SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

My contention in this chapter will be that, given the protoplasm of the sign-making faculty so far organized as to have reached the denotative stage; and given also the protoplasm of judgment so far organized as to have reached the stage of stating a truth, without the mind being yet sufficiently developed to be conscious of itself as an object of thought, and therefore not yet able to state to itself a truth as true; by a confluence of these two protoplasmic elements an act of fertilization is performed, such that the subsequent processes of mental organization proceed apace, and soon reach the stage of differentiation between subject and object.

And here, to avoid misapprehension, I may as well make it clear at the outset that in all which is to follow I am in no way concerned with the philosophy of this change, but only with its history. On the side of its philosophy no one can have a deeper respect for the problem of self-consciousness than I have; for no one can be more profoundly convinced than I am that the problem on this side does not admit of solution. In other words, so far as this aspect of the matter is concerned, I am in complete agreement with the most advanced idealist; and hold that in the datum of self-consciousness we each of us possess, not merely our only ultimate knowledge, or that which only is “real in its own right,” but likewise the mode of existence which alone the human mind is capable of conceiving as existence, and therefore the conditio sine qu non to the possibility of an external world. With this aspect of the question, however, I am in no way concerned. Just as the functions of an embryologist are confined to tracing the mere history of developmental changes of living structure, and just as he is thus as far as ever from throwing any light upon the deeper questions of the how and the why of life; so in seeking to indicate the steps whereby self-consciousness has arisen from the lower stages of mental structure, I am as far as any one can be from throwing light upon the intrinsic nature of that the probable genesis of which I am endeavouring to trace. It is no less true to-day than it was in the time of Soloman, that “as thou knowest not how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit.”

If we are agreed that it is only in man that self-consciousness is to be found at all, it follows that only to man can we look for any facts bearing upon the question of its development. And inasmuch as it is only during the first years of infancy that a normal human being is destitute of self-consciousness, the statement just made implies that only in infant psychology need we seek for the facts of which we are in search. Further, as I maintain that self-consciousness arises out of an admixture of the protoplasm of judgment with the protoplasm of sign-making (according to the signification of these terms as already explained), I have now to make good this opinion upon the basis of facts drawn from the study of infant psychology.

Nevertheless, before I proceed to the heart of the subject, I think it will be convenient to consider those faculties of mind which, occurring both in the infant and in the animal, in the former case precede the advent of self-consciousness, and, according to my view, prepare the way for it.

It will, I suppose, on all hands be admitted that self-consciousness consists in paying the same kind of attention to internal or psychical processes as is habitually paid to external or physical processes—a bringing to bear upon subjective phenomena the same powers of perception as are brought to bear upon the objective. The degrees in which such attention may be yielded are, of course, as various in the one case as in the other; but this does not affect my psychological definition of self-consciousness.

Again, I suppose it will be further admitted that in the mind of animals and in the mind of infants there is a world of images standing as signs of outward objects; and that the only reason why these images are not attended to unless called up by the sensuous associations supplied by their corresponding objects, is because the mind is not yet able to leave the ground of such association, so as to move through the higher and more tenuous medium of introspective thought.[112] Nevertheless, this image world assuredly displays an internal activity which is not wholly dependent on sensuous associations supplied from without. That is to say, one image suggests another, this another, and so on—although, as I have just conceded, this cannot be due to successive acts of inward attention, or of the self-conscious contemplation of images known as such. Nevertheless, that an internal—though unintentional—play of ideation takes place in the minds of brutes, without the necessity of immediate associations supplied from present objects of sense, admits of being amply proved from the phenomena of dreaming, hallucination, home-sickness, pining for absent friends, &c., which, as I have fully shown in my previous work, can only be explained by recognizing such a play of inward ideation.[113] Now, I hold it of importance to note that such an internal play of ideation is thus possible even in the absence of self-consciousness, because many writers have assumed, without any justification, that unless ideas are intentionally contemplated as such, they must be wholly dependent for their occurrence upon associations supplied by present objects of sense. Of course I do not doubt that an agent who is capable of intentionally making one idea stand as the object of another, is likewise capable of going very much further than a brute in the way of causing one idea to start from another irrespective of immediate stimulation from without. My point here is merely to remark that the ideation of brutes is not wholly dependent on such stimulation; but is capable, in a certain humble degree, of forming independent chains of its own.

The next thing which I desire to be remembered in connection with the ideation of brutes is, that it is not restricted to the mere reproduction in memory of particular objects of sensuous impressions; but, as we have so fully seen in Chapter III., admits of undergoing that amount of mental elaboration which belongs to what I have termed recepts.

Furthermore, the foundations of self-consciousness are largely laid in the fact that an organism is one connected whole; all the parts are mutually related in the unity of individual sensibility. Every stimulus supplied from without, every movement originating from within, carries with it the character of belonging to that which feels and moves. Hence a brute, like a young child, has learnt to distinguish its own members, and likewise its whole body, from all other objects; it knows how to avoid sources of pain, how to seek those of pleasure; and it also knows that particular movements follow from particular volitions, while in connection with such movements it constantly experiences the same muscular sensations. Of course such knowledge and such experience all belong to the receptual order; but this does not hinder that they play a most important part in laying the foundations of a consciousness of individuality.[114]

Lastly, and I believe of still more importance in the present connection than any of the above-named antecedents, a large proportional number of the recepts of a brute have reference, not to objects of sense, or even to muscular sensations, but to the mental states of other animals. That is to say, the logic of recepts, even in brutes, is sufficient to enable the mind to establish true analogies between its own states (although these are not yet the objects of separate attention, or of what may be termed subjective knowledge), and the corresponding states of other minds. I need not dwell upon this point, because I take it to be a matter of general observation that animals habitually and accurately interpret the mental states of other animals, while they also well know that other animals are able similarly to interpret theirs—as is best proved by their practising the arts of cunning, concealment, hypocrisy, &c.[115] From which considerations we reach the general conclusion, that intelligent animals recognize a world of ejects as well as a world of objects: mental existence is known to them ejectively, though, as may be allowed, never thought upon subjectively.[116]

It is of importance further to observe that at this stage of mental evolution the individual—whether an animal or an infant—so far realizes its own individuality as to be informed by the logic of recepts that it is one of a kind. I do not mean that at this stage the individual realizes its own or any other individuality as such; but merely that it recognizes the fact of its being one among a number of similar though distinct forms of life. Alike in conflict, rivalry, sense of liability to punishment or vengeance, &c., the truth is continually being borne in upon the mind of an animal that it is a separate individuality; and this though it be conceded that the animal is never able, even in the most shadowy manner, to think about itself as such. In this way there arises a sort of “outward self-consciousness,” which differs from true or inward self-consciousness only in the absence of any attention being directed upon the inward mental states as such. This outward self-consciousness is known to us all, even in adult life—it being but comparatively seldom that we pause in our daily activities to contemplate the mental processes of which these activities are the expression.

Now, if these things are so, we encounter the necessity of drawing the same distinction in our analysis of self-consciousness, as we have had to draw in our previous analyses of all the other faculties of mind: there is a self-consciousness that is receptual, and a self-consciousness that is conceptual. No doubt it is to the latter kind of self-consciousness alone that the term is strictly applicable, just as it is to conceptual naming or to conceptual predicating alone that the word “judgment” is strictly applicable. Nevertheless, here, as before, we must not ignore an important territory of mind only because it has hitherto remained uncharted.[117] Receptual or outward self-consciousness, then, is the practical recognition of self as an active and a feeling agent; while conceptual or inward self-consciousness is the introspective recognition of self as an object of knowledge, and, therefore, as a subject. Hence, the one form of self-consciousness differs from the other in that it is only objective and never subjective.[118]

I take it, then, as established that true or conceptual self-consciousness consists in paying the same kind of attention to inward psychical processes as is habitually paid to outward physical processes; that in the mind of animals and infants there is a world of images standing as signs of outward objects, although we may concede that for the most part they only admit of being revived by sensuous association; that at this stage of mental evolution the logic of recepts comprises an ejective as well as an objective world; and that here we also have the recognition of individuality, so far as this is dependent on what has been termed an outward self-consciousness, or the consciousness of self as a feeling and an active agent, without the consciousness of self as an object of thought, and, therefore, as a subject.

Such being the mental conditions precedent to the rise of true self-consciousness, we may next turn to the growing child for evidence of subsequent stages in the gradual evolution of this faculty. All observers are agreed that for a considerable time after a child is able to use words as expressive of ideas, there is no vestige of true self-consciousness. But, to begin our survey before this period, at a year old even its own organism is not known to the child as part of the self, or, more correctly, as anything specially related to feelings. Professor Preyer observed that his boy, when more than a year old, bit his own arm just as though it had been a foreign object; and thus may be said to have shown even less consciousness of a limb as belonging to “self,” than did Buffon’s parrot, which would first ask itself for its own claw, and then comply with the request by placing the claw in its own beak—in the same way as it would give the claw to any one else who asked for it in the same words.

Later on, when the outward self-consciousness already explained has begun to be developed, we find that the child, like the animal, has learnt to associate its own organism with its own mental states, in such wise that it recognizes its body as belonging in a peculiar manner to the self, so far as the self is recognizable by the logic of recepts. This is the stage that we meet with in animals. Next the child begins to talk, and, as we might expect, this first translation of the logic of recepts reveals the fact that as yet there is no inward self-consciousness, but only outward: as yet the child has paid no attention to his own mental states, further than to feel that he feels them; and in the result we find that the child speaks to himself as an object, i.e. by his proper name or in the third person. That is to say, “the child does not as yet set himself in opposition to all outer objects, including all other persons, but regards himself as one among many objects.”[119] The change of a child’s phraseology from speaking of self as an object to speaking of self as a subject does not take place—or but rarely so—till the third year. When it has taken place we have definite evidence of true self-consciousness, though still in a rudimentary stage. And it is doubtful whether this change would take place even at so early an age as the third year, were it not promoted by the “social environment.” For, as Mr. Sully observes, “the relation of self and not self, including that between the I and the You, is continually being pressed on the child’s attention by the language of others.”[120] But, taking this great change during the time of life when it is actually observed to be in progress, let us endeavour to trace the phases of its development.

It will no doubt be on all hands freely conceded, that at least up to the time when a child begins to speak it has no beginning of any true or introspective consciousness of self; and it will further be conceded that when this consciousness begins to dawn, the use of language by a child may be taken as a fair exponent of all its subsequent progress. Now we have already seen that, long before any words are used indicative of even a dawning consciousness of self as self, the child has already advanced so far in its use of language as to frame implicit propositions. But lest it should be thought that my judgment in this matter is biased by the exigencies of my argument, I may again quote Mr. Sully as at once an impartial witness and a highly competent authority on matters of purely psychological doctrine.

“When a child of eighteen months on seeing a dog exclaims ‘Bow-wow,’ or on taking his food exclaims ‘Ot’ (Hot), or on letting fall his toy says ‘Dow’ (Down), he may be said to be implicitly framing a judgment: ‘That is a dog,’ ‘This milk is hot,’ ‘My plaything is down.’ The first explicit judgments are concerned with individual objects. The child notes something unexpected or surprising in an object, and expresses the result of his observation in a judgment. Thus, for example, the boy more than once referred to, whom we will call C., was first observed to form a distinct judgment when nineteen months old, by saying ‘Dit ki’ (Sister is crying). These first judgments have to do mainly with the child’s food, or other things of prime importance to him. Thus, among the earliest attempts at combining words in propositions made by C. already referred to, were the following: ‘Ka in milk,’ (Something nasty in milk); ‘Milk dare now’ (There is still some more milk in the cup). Towards the end of the second year quite a number of judgments is given out having to do with the peculiarities of objects which surprise or impress the mind, their altered position in space, &c. Among these may be instanced the following: ‘Dat a big bow-wow’ (That is a large dog); ‘Dit naughty’ (Sister is naughty); ‘Dit dow ga’ (sister is down on the grass). As the observing powers grow, and the child’s interest in things widens, the number of his judgments increases. And as his powers of detaching relations and of uttering and combining words develop, he ventures on more elaborate statements, e.g. ‘Mama naughty say dat.’”[121]

Were it necessary, I could confirm all these statements from my own notes on the development of children’s intelligence; but I prefer, for the reason already given, to quote such facts from an impartial witness. For I conceive that they are facts of the highest importance in relation to our present subject, as I shall immediately proceed to show.

We have now before us unquestionable evidence that in the growing child there is a power, not only of forming, but of expressing a pre-conceptual judgment, long before there is any evidence of the child presenting the faintest rudiment of internal, conceptual, or true self-consciousness. In other words, it must be admitted that long before a human mind is sufficiently developed to perceive relations as related, or to state a truth as true, it is able to perceive relations and to state a truth: the logic of recepts is here concerned with those higher receptual judgments which I have called pre-conceptual, and is able to express such judgments in verbal signs without the intervention of true (i.e. introspective) self-consciousness. It will be remembered that I have coined these various terms in order to acknowledge the possible objection that there can be no true judgments without true self-consciousness. But I do not care what terms are employed whereby to designate the different and successive phases of development which I am now endeavouring to display. All that I desire to make clear is that here we unquestionably have to do with a growth, or with a continuous advance in degree as distinguished from a difference of kind.

First, then, let it be observed that in these rudimentary judgments we already have a considerable advance upon those which we have considered as occurring in animals. For in a child between the second and third years we have these rudimentary judgments, not only formed by the logic of recepts, but expressed by a logic of pre-concepts in a manner which is indistinguishable from predication, except by the absence of self-consciousness. “Dit dow ga” is a proposition in every respect, save in the absence of the copula; which, as I have previously shown, is a matter of no psychological moment. The child here perceives a certain fact, and states the perception in words, in order to communicate information of the fact to other minds—just as an animal, under similar circumstances, will use a gesture or a vocal sign; but the child is no more able than the animal designedly to make to its own mind the statement which it makes to another. Nevertheless, as the child has now at its disposal a much more efficient system of sign-making than has the animal, and moreover enjoys the double advantage of inheriting a strong propensity to communicate perceptions by signs, and of being surrounded by the medium of speech; we can scarcely wonder that its practical judgments (although still unattended by self-consciousness) should be more habitually expressed by signs than are the practical judgments of animals. Nor need we wonder, in view of the same considerations, that the predicative phrases as used by a child at this age show the great advance upon similar phrases as used by a parrot, in that subjects and predicates are no longer bound together in particular phrases—or, to revert to a previous simile, are no longer stereotyped in such particular phrases, but admit of being used as movable types, in order to construct, by different combinations, a variety of different phrases. To a talking bird a phrase, as we have seen, is no more in point of signification than a single word; while to the child, at the stage which we are considering, it is very much more than this: it is the separately constructed vehicle for the conveyance of a particular meaning, which may never have been conveyed by that or by any other phrase before. But while we thus attach due importance to so great an advance towards the faculty of true predication, we must notice, on the one hand, that as yet it is not true predication in the sense of being the expression of a true or conceptual judgment; and, on the other hand, we must notice that the power of thus using words as movable types does not deserve to be regarded as any wonderful or unaccountable advance in the faculty of sign-making, when we pay due regard to the several considerations above stated. The really important point to notice is that, notwithstanding this great advance towards the faculty of predication, this faculty has not yet been reached: the propositions which are made are still unattended by self-consciousness: they are not conceptual, but pre-conceptual.

Given, then, this stage of mental evolution, and what follows? Be it remembered I am not endeavouring to solve the impossible problem as to the intrinsic nature of self-consciousness, or how it is that such a thing is possible. I am merely accepting its existence (and therefore its possibility) as a fact; and upon the basis of this fact I shall now endeavour to show how, in my opinion, self-consciousness may be seen to follow upon the stage of mental evolution which we have here reached.

The child, like the animal, is supplied by its logic of recepts with a world of images, standing as signs of outward objects; with an ejective knowledge of other minds; and with that kind of recognition of self as an active, suffering and accountable agent which, following Mr. Chauncey Wright, I have called “outward self-consciousness.” But, over and above the animal, the child has at its command, as we have just seen, the more improved machinery of sign-making which enables it to signify to other minds (ejectively known) the contents of its receptual knowledge. Now, among these contents is the child’s perception of the mental states of others as expressed in their gestures, tones, and words. These severally receive their appropriate names, and so gain clearness and precision as ejective images of the corresponding states experienced by the child itself. “Mama pleased to Dodo” would have no meaning as spoken by a child, unless the child knew from his own feelings what is the state of mind which he thus ejectively attributes to another. Therefore we cannot be surprised to find that at the same stage of mental evolution the child will say, “Dodo pleased to mama.” Yet it is evident that we here approach the very borders of true self-consciousness. “Dodo” is no doubt still speaking of himself in objective terminology; but he has advanced so far in the interpretation of his own states of mind as to name them no less clearly than he names any external objects of sense perception. Thus he is enabled to fix these states before his mental vision as things which admit of being denoted by verbal signs, albeit he is not yet able to denominate.

The step from this to recognizing “Dodo” as not only the object, but also the subject of mental changes, is not a large step. The mere act of attaching verbal signs to inward mental states has the effect of focussing attention upon those states; and, when attention is thus focussed habitually, there is supplied the only further condition required to enable the mind, through its memory of previous states, to compare its past with its present, and so to reach that apprehension of continuity among its own states wherein the full introspective consciousness of self consists.

Again, as Mr. Chauncey Wright observes, “voluntary memory, or reminiscence, is especially aided by command of language. This is a tentative process, essentially similar to that of a search for a lost or missing external object. Trials are made in it to revive a missing mental image, or train of images, by means of words; and, on the other hand, to revive a missing name by means of mental images, or even by other words. It is not certain that this power is an exclusively human one, as is generally believed, except in respect to the high degree of proficiency attained by men in its use. It does not appear impossible that an intelligent dog may be aided by its attention, purposely directed to spontaneous necessaries, in recalling a missing fact, such as the locality of a buried bone.”[122]

But whether or not animals possess any power of recollection as distinguished from memory, there can be no doubt that the use of words as signs necessarily leads to the cultivation of this faculty, and so to the clear perception of a continuance of internal or mental states in which consists the consciousness of an abiding self.

Further, the acquisition of language greatly advances the conception of self, both as a suffering or feeling agent, and as an active cause; seeing that both the feelings and the actions of the self are placed clearly before the mind by means of denotative names, and even, as we have just seen, by pre-conceptual propositions. Doubtless, also, the recognition of self in each of these capacities is largely assisted by the emotions. The expressions of affection, sympathy, praise, blame, &c., on the part of others, and the feelings of emulation, pride, triumph, disappointment, &c., on the part of the self, must all tend forcibly to impress upon the growing child a sense of personality. “It is when the child’s attention is driven inwards in an act of reflection on his own actions, as springing from good or bad motives, that he wakes up to a fuller consciousness of himself.”[123]

The conspiring together of all these factors leads to the gradual attainment of self-consciousness. I say “gradual,” because the process is throughout of the nature of a growth. Nevertheless, there is some reason to think that when this growth has attained a certain point, it makes, so to speak, a sudden leap of progress, which may be taken to bear the same relation to the development of the mind as the act of birth does to that of the body. In neither case is the development anything like completed. Midway between the slowly evolving phases in utero and the slowly evolving phases of aftergrowth, there is in the case of the human body a great and sudden change at the moment when it first becomes separated from that of its parent. And so, there is some reason to believe, it is in the case of the human mind. Midway between the gradual evolution of receptual ideation and the no less gradual evolution of conceptual, there appears to be a critical moment when the soul first becomes detached from the nutrient body of its parent perceptions, and wakes up in the new world of a consciously individual existence. “Die Schlussprozesse, durch welche jene Trennung des Ich von der Aussenwelt vor sich geht, geschehen allmÄlig. Es ist eine langsame Arbeit, durch die sich die Scheidung bewerkstelligt. Doch diese Scheidung selber ist stets eine plÖtzliche That: es ist ein bestimmter Moment, in welchem das Ich mit einem Mal mit voller Klarheit in der Seele aufblitzt, und es ist derselbe Moment, in welchem das bewusste GedÄchtniss beginnt, Sehr hÄufig ist es daher, dass gerade diesses erste blitzÄhnliche Aufleuchten des Selbstbewusstseins bis in spÄte Jahre noch als deutliche Erinnerung zurÜckbleibt.”[124]

Of course the evidence upon this point must always be more or less unsatisfactory—first, because the powers of introspective analysis at the particular time when they first become nascent must be most incompetent to report upon the circumstances of their own birth; and next, because we know how precarious it is to rely on adult reminiscences of childhood’s experience. Therefore, I have only mentioned this evidence for what it is worth, in order to remark that it has no important bearing upon our present subject. Whether or not there is in the life of every human being some particular moment between the ages of two and three when the fact of its own personality is revealed to the growing mind, the results of the present analysis are in no way affected. For, even if such were supposed to be invariably the case, it could not be supposed that the revelation were other than low and feeble to a degree commensurate with the still almost infantile condition of all the other mental powers. Nor could it be doubted that this revelation needed to be led up to by that gradual process of receptual evolution with which my analysis has been concerned, and which in the terms of our previous analogy we may liken to the pre-natal life of an embryo. While, on the other hand, as little can it be doubted that such consciousness of self as is then revealed, requires to be afterwards supplemented by another prolonged course of mental evolution in the conceptual sphere, before those completed faculties of introspective thought are attained, which serve to difference the mind of a full-grown man from that of a babbling child almost as widely as the same interval of time is found to difference the body of an adult from that of a new-born babe.

In this brief analysis of the principles which are probably concerned in the evolution of self-consciousness, I should like to lay particular stress upon the point in it which I do not think has been sufficiently noticed by previous writers—namely, the ejective origin of subjective knowledge. The logic of recepts furnishes both the infant and the animal with a marvellously efficient store of ejective information. Indeed, we can scarcely doubt that to a very considerable extent this information is hereditary: witness the smile of an infant in answer to a caressing tone, and its cry in answer to a scolding one; not to mention the still more remarkable cases which we meet with in animals, such as newly-hatched chickens understanding the different sounds made to them by the hen, being terror-stricken at the voice of a hawk, newly-born mammals knowing the voice of their mother, &c.[125] Moreover, we find that the child, even for a considerable time after it has begun to use words, manifests a strong tendency to regard all objects, whether animate or inanimate, as ejects. This fact is a matter of such general observation that I need not wait to give special instances. I will, therefore, merely observe that the tendency is not wholly obliterated even when the faculty of speech has been fully acquired, and with it a general knowledge of the distinction between objects as animate and inanimate. Mr. Sully, for instance, gives a case of this when he records the saying of a little girl of five—“Ma, I do think this hoop must be alive; it is so sensible; it goes wherever I want it to.”[126] Again, we meet with the same tendency in the psychology of uncultured man. Pages might be filled with illustrations showing that savages all over the world both mentally and expressly personify, or endow with psychical attributes, the inanimate objects and forces of nature; while language, even in its most highly developed forms, still retains the impress of an originally ejective terminology. And, if Professor Max MÜller is right in his generalization that the personal pronoun “I” is in all languages traceable to roots equivalent to “This one” (indicative of an accompanying gesture-sign), we have additional and more particular evidence of the originally ejective character of the idea of self. Nor is it too much to say that even civilized man is still under the sway of this innate propensity to attribute to external things the faculties of feeling and willing of which he is conscious in himself. On the one side we have proof of this in the universal prevalence of the hypothesis of psychism in Nature, while on the other side we meet with further proof in the fact of psychological analysis revealing that our idea of cause is derived from our idea of muscular effort.

Now it is evident that in all these cases the tendency which is shown by the human mind, in every stage of its development, to regard external phenomena ejectively, arises from man’s intuitive knowledge—or the knowledge which is given in the logic of recepts—of his own existence as twofold, bodily and mental. This in his early days leads him to regard the Ego as an eject, resembling the others of his kind by whom he is surrounded. But as soon as the power of pre-conceptual predication has been attained, the child is in possession of a psychological instrument wherewith to observe his own mental states; and as soon as attention is thus directed upon them, there arises that which is implied in every act of such attention—namely, the consciousness of a self as at once the subject and object of knowledge.

I may remark that this analysis is not opposed, as at first sight it may appear to be, to the conclusion with regard to the same subject which is thus given by Wundt:—“It is only after the child has distinguished by definite characteristics its own being from that of other people, that it makes the further advance of perceiving that these other people are also beings in or for themselves.”[127] In other words, the attribution of personality to self is prior to the attribution of personality to others. Now this I do not question, although I do not think there can be much before or after in these two concepts. But the point which I have been endeavouring to bring out is that, prior to either of these concepts, there are two corresponding recepts—namely, first the receptual apprehension of self as an agent, and, second, the eject of this receptual apprehension, whereby “other people” are recognized as agents. Out of these two recepts there subsequently develop the corresponding concepts of personality. The order of development, therefore, is:—

Upon the whole, then, it appears to me perfectly evident that language is quite as much the antecedent as it is the consequent of self-consciousness. We have seen that in its first beginnings, or before the child is able to state a truth as true, what I have called rudimentary or pre-conceptual predication is concerned only with existence as objective or ejective: all these propositions, which are made by children during the first two years of their life, have reference to objects of sense, states of feeling, &c.; but never to self as self, and therefore never to truths as true. But as soon as the protoplasm of predication, or sign-making at this stage of elaboration, begins to mix freely with the protoplasm of judgment, or the logic of recepts at that stage of elaboration, an intimate movement of action and reaction ensues: the judgments are rendered clearer and more comprehensive by being thrown into the formal shape of even rudimentary propositions, while the latter are promoted in their development by the growing powers of judgment. And when this advancing organization of faculties has proceeded to the extent of enabling the mind incipiently to predicate its own states, the mental organism may be said for the first time to be quickening into the life of true self-consciousness.[128]