Inconsistent internally. If the reader will recall the

discussions of the preceding chapter, he may, I

think, convince himself on this point. Take the self,

either at one time or throughout any duration, and its

contents do not seem to arrange themselves as a harmony.

Nor have we, so far, found a principle by the

application of which we are enabled to arrange them

without contradiction. (ii.) But self-consciousness, we

may be told, is a special way of intuition, or

perception, or what you will. And this experience of

both subject and object in one self, or of the identity

of the Ego through and in the opposition of itself to

Itself, or generally the self-apprehension of the self

as one and many, is at last the full answer to our whole

series of riddles. But to my mind such an answer brings

no satisfaction. For it seems liable to the objections

which proved fatal to mere feeling. Suppose, for

argument's sake, that the intuition (as you describe it)

actually exists; suppose that in this intuition, while

you keep to it, you possess a diversity without

discrepancy. This is one thing, but it is quite another

thing to possess a principle which can serve for the

understanding of reality. For how does this way of

apprehension suffice to take in a long series of events?

How again does it embrace, and transcend, and go beyond,

the relational form of discursive intelligence? The

world is surely not understood if understanding is left

out. And in what manner can your intuition satisfy the

claims of understanding? This, to my mind, forms a

wholly insuperable obstacle. For the contents of the

intuition (this many in one), if you try to reconstruct

them relationally, fall asunder forthwith. And the

attempt to find in self-consciousness an apprehension at

a level, not below, but above relations--a way of

apprehension superior to discursive thought, and

including its mere process in a higher harmony--appears

to me not successful. I am, in short, compelled to this

conclusion: even if your intuition is a fact, it is not

an understanding of the self or of the world. It is a

mere experience, and it furnishes no consistent

view about itself or about reality in general. An

experience, I suppose, can override understanding only

in one way, by including it, that is, as a subordinate

element somehow within itself. And such an experience is

a thing which seems not discoverable in self-

consciousness.

And (iii.) I am forced to urge this last objection

against the whole form of self-consciousness, as it was

described above. There does not really exist any

perception, either in which the object and the subject

are quite the same, or in which their sameness amid

difference is an object for perception. Any such

consciousness would seem to be impossible

psychologically. And, as it is almost useless for me to

try to anticipate the reader's views on this point, I

must content myself with a very brief statement. Self-

consciousness, as distinct from self-feeling, implies a

relation. It is the state where the self has become an

object that stands before the mind. This means that an

element is in opposition to the felt mass, and is

distinguished from it as a not-self. And there is no

doubt that the self, in its various meanings, can become

such a not-self. But, in whichever of its meanings we