regarded, for then the mind would be in two states at once. Consciousness has to do with mind alone. It cannot include any thing we call external matter, though it may our percep tions of it. It knows nothing of our sentient nature, and we should not know that we possessed it, but from our senses. It comprehends nothing of the nature of mind, but only its exercises, and even nothing of their mode. In plainer language,

the mind feels its thinking, but not its substance.

How necessary this state of mind is to all we conceive of mind, is demonstrable when we attempt to imagine any condition devoid of it, and requiring its absence. The condition of the body in the grave is always connected in our thoughts with cold, and imprisonment, and dissolution. The condition is thought of as conscious still. It has to do with the present only, and we cannot therefore say that we are conscious that we did not do such a thing, though from the knowledge we have of our present character we may be conscious we could not do it. That admirable essay published by Bishop Butler on this subject, fails, though it is a single exception, in this precision of ideas. Consciousness is, then, the feeling of our present self. It does not constitute that self, as many have thought. It might as well be maintained that sight constitutes colour, and hearing, sound. Its necessity to identity has, however, been overstated. For identity is relative and retrospective, but consciousness is only of the present moment and thought. Consciousness is therefore individual. Even in soliloquy we are obliged to personify a second party to address ourselves. And the sentiment is not less philosophic because of the source whence it is derived: "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ?" Nor is the figure less just," the hidden man of the heart." Consciousness being always current, its impressions would be very fugitive, were there no other state of mind. Memory gives permanence to them. It is not always easy to distinguish their functions. Who can sever the present and the past? There is a kind of paulo-post future which all must feel. When a luminous point is rapidly whirled round, distinct sensations are generated

by that point at each part of the round. But the new are so fleet, and the former so recent, that consciousness merges in memory, and memory is scarcely less vivid than consciousness: the result is, that, instead of a luminous point, the one object of perception, we seem to behold a luminous circle. In complex ideas we are indebted to memory; for the horse, which has various qualities of speed, size, animation, restiveness, colour, can only be understood by me as each quality is remembered after being consciously perceived. But who

remembers? myself:

"Ah! why in age

Do we revert so fondly to the walks

Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns

The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired

Of her own native vigour-but for this

That it is given her thence in age to hear
Reverberations ?"

As the Association of ideas is another state the mind is often found in, it may be proper to mention it; since it involves a law which unites separate recollections, and establishes a pleasing and useful relation between them. How, in obedience to this law of mind, do former scenes revive,-as when the landscape, hid by gloom, and lost in distance, starts into view, and glows with beauty, beneath a sudden catch and shoot of the declining sun!

"There is no thought doth ever cross the mind

Till some preceding kindred sentiment

Hath made a pathway for it."+

Our sense of identity is, then, impressed upon us through the mediums of consciousness, memory, and association. Without consciousness, memory would be useless, for there could be nothing which remembered: without memory, consciousness would be unmeaning, for it could be nothing but evanescent feeling without association, some of the most powerful ties of our nature and tissues of our history, would be torn asunder. How we formerly felt is recalled and conjoined, and

our identity flashes upon us from our remembered and associated consciousness. As far back as we can trace, we know that we felt what we now do, and recognised ourselves as we now are. "Integer vitæ." But of our infancy we cannot recall a trace. We must of necessity receive some information from the testimony of others,-yet most probably the infant felt and remembered from the first that it was itself: many of these feelings and remembrances vanished, but only to make room for others of the same purport and of greater steadiness: and these again were succeeded by those firm and lasting impres sions which we can now, though far removed, freely examine and must unequivocally obey. And from these failures of memory we have no more reason to doubt our identity, than the traveller can find to suspect the continued progress of his journey, because he recollects not a few circumstances of the outset, or a few way-marks of the road.

We need not be surprised at Hume's opinion that identity depends on a certain prejudice more beneficial than just. But it is surprising that Locke should suspend such a fact on memory, and mix up together the memory which remembers with the thing remembered. To draw the line between those who treat it as capricious and notional, and those who deem it legitimate and necessary, we may suppose the following familiar illustration. Let a beggar divide his life between waking and sleep: awake, surrounded with all the tattered gear and harsh privations of poverty; asleep, dreaming himself a monarch, inhabiting a palace instead of a hovel, revelling among dainties instead of eating a crust, and reclining beneath canopies instead of pressing a pallet of straw. Let a monarch thus equally divide his time,-awake, encircled by pomp and splendour; asleep, enduring all the thick-coming fancies of squalid penury and want. We, who believe identity to be conformable to truth, believe the one to be a beggar, the other to be a monarch, still. Their imaginings could not reverse the nature and reality of things. But they who suppose it gratuitous, or confound it with any state of mind which simply apprehends it, must be perplexed to the extreme

in determining whether each be more of the beggar or of the monarch, and on whose side the advantage lies.

Suppose our minds were made up of mere passing sensations, unlinked together, or unrelated to a permanent substance of mind; these present and eccentric sensations could give no idea of personal identity. Hume says, "an object may exist and be no where; and this is not only possible, but the greatest part of beings do and must exist after this manner."* But what does this writer intend by beings? He seriously informs us," ideas and impressions." Surely it would baffle even his acuteness, and exceed his sophistry, to convince any that ideas and impressions are beings at all: they are but the particular effects or relations which beings experience. A conscious mind is an intelligible idea, far more than that of an unconscious, but a conscious idea or impression is a manifest solecism. According to this great Sceptic (and I only mean it now in a philosophical sense) there can be nothing to agree with fixed personality,-the mind is a set of ideas, those ideas are beings, those beings have no fixed reference nor centre,-personal and mental character are therefore nonentities. Not only is identity denied, but the tablet of memory is shivered, the bond of association is snapped, and the light of consciousness is extinguished! It would not be difficult to show that the Berkleian theory does not warrant the use which the Scotch philosopher makes of it: that it is most disingenuously perverted by him: but a reference to the respective authorities will amply satisfy all how feeble an antagonist he is proved in the lists with that Giant Reasoner and Amiable Sage.

There will come no help to the above assertion from the just views of the human mind. We should not hesitate to say in reply to the question, Where is it? that it is no where. For the question is but a materialistic trap to inveigle into an admission that mind is a thing of extension. The o is a question of matter. Deny the where, the extension, the material predicament, to mind. But allow all that the objector can demand or you need wish,-that mind is a related

Essays.

It

thing, to the individuated body, to the general system. admits of numerous relations, to matter, to space. What is the nature of those relations, beyond their practical working, none can divine.

Were any induction of facts necessary to confirm our impressions of identity, it might be easily pursued.

On any other principle, how could we compare our ideas and impressions? We are conscious of what now occurs as repugnant to what has occurred; this is pleasant, that is dis tasteful; one elicits complacency, the other rouses aversion. What, then, is this great comparing and distinguishing power? And what but that which is individual and durable could attach variety, agreement, dissimilitude, pleasantness, or pain to its emotions?

The intellectual economy proceeds upon this principle. Not only are comparison and contrast the principal foundations of all our judgments, but what are memory, reflection, hope, and fear, except when connected with a being of whom these are properties? except when understood as his operations? We remember, we think, for ourselves: we hope and fear for ourselves.

And as self is affined to an organised structure which is determined to a particular space, we are affected by circumstances of proximity and distance. It forms the centre, and objects influence it as they approach it or recede from it. Hence our cares, but were we the shadows of instants, having nothing in common between each idea, ceasing to be ourselves with each moment,—we might feel

"As broad and general as the casing air."

But how soon will the individual rejoin,

"But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears!"

It is worthy of notice that, if we assume our identity, they who deny it more than rival the assumption. What do they assume who take for granted that they exist, that they can