centralizing the concept of self, arrive at the concrete subject of experience, we may yet infer its existence. The inference is necessarily immediate, for all such terms as 'knowledge,' 'experience,' 'perception,' etc., imply the existence of a subject in their very meaning. Without it they have no significance whatever. In fact, all psychological discussion inevitably assumes the existence of an individual subject. We cannot speak simply of the existence of thoughts and feelings. There is always the implication of 'one who feels and thinks.' Knowledge and consciousness only possess meaning at all in so far as they are referred to something knowing and conscious of something else.[1] Experience implies presentation of an object to a subject, thus comprising a duality in a unity. The existence of the subject in this duality is just as much a fact as the existence of the object. The Cogito ergo sum of Descartes was one of the most conclusive inferences ever stated.
Some philosophers, following Huxley, have regarded the self as being merely the series of mental phenomena constituting the individual mind. This supposition implies the existence of the very entity which it is attempting to dispose of. For, in the first place, what is meant by the 'individual mind'? Why should the series be individual at all? What gives it its essential characteristic of unity? The fact of presentation to an individual subject is the only possible reason. Moreover, the very word 'phenomenon' implies appearance or presentation to something to what we call the subject. It is useless to state, as some have done, that even if this be so, the subject may still be merely a logical construction, for this is to lose sight of the fact that the agent which constructs can be no other than that subject which is supposed to be a logical abstraction. Finally, it should be noted that the exponents of the new scientific method continually use the word 'sense-data.' By so doing, they not only assert the existence of experience, but they also, by the very term, tacitly acknowledge that one element of experience is something which is 'given.' But if there be something given, there must be something else to which it is given.
- ↑ See also J. Ward, Art. "Psychology." Ency. Britt.
