ness, not merely of the phenomena of mind, but of a
personal self as passively or actively related to the phenomena_. We are
conscious not merely of the act of volition, but of a self, a power,
producing the volition. We are conscious not merely of feeling, but of a
being who is the subject of the feeling. We are conscious not simply of
thought, but of a real entity that thinks. "It is clearly a flat
contradiction to maintain that I am not immediately conscious of myself,
but only of my sensations or volitions. Who, then, is that _I_ that is
conscious, and how can I be conscious of such states as _mine?_"[243]

[Footnote 243: Mansel, "Prolegomena Logica," p. 122, and note E, p.
281.]

The testimony of consciousness, then, is indubitable that we have a
direct, immediate cognition of _self_--I know myself as a distinctly
existing being. This permanent self, to which I refer the earlier and
later stages of consciousness, the past as well as the present feeling,
and which I know abides the same under all phenomenal changes,
constitutes my personal identity. It is this abiding self which unites
the past and the present, and, from the present stretches onward to the
future. We know self immediately, as existing, as in active operation,
and as having permanence--or, in other words, as a "_substance_." This
one immediately presented substance, myself, may be regarded as
furnishing a positive basis for that other notion of substance, which is
representatively thought, as the subject of all sensible qualities.

3. We may now inquire what is the testimony of consciousness as to the
existence of the extra-mental world? Are we conscious of perceiving
external objects immediately and in themselves, or only mediately
through some vicarious image or representative idea to which we
fictitiously ascribe an objective reality?

The answer of common sense is that we are immediately conscious, in
perception, of an _ego_ and a _non-ego_ known together, and known in
contrast to each other; we are conscious of a perceiving subject, and of
an external reality, as the object perceived.[244] To state this
doctrine of natural realism still more explicitly we add, that we are
conscious of the immediate perception of certain essential attributes of
matter objectively existing. Of these primary qualities, which are
immediately perceived as real and objectively existing, we mention
_extension_ in space and _resistance_ to muscular effort, with which