THEORY OF KNOWING.
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PROP. I.————
not our own bodies, in so far as these are, or may be made, objects of sense;[1] and not being an object of sensible, but only of intellectual experience, and our attention being naturally held captive by the things of sense, it is not surprising that these latter should cause us to attend but slightly to ourselves in our ordinary moods, and in the common transactions of life. Thus the slight degree of notice which we usually take of ourselves is sufficiently explained,—without its being necessary to resort to the hypothesis that the oversight is ever total,—by means of these two circumstances—the operation of the law of familiarity, and the fact that the ego is no object of sensible experience.
A theory of self-consciousness at variance with Prop. I. refuted.8. A theory of self-consciousness, opposed to the doctrine advanced in our first proposition, has been sometimes advocated. It reduces this operation to a species of reminiscence: it affirms that we are first cognisant of various sensible impressions, and are not conscious of ourselves until we reflect upon them afterwards. But this doctrine involves a contradiction; for it supposes us to recollect certain impressions to have been ours, after they have been experienced, which we did not know to be ours when they were experienced. A man cannot remember what never happened. If the impressions- ↑ That the ego cannot be known to be material, is proved in its proper place. (See Proposition VIII.)
