DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE RELATION SUBJECT-OBJECT
After having separated from the consciousness that which it is not,
let us try to define what it is. This and the two following chapters
are devoted to this study.
A theory has often been maintained with regard to the consciousness;
namely, that it supposes a relation between two terms--a subject and
an object, and that it consists exactly in the feeling of this
relation. By subject is understood the something that has
consciousness; the object is the something of which we are conscious.
Every thought, we are told, implies subject and object, the
representer and the represented, the _sentiens_ and the _sensum_--the
one active, the other passive, the active acting on the passive, the
_ego_ opposed to the _non ego_.
This opinion is almost legitimised by current language. When speaking
of our states of consciousness, we generally say, "I am conscious; it
is I who have consciousness," and we attribute to our I, to our Ego,
to our personality, the rôle of subject. But this is not a peremptory
argument in favour of the above opinion; it is only a presumption,
and, closely examined, this presumption seems very weak.
Hitherto, when analysing the part of mind, we have employed
non-committal terms: we have said that sensation implied
consciousness, and not that sensation implied something which is
conscious.[23] The difference may appear too subtle, but it is not; it
consists in taking from consciousness the notion of a subject being
conscious and replacing it by the very act of consciousness.
My description applies very exactly, I think, to the facts. When we
are engaged in a sensation, or when we perceive something, a
phenomenon occurs which simply consists in having consciousness of a
thing. If to this we add the idea of the subject, which has
consciousness, we distort the event. At the very moment when it is
taking place, it is not so complicated; we complicate it by adding to
it the work of reflection. It is reflection which constructs the
notion of the subject, and it is this which afterwards introduces this
construction into the states of consciousness; in this way the state
of consciousness, by receiving this notion of subject, acquires a
character of duality it did not previously possess. There are, in
short, two separate acts of consciousness, and one is made the subject
of the other. "Primitively," says Rabier, "there is neither
representative nor represented; there are sensations, representations,
facts of consciousness, and that is all. Nothing is more exact, in my
opinion, than this view of Condillac's:--that primitively, the
inanimate statue is entirely the sensation that it feels. To itself it
is all odour and all savour; it is nothing more, and this sensation
includes no duality for the consciousness. It is of an absolute
simplicity."
Two arguments may be advanced in favour of this opinion. The first is
one of logic. We have divided all knowledge into two groups--objects
of cognition, and acts of cognition. What is the subject of cognition?
Does it form a new group? By no means; it forms part of the first
group, of the object group; for it is something to be known.
Our second argument is one of fact. It consists in remembering that
which in practice we understand by the subject of cognition; or
rather, metaphorically we represent this subject to ourselves as an
organ--the eye that sees or the hand that touches--and we represent to
ourselves the relation subject-object in the shape of a material
relation between two distinct bodies which are separated by an
interval and between which some action is produced which unites them.
Or else, confusing the subject and the Ego, which are nevertheless two
different notions, we place the Ego in the consciousness of the
muscular effort struggling against something which resists. Or,
finally and still more frequently, we represent the subject to
ourselves by confusing it with our own personality; it is a part of
our biography, our name, our profession, our social status, our body,
our past life foreshortened, our character, or, in a word, our civil
personality, which becomes the subject of the relation subject-object.
We artificially endow this personality with the faculty of having
consciousness; and it results from this that the entity consciousness,
so difficult to define and to imagine, profits by all this factitious
addition and becomes a person, visible and even very large, in flesh
and bone, distinct from the object of cognition, and capable of living
a separate life.
It is not difficult to explain that all this clearness in the
representation of ideas is acquired by a falsification of the facts.
So sensorial a representation of consciousness is very unfaithful;
for our biography does not represent what we have called acts of
consciousness, but a large slice of our past experience--that is to
say, a synthesis of bygone sensations and images, a synthesis of
objects of consciousness; therefore a complete confusion between the
acts of consciousness and their objects. The formation of the
personality seems to me to have, above all, a legal and social
importance.[24] It is a peculiar grouping of states of consciousness
imposed by our relations with other individuals. But, metaphysically,
the subject thus understood is not distinguished from the object, and
there is nothing to add to our distinction between the object and the
act of consciousness.
Those who defend the existence of the subject point out that this
subject properly constitutes the Ego, and that the distinction of the
subject and the object corresponds to the distinction of the Ego and
non-Ego, and furnishes the separation between the physical and the
moral so long sought.
It is evidently very enticing to make of the Ego thus a primitive
notion of the consciousness; but this view of the Ego as opposed to
the non-Ego in no way corresponds to that of the mental and the
physical. The notion of the Ego is much larger, much more extensible,
than that of the mental; it is as encroaching as human pride, it
grasps in its conquering talons all that belongs to us; for we do not,
in life, make any great difference between what is _we_ and what is
_ours_--an insult to our dog, our dwelling, or our work wounds us as
much as an insult to ourselves. The possessive pronoun expresses both
possession and possessor. In fact, we consider our body as being
ourselves.
Here, then, are numbers of material things introducing themselves into
the category of mental things. If we wished to expel them and to
reduce the domain of the Ego to the domain of the mental, we could
only do so if we already possessed the criterion of what is
essentially mental. The notion of the Ego cannot therefore supply us
with this criterion.
Another opinion consists in making of the subject a spiritual
substance, of which the consciousness becomes a faculty. By substance
is understood an entity which possesses the two following principal
characteristics, unity and identity, this latter merging into unity,
for it is nothing else but the persistence of unity through the course
of time. Certain philosophers have asserted that through intuition we
can all establish that we are a spiritual substance. I am compelled to
reject this idea, because I think the expression _spiritual substance_
has no meaning; nothing but the sonorous value of six syllables. It
has also been supposed, that there exists a corporeal substance hidden
under the sensations, in which are implanted the qualities of bodies,
as the various organs of a flower are in its calyx. I will return
later to this conception of a material substance. That of a spiritual
substance cannot be defended, and the chief and fatal argument I urge
against it is, that we cannot represent it to our minds, we cannot
think it, and we cannot see in these words "spiritual substance" any
intelligible idea; for that which is mental is limited to "that which
is of the consciousness." So soon as we endeavour to go beyond the
fact of having consciousness to imagine a particular state which must
be mental, one of two things happen; either we only grasp the void, or
else we construct a material and persistent object in which we
recognise psychical attributes. These are two conclusions which ought
to be rejected.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 23: This second method of expression, which I consider
inexact, is constantly found in DESCARTES. Different philosophers have
explicitly admitted that every act of cognition implies a relation
subject-object. This is one of the corner-stones of the neo-criticism
of RENOUVIER. He asserts that all representation is double-faced, and
that what is known to us presents itself in the character of both
representative and represented. He follows this up by describing
separately the phenomena and laws of the representative and of the
represented respectively.]
[Footnote 24: The preceding ten lines in the text I wrote after
reading a recent article of WILLIAM JAMES, who wishes to show that the
consciousness does not exist, but results simply from the relation or
the opposition raised between one part of our experience (the actual
experience, for instance, in the example of the perception of an
object) and another part, the remembrance of our person. But the
argument of JAMES goes too far; he is right in contesting the relation
subject-object, but not in contesting the existence of the
consciousness (W. JAMES: "Does consciousness exist?" in _J. of
Philosophy, &c._, Sept. 1904).]