be, whether ethereal, or electrical, or of some other sort. Something like this is true also of our knowledge of mind. We know the succession, permanent identity, power, unity and ownership, of the mind,―very much more than could ever be known of the mind of the pure succession of thoughts, the streammind, or than the stream-mind could ever know of itself, and very much more than mere abstract activity,—but we cognize not the lowest depths of mind, its final essence, its innermost formation. But this ignorance no more proves that we do not know the permanent identity and power of the mind, than ignorance of the final elements of a material object proves that we do not know the object's permanence and extension.

We remark in general, and in conclusion, that the knowledge the mind has of itself is its supreme knowledge; supreme in the sense of being its most direct and certain knowledge, and the ground and the means of the

knowledge of all other reality. The only immediate knowledge the mind has is its knowledge of itself. It certainly has much other knowledge; it knows many things which are not present in time and space; it has knowledge of objects that are greater than itself,objects of longer duration, larger extension, and of superiority in every attribute;-but only by a mode of cognition less direct and less certain. The mind has immediate and most certain knowledge of itself because the thing known and the knowing are in the closest possible relationship; the thing known is in the knowing; the knowing is in the thing known. But such knowledge the mind has solely of itself; all other things are known only mediately, by inference and representation. No other thing whatever has so close relation to the knowing act or state as the mind itself; everything except the mind is severed from the cognition of itself by an ontological breach, or by separation in time and space. The division, which is of the highest significance, of immediate and mediate knowledge, corresponds to and indicates a division of reality—a division between soul and body, or between soul and every other object animate and inanimate. It may be remarked further explicitly, that the mind always, if not necessarily, knows itself in comparison and contrast with other realities, especially other finite realities. But the comparison in every instance is based upon, or made possible by, the combination of two modes of knowledge—the immediate knowledge of self, and the mediate or inferential knowledge of the not-self.

The means of our knowledge of outer realities, it should be expressly noted, are not media distinct from the mind, are not third things coming in between the mind and the outer objects, but the pure conscious

modes of the mind itself. These modes are the grounds for inference; they are the means of representation and depicture. Therefore the mind has, in the same cognitive modes, both an immediate knowledge of itself and a mediate knowledge of other things; just as, but in a different manner, it has, in the same present mode, a knowledge of both the present and the past. Our mediate or inferential knowledge, which constitutes the great bulk of our knowledge, thus stands upon the narrow foundation of our immediate knowledge of mind. This foundation is indeed narrow; but it is yet altogether firm, safe and sufficient, because it is a direct knowledge and therefore also certain, and because, though contracted, it is still in itself rich.