Note 12 — Chapter I

Mr. James Mill (Analysis of the Mind, vol. i. pp. 171, 172) says that consciousness and belief are the same, and that great error has arisen from calling ‘consciousness a feeling distinct from all other feelings.’ According to Locke (Essay concerning Human Understanding, book ii. chap. i., Works, vol. i. p. 89), ‘consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind.’ Brown (Philosophy of the Mind, pp. 67, 68) denies that consciousness is a faculty: and Sir W. Hamilton complains of ‘Reid's degradation of consciousness into a special faculty.’ Notes to Reid's Works, pp. 223, 297, 373. M. Cousin (Hist. de la Philosophie, II. Série, vol. i. p. 131) pronounces consciousness to be ‘phénomène complexe;’ and at p. 94, ‘la condition nécessaire de l'intelligence c'est la conscience:’ while a still later writer (Jobert's New System of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 25) declares that ‘we have the consciousness of our consciousness—this is certain.’ The statement in Alciphron, Dialogue vii. (Berkeley's Works, vol. i. pp. 505, 506) is equally unsatisfactory: and what still further perplexes the question is the existence of what is now recognised as ‘double consciousness.’ See on this extraordinary phenomenon Elliotson's Physiology, pp. 367–369, 1165; Mayo's Physiology, pp. 195, 196; Prichard's Treatise on Insanity, pp. 450, 451; Carpenter's Human Physiology, p. 379.