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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. IX.————
nisant of. Whatever makes a thing to be what it is, is properly called its essence. Self-consciousness, therefore, is the essence of the mind, because it is in virtue of self-consciousness that the mind is the mind—that a man is himself. Deprive him of this characteristic, this fundamental attribute, and he ceases to be an intelligence. He loses his essence. Restore this, and his intelligent character returns. Perhaps these remarks may assist in restoring to the word "essence" its right signification, and in dissipating the psychological hallucination, that the essence of the mind is inconceivable.
This proposition reduces the ego per se to a contradiction.13. It is obvious that this proposition reduces the ego per se to a contradiction—a thing not to be known on any terms by any intelligence—just as Proposition IV. reduced matter per se to the condition of a contradiction. But there is this difference between the two contradictories, that the ego carries within itself the power by which the contradiction may be overcome, and itself redeemed into the region of the cogitable, out of the region of the Contradictory. It has a power of self-determination, which is no other than the Will. Matter per se, on the other hand, has to look to the ego for the elimination of the contradiction by which it is spell bound. This is a momentous difference, and gives the contradictory ego per se an infinite superiority over the contradictory material universe per se