What order, what firm connexion, what comprehensive supervision does it introduce into the whole fabric of my knowledge! Consciousness is here no longer that stranger in Nature, whose connexion with existence is so incomprehensible; it is native to it, and indeed one of its necessary manifestations. Nature rises gradually in the fixed series of her productions. In rude matter she is a simple existence; in organized matter she returns within herself to internal activity; in the plant, to produce form; in the animal, motion;—in man, as her highest masterpiece, she turns inwards that she may perceive and contemplate herself; in him she, as it were, doubles herself, and, from being mere existence, becomes existence and consciousness in one.
How I am and must be conscious of my own being and of its determinations, is, in this connexion, easily perceived. My being and my knowledge have one common foundation,—my own nature. The Living being within me, even because it is mine, is conscious of itself. Quite as conceivable is my consciousness of corporeal objects existing beyond myself. The powers in whose manifestation my personality consists,—the formative—the self-moving—the thinking powers,—are not these same powers as they exist in Nature at large, but only a certain definite portion of them; and that they are but such a portion, is because there are so many other existences beyond me. From the former, I can infer the latter; from the limitation, the power which limits. Because I myself am not this or that, which yet belongs to the connected system of existence, it must exist beyond me;—thus reasons the thinking principle within me. Of my own limitation, I am immediately conscious, because it is a part of myself, and only by reason of it do I possess an actual
