the attention of psychologists was first distinctly directed to the only known instance in which a notion and a reality are identical and coincident—in which a thought is the same as a thing.
But, by means of the dogma, cogito ergo sum, was it not the design of Descartes to prove his own existence? Take our word for it, no such miserable intention ever entered into his head. His great object, in the first place, was emphatically to signalize the very singular and altogether anomalous phenomenon we have spoken of, namely, the identity in man of thought and reality, and then to found upon this point as on a rock which no conceivable scepticism could shake; and, in the second place, he attempted to point out the genesis of the ego, in so far as it admitted of logical exposition. Cogito ergo sum—I am conscious, therefore I am—that is—consciousness—or the notion of "I," takes place in a particular Being—and the reality of "I" is the immediate result. The ergo here does not denote a mere logical inference from the fact of consciousness, but it points to a genetic or creative power in that act.
"Consciousness created you—that is to say, you created yourself—did you?"—we may here imagine an opponent of Descartes to interpose.
"No," replies Descartes; "I did not create myself, in so far as my mere existence is concerned. But, in so far as I am an ego, or an existence as a self, I certainly did create myself. By becoming conscious, I, in one sense, actually created myself."
"But," says the other, "must you not have existed before you could become conscious, and in order to become conscious."
"Certainly," answers Descartes, "some sort of being must have existed before my consciousness, but it was only after consciousness that that being became I."
"Do you then cease to be whenever you cease to be conscious?"
To this question Descartes answers both yes and no. "As an existing being; says he, "fulfilling many purposes of creation, I certainly do not cease to exist when I cease to be conscious; but as an 'I' (ego), I certainly am no more the moment consciousness leaves me. Consciousness made me from a thing, a self; that is, it lifted me up from existing merely for others, and taught me to exist also for myself. My being as an ego depends upon, and results from my consciousness, and therefore, as soon as my consciousness is taken away, my existence as an ego or self vanishes. The being heretofore called 'I' still exists, but not as 'I.' It lives only for others—not for itself—not as a self at all, either in thought or in deed."
Chapter V.
But though we have seen that consciousness is the genesis or origin of the ego, and that without the former the latter has no existence, we have yet to throw somewhat more light on consciousness itself, and the circumstances in which it arises.
Let thyself float back, oh reader! as far as thou canst in obscure memory into thy golden days of infancy, when the light of thy young life, rising out of unknown depths, scattered away death from before its path, beyond the very limits of thought; even as the sun beats off the darkness of night into regions lying out of the visible boundaries of space. In those days thy light was single and without reflection. Thou wert one with nature, and, blending with her bosom, thou didst drink in inspiration from her thousand breasts. Thy consciousness was faint in the extreme; for as yet thou hadst but slightly awakened to thyself; and thy sensations and desires were nearly all-absorbing. Carry thyself back still farther into days yet more "dark with excess of light," and thou shalt behold, through the visionary mists, an earlier time, when thy consciousness was altogether null—a time when the discrimination of thy sensations into subject and object, which seems so ordinary and inevitable a process to thee now, had not taken place, but when thyself and nature were enveloped and fused together in a glowing and indiscriminate synthesis. In these days thy state was indeed blessed, but it was the blessedness of bondage. The earth flattered thee, and the smiling heavens flattered
