evidence, and the facts thus discovered are facts of con sciousness. They fall not under cognizance of the senses: nevertheless they are facts, and facts of the utmost certainty. What can be more sure than to feel pleasure or pain, to feel ones own existence, to feel that we think or that we have thought of any thing; that we will, or that we have willed any thing; that we believe one thing, or doubt about another, &c. But since these two classes of facts are equally certain to the human being, the history of man is two fold. It is in vain that the naturalists would base it on facts cognizable by the senses alone, and the philosophers on facts of consciousness; the two classes cannot be confounded. Consciousness feels itself, but does not feel the sensations: the senses perceive nothing but external objects and impressions, and can neither see, or hear, or touch what is evident to consciousness. Senses and consciousness have nothing in common, except to be equally in connection with the intelligent principle, which is individual in its nature, and to which the others administer. If we have not yet succeeded in reducing philosophy to a science of certainty, it is because its truths have not been understood. Hitherto the two classes of facts have been confounded, as have the two corresponding sciences. The naturalists have gone astray in treating the facts of consciousness as sensible facts: the philosopher has been equally mistaken in admitting this method, and affecting to refer to his consciousness, to decide on sensible facts. Neither of these sciences ought to borrow from, or concede any thing to the other: it is high time that each should know his proper boundaries: and if the physiologist or the naturalist will absolutely treat on the moral character of man, they must abandon all investigations that depend on the senses, throw away their scalpels and microscopes, and like the philosophers, give themselves up to meditation in the absence of all outward impressions, and become solely psychologists." Thus spake the metaphysicians of the new school: and the ideologists who were enrolled under the banners of Locke and Cordillac, by referring all our ideas to the impressions made upon our senses, now found themselves embarrassed. They had not foreseen this important objection; and so soon as the psychologists advanced under cover of consciousness, the existence of a mover independent of all animal substance-while they protested that they felt the existence and operation of this mover-that they saw it act freely and originally without any other relation to the external senses than that of a master over his servantsthe ideologists were afraid to contradict it openly. But when the psycologists came forward, and in the name of their Sybill pronunced anathemas against all those who doubted of these truths-when they expressed a contempt for all those whose intellects were so gross as to refuse their assent to the evidence of a principle superior in wisdom and elevation to bodily senses composed of matter, vile, and subject even to putrefaction-the ideologists who had admitted this simple principle without doubting but they could amalgamate it with their own theory, remained unable to reply; with one only exception. We are now at this point; the Ideologists are silent, or advance no refutation; and the physicians who cultivated physiology reclaim for themselves by halfway complaints, the science of intellect which has been ravished from them, and appropriated to themselves by the psychologists, who had never condescended to study the organs or the functions of the bodily system. As it is solely on the evidence of consciousness that the psychologists rely, I proceed to examine what they understand by that word; and whether it be possible to erect a real science on this word alone as the basis of it. Sec. 2. Of the notions entertained by the psychologists of consciousness are animals endowed with it? By consciousness they understand that faculty which man possesses, of observing himself: not of observing external bodies which he cannot do but by means of the senses; but of observing his thoughts; that he thinks of this or that ; that he wills or that he does not will; or that he does or does not will this or that. This is what I have denominated in my treatise on physiology by the expression to reflect upon one's self. This has no termination; for in observing, I feel, I perceive, I am sensible that I observe; and so on. This kind of intercranial innervation, distinguishes us among animals, and places us at the head of them, by the perfection to which it can be carried in our species. We cannot admit its existence in any living being unless he can make us understand that he possesses it, either by his actions or his discourse. As the fœtus, the embryo, the new I believe he alludes to Destut Tracy, the friend of Cabanis; the author of the Ideology.—Transl. born infant, and all the animals of a lower class, exhibit no proof of possessing it as they have no language, and therefore cannot say to us, "I feel that I feel;" nor can they understand us when we employ this formula-we therefore do not hesitate to decide that they do not possess the faculty which it expresses. In observing the infant and the progress of his growth, we seize upon that moment when he deliberates between several impressions; it is from that moment we may conclude that he feels that he feels, and that he has felt, that is to say, the phenomena of consciousness then manifest themselves in him. If on the other hand we apply our observation to many other animals, we observe the same phenomena. In truth, we see that animals do not confound themselves with any other body in nature: they receive many impressions: they hesitate before they act and they act without any proof to us that they are determined, except by some one of their actual and present impressions. The case is the same when they obey the impulse of a simple recollection; that is, they feel at present, that they have felt heretofore impressions different from what they feel at the present moment by means of their senses. For instance, a well-educated hunting dog, who formerly devoured the game, now brings it without hesitation to his master; he seems even to applaud himself for not having given way to his appetite. Such is another dog, who although tempted by caresses, and by food set before him, refuses to stay with the person tempting him, and returns to a great distance to rejoin his master whom he has not seen for some days, &c. Such are wolves, wild dogs, and animals of prey, who though pressed by hunger, but foreseeing from the presence of the enemy that there is not time to satisfy their hunger with security, hide in some place the animal they have seized, after taking the precaution of killing it, and then run to the defence of themselves or their young. Such are also dogs and foxes which hunt in company, one of which pursues the game, while the other waits for it at its form, to which it never fails to come back. A cat weary of always having her young carried away, determined to put them down in a granary, When the young ones of this last deportation began to grow up, and her milk did not suffice for their nourishment, she thought of transporting them to the kitchen; the door was shut; Jee. 358 she cried out to get it opened. The door being opened, she regained the stairs leading to the granary for the purpose of finding her young, but they being wild had run away at the noise of opening the kitchen door. This door was shut against the cat, who called again, and had the door again opened. The want of success in this first trial served her for a lesson she entered a few paces, carressed the cook, and put herself in a posture to go out again and regain the staircase, but turning round every now and then to excite the curiosity of the woman and induce her to follow that she might understand the cat's proceedings. The cat succeeded. The cook surprised at this management, followed the uneasy mother, and found upon the stairs of the granary, the young ones who again took flight. The cook now comprehending the wishes of the old cat, left open the door of the kitchen, and seemed to pay no attention to what was going forward. The cat took advantage of the opportunity, and by calling her kittens to her, introduced them at length into the kitchen. All these actions and a thousand others, which we could add to them, incontestably prove that animals whose organization approaches ours to a certain point, have the faculty of feeling that they feel or perceive, and that they have felt or perceived different impressions; and also they have the faculty of induction, (or deducing conclusions from a comparison of ideas.) At length the infant gets hold of the instrument, language: he gets at it by the gradual progress of cerebral developement: he arrives at this point by leaving behind him the mere animal life, at whose level he was a short time ago it is then he understands the meaning of I feel that I feel, or that he pronounces it himself. It is thus that the consciousness belonging to man, developed with the slow and successive progress of the encephalon, finishes by płacing men far above all other animals. Having now settled the characters of this faculty, let us see how the psychologists wish to use it as the base of a particular science. Sec. 3. If it be possible to make a science out of the mere phenomena of consciousness? Sources of error among the psychologists in relation to it. *The translator could add fifty of his own knowledge, demonstrative of thought and reasoning in animals, Transl. They say we must listen to the language of consciousness; and for that purpose, collect ourselves in silence and obscurity, that no sense may be employed: we must abstract ourselves from every body in nature, in short we must listen to ourselves alone, and think. They affirm seriously that when we have been for a long time exercised in this kind of reverie, we discover an immense perspective, a new world, crowded with facts of the most admirable kind, and connected by natural relations, of which the laws may be discovered; facts morcover, that have nothing in common with those presented by the senses; facts whose assiduous contemplation, elevates the psychologist far above his fellow men, without excepting the naturalists and the physiologists, who are occupied about ideas furnished by the senses. Let us then examine what they can find in their consciousness by proceeding in this mode of research. Independent of the faculty of feeling that we feel, they find two other sorts of things: but let us first speak of what is originally established in consciousness, and is surely found there. The psychologists are sure to meet there, all the visceral sensations that are in correspondence with the brain; not merely hunger, thirst, venereal desires, the sensations of cold, heat, positive pain and pleasure, referred to some part of the system, but they will have to remark a crowd of other ⚫ sensations vague, indeterminate, sometimes producing sadness, sometimes joy, sometimes action, sometimes rest; hope at one time, at another despair even to dread of existence. They will find all these sensations and emotions without any doubt in their minds concerning the source. from whence they proceed; for the physiologists or rather the physicians who have paid most attention to the phenomena of visceral irritation, and the various degrees of insanity and whom they never consult, can alone give them information on this point. If they take all these internal sensations for revelations of the divinity, whom they call consciousness, they may greatly increase their riches of this description, by following the oriental custom of taking a dose of opium combined with aromatics. They will then find themselves like Mahomet, in connection with all that is most extraordinary in the empyreal heavens. But let us pass on to the second class of objects, which the psycho |