it stands to others, and it ought to be possible to contrast such a knowledge with a knowledge which includes these relations. The force of the objection made above to the presence in consciousness of simple elements evidently depends upon the tacit assumption that it is impossible to know a thing in any manner whatever without knowing what it is, in the manner described. Such an assumption is sufficiently refuted by showing that it is impossible even to describe the complicated process of knowing what a thing is, without recognizing the presence of acts of knowledge of a more elementary kind. The question of the propriety of using the word "know" to indicate such is a purely verbal one, and need not detain us.

It is worth while to point out that this argument against the possibility of knowing simple elements in consciousness may be urged with equal force against the possibility of knowing complexes in consciousness which have not yet been analyzed. The most ardent champion of the composite nature of our experience will hardly maintain that all that enters into his experience is, not merely analyzable, but already analyzed. It must follow that whatever he has not at any time analyzed is unknown; and if it is a fair argument to bring against simple elements in consciousness that they are unknown, it is an equally fair argument to bring against unanalyzed complexes that they are unknown also. That they can be known does not remove the difficulty, for they can be known only by the substitution for them of other unknown things, i.e. other unanalyzed complexes. All knowledge must rest upon the unknown as much in the one case as in the other, the only difference being that here the unknown becomes a shifting one. But it is not worth while to spend much time over this argument for the necessarily composite nature of all our mental states. The fundamental error upon which it rests is that, while it insists upon their complexity and maintains that we can always discern them to be composed of parts, it fails to recognize that this very doctrine necessarily implies that we must in some way be singly conscious of those parts or we could not recognize our complex as a complex. It has no name for such a consciousness of the parts of a complex experience.

There is, indeed, good reason to believe that our sensations and our "ideas" are composed of simple elements. From all that has preceded, it will be readily understood that it is impossible to prove

this fact by direct introspection. The only way to prove it is to show that such an assumption harmonizes best with our knowledge as a whole, and offers the least difficulties, and that a satisfactory explanation can be given of the fact that men of intelligence embrace the contrary doctrine and defend it with ardor. As to the formal element in consciousness, it has been maintained that relations should be treated in a coherent way, distinguished as distinct from each other when they occur at different places or different times, and, in short, reasoned about very much as we reason about sensations. It seems to follow that complex relations may be analyzed into simple ones, and that there may be simplest relations. which resist any further analysis. Certainly geometrical reasonings recognize the presence of complexes, and endeavor to determine the constituents which enter into their composition. But when all this is admitted, it must be acknowledged that we have no such knowledge of the contents of consciousness as would make possible a detailed description of the individual elements which compose it, and there is small hope that such a knowledge will be attained within any assignable limit of time. If exception be taken to the use of the word "description" in such a connection, one may say, instead, such a knowledge as would enable us to represent to ourselves truly the simple elements which enter into our complex experiences. What it is to represent anything has already been explained.

CHAPTER V

THE SELF OR KNOWER

DOUBTLESS it has seemed to many of those who have read the preceding chapter that its most characteristic feature is one glaring omission. Where is the hero of the whole piece? Where is the self that perceives sensations, has memories, pictures ideal scenes, distinguishes between material and formal elements, and bustles about upon the stage before which the curtain has been raised? To deny the existence of this self, and to deny that it is immediately perceived to busy itself in divers ways seems little short of madness. Do we not say: I see, I hear, I touch, I taste, I smell, I think, I feel, I will? A sensation is always experienced by some one; a thought is thought by some one; an emotion does not float about unattached, like a storm-tossed bit of seaweed, or a dry leaf riding on the wind. It is useless to try to persuade the plain man that he is not conscious of himself as well as of other things, and that he does not do and suffer. As well try to persuade him that he has no consciousness at all.

But it is a misconception of what has been said in the preceding chapter to suppose that it denies these experiences upon which the plain man so stoutly insists, and which certainly no one has a right to overlook. We are conscious of self, and we do have experiences that we call knowing, feeling, willing, comparing, etc. In the last chapter, however, we were not concerned with complex experiences as complexes, but were endeavoring to fix certain broad distinctions which mark the elements of which these are composed. We were concerned with the elements of consciousness merely, and can be accused of an oversight only if it can be shown that in our complex experiences there is present something that cannot be made to fall within any of the classes there recognized; something so different that it must stand alone and as contrasted with all else. That the experiences adduced above contain such an element cannot be satisfactorily established by accepting

the testimony of the plain man, who knows little, as we have seen, of the separate elements which enter into his experience, and is capable of giving very foolish answers when he is asked to indicate them; and it is equally clear that even the psychologist cannot depend upon so coarse an instrument as direct introspection in the ultimate analysis of mental complexes, and has no right to say offhand just what elements they do or do not contain.

Hence, it is no refutation of the preceding account of the content of consciousness merely to adduce the experience which we call the consciousness of self, and to point to the fact of knowledge. He who accepts that account will maintain that these things are complexes, which may be resolved into the elements he has recognized, and which can only be clearly understood when they are seen to be capable of such an analysis. He will insist that he is not denying the experiences at all, but is merely showing what they really are, and is clearing away needless obscurity and misconception. It is, of course, possible to hold that his analysis is an unsatisfactory one. But one who takes this position should not content himself with baldly stating that fact; he should prove it by showing that it does not satisfactorily adjust itself to our knowledge as a whole; and he should likewise show that what he has to offer in place of it does not contain what is incomprehensible and self-contradictory. It is of importance to remark that both parties to the dispute accept such experiences as the consciousness of self and the knowledge of things. The only question at issue is: How are such experiences to be analyzed, or are they to be analyzed at all?

Those who hold that in addition to the elements which have above been recognized as constituting the content of consciousness, there must also be recognized a self or knower, which cannot be resolved into a number of such elements, but must be regarded as something of a quite different kind, lay emphasis upon such expressions as I see, I hear, I think, and the experiences which they call up. A sight cannot see itself, they insist, nor can a sound hear itself. Thought without a thinker is something incomprehensible. Are we, they ask, to regard it as without significance that we speak of "bringing objects within the focus of attention," "directing" the attention to this or that, or "holding" something before the attention? Do we not in the use of such phrases plainly indicate that there is a something which is busying itself about the objects,

turning, in a certain sense of that word, toward them or from them, summoning them before it or dismissing them as no longer of interest? Such phrases have been freely used in the preceding pages, and it may be asked with what right this has been done, when it is denied that there exists anything that either "brings" objects before it or "directs" attention to them.

Furthermore, and this is perhaps the point upon which the most emphasis is laid at the present day, it is pointed out that consciousness is highly complex, and yet our knowledge may be said to possess a certain unity. Colors, sounds, tastes, touches, memories - why does not every element of these exist absolutely by itself and for itself? Why does each stand in relation to other elements and help to form a whole? Things are known together: we run over many elements in succession, and then group them as a total: we do not lose one in gaining the other, nor does one take the place of the other; they exist in our thought side by side, and constitute its parts. Two sensations in the mind of one man belong to each other in a very different way from two sensations each of which exists in the mind of a separate man. Whence the difference? Does it not seem as if the mind itself gave this unity to its contents, knit together elements which would otherwise fall hopelessly apart, if, indeed, they could exist at all? Must not some principle of unity be assumed, if the coexistence of things in any fashion is to be rendered comprehensible?

To some of these questions it is not possible to give a complete answer at the present stage of our discussion. But it is sufficiently easy to point out that the assumption of a "knower " to perform the various functions indicated above is a gratuitous one, and rests upon misconception. Any principle or agent the existence of which is assumed in order to account for certain experienced facts should really account for them; that is, it should be capable of making comprehensible the manner of their occurrence. It will not do to make the facts their own explanation, to assume the existence of an agent whose whole being is, as it were, a shadow cast by the things it is assumed to explain. It was thus that “occult " qualities were once assumed as the explanation of observed phenomena; that the possession of a "dormitive virtue" was made to account for the soporific properties of opium. It is thus that mental "faculties" of various kinds are still used in some quarters to explain the divers sorts of mental phenomena. How the dormitive virtue of