"When I speak," says Crousaz, in his Art of Thinking, "of desire, contentment, trouble, appre"hension, doubt, certainty; of affirming, denying,

approving, blaming ;-I pronounce words, the "meaning of which I distinctly understand; and "yet I do not represent the things spoken of under any image or corporeal form. While the intel"lect, however, is thus busy about its own pheno66 mena, the imagination is also at work in presenting its analogical theories; but so far from aiding "us, it only misleads our steps, and retards our pro66 gress. Would you know what thought is ?—It "is precisely that which passes within you when "you think: Stop but here, and you are sufficiently informed. But the imagination, eager to pro"ceed farther, would gratify our curiosity by com

paring it to fire, to vapour, or to other active and "subtile principles in the material world. And to "what can all this tend, but to divert our attention "from what thought is, and to fix it upon what it " is not ?"

The belief which accompanies consciousness, as to the present existence of its appropriate phenomena, has been commonly considered as much less obnoxious to cavil, than any of the other principles which philosophers are accustomed to assume as selfevident, in the formation of their metaphysical systems. No doubts on this head have yet been suggested by any philosopher, how sceptical soever; even by those who have called in question the existence both of Mind and of Matter:-And yet the fact is, that it rests on no foundation more solid than

our belief of the existence of external objects; or our belief, that other men possess intellectual powers and faculties similar to those of which we are conscious in ourselves. In all these cases, the only account that can be given of our belief is, that it forms a necessary part of our constitution; against which metaphysicians may easily argue so as to perplex the judgment, but of which it is impossible to divest ourselves for a moment, when called on to employ our reason, either in the business of life, or in the pursuits of science. While we are under the influence of our appetites, passions, or affections, or even of a strong speculative curiosity, all those difficulties which bewildered us in the solitude of the closet vanish before the essential principles of the human frame.

According to the common doctrine of our best philosophers, it is by the evidence of consciousness we are assured that we ourselves exist. The proposition, however, when thus stated, is not accurately true; for our own existence is not a direct or immediate object of consciousness, in the strict and logical meaning of that term. We are conscious of sensation, thought, desire, volition; but we are not conscious of the existence of Mind itself; nor would it be possible for us to arrive at the knowledge of it (supposing us to be created in the full possession of all the intellectual capacities that belong to human nature), if no impression were ever to be made on our external senses. The moment that, in consequence of such an impression, a sensation is excited, we learn two facts at once ;-the existence of the sensation, and our own existence as sentient beings:

-in other words, the very first exercise of consciousness necessarily implies a belief, not only of the present existence of what is felt, but of the present existence of that which feels and thinks; or (to employ plainer language) the present existence of that being which I denote by the words I and myself. Of these facts, however, it is the former alone of which we can properly be said to be conscious, agreeably to the rigorous interpretation of the expression. The latter is made known to us by a suggestion of the understanding consequent on the sensation, but so intimately connected with it, that it is not surprising that our belief of both should be generally referred to the same origin.

If this distinction be just, the celebrated enthymeme of Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum, does not deserve all the ridicule bestowed on it by those writers who have represented the author as attempting to demonstrate his own existence by a process of reasoning. To me it seems more probable, that he meant chiefly to direct the attention of his readers to a circumstance which must be allowed to be not unworthy of notice in the history of the Human Mind; the impossibility of our ever having learned the fact of our own existence, without some sensation being excited in the mind, to awaken the faculty of thinking.

*After looking again into the Meditations of Descartes, I am doubtful if I have not carried my apology for him a little farther than his own words will justify. I am still of opinion, however, that it was the remark which I have ascribed to him, that first led him into this train of thought.

As the belief of our present existence necessarily accompanies every act of consciousness, so, from a comparison of the sensations and thoughts of which we are now conscious, with those of which we recollect to have been conscious formerly, we are impressed with an irresistible conviction of our personal identity. Notwithstanding the strange. difficulties that have been raised upon the subject, I cannot conceive any conviction more complete than this, nor any truth more intelligible to all, whose understandings have not been perplexed by metaphysical speculations. The objections founded on the change of substance in certain material objects to which we continue to apply the same name, are plainly not applicable to the question concerning the identity of the same person, or of the same thinking being; inasmuch as the words sameness and identity are here used in different senses. the meaning of these words, when applied to persons, I confess I am not able to give a logical definition; but neither can I define sensation, memory, volition, nor even existence; and if any one should bring himself by this and other scholastic subtilties to conclude, that he has no interest in making provision for to-morrow, because personality is not a permanent, but a transient thing, I can think of no argument to convince him of his error.

Of

But although it is by consciousness and memory that the sameness of our being is ascertained to ourselves, it is by no means correct to say with Locke, that consciousness constitutes personal identity; -a doctrine which, as Butler justly remarks," in

volves, as an obvious consequence, that a person "has not existed a single moment, nor done one "action but what he can remember; indeed, none "but what he reflects upon. "One should

really think it self-evident," as the same author further remarks, "that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot consti"tute, personal identity, any more than knowledge, "in any other case, constitutes those truths which "are its own objects."-The previous existence of the truths is manifestly implied in the very supposition of their being objects of knowledge.

While, however, I assent completely to the substance of these acute and important strictures upon Locke's doctrine, I think it necessary to observe, that the language of Butler himself is far from being unexceptionable. He speaks of our consciousness of personal identity; whereas it must appear evident, upon a moment's reflection, even to those who acquiesce in the common statement which ascribes immediately to consciousness our belief of our present existence, that our belief of our personal identity presupposes, over and above this knowledge, the exercise of memory, and the idea of time.

The importance of attending carefully to the distinction between the phenomena which are the immediate objects of Consciousness, and the concomitant notions and truths which are suggested to our thoughts by these phenomena, will appear from the

See the Dissertation on Personal Identity, subjoined to But ler's Analogy.