Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

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iwe can properly be said to be conscious, agreeably to the
rigorous interpretation of the expression. A conviction of th.e
latter, although it seems to be so insepartable fiom the exercise
of consciousness, that it can scarcely be considered as posterior
to it in the order of time, is yet (if I may be allowed to make
use of a scholastic distinction) posterior to it in the order of
nature; not only as it supposes consciousness to be already.awakened by some sensation, or some other mental affection;
but as it is evidently rather a judgment accompanying the exercise of that power, than one of its immediate intimations concerning its appropriate class of internal phenomena. It appears
to me, therefore, more correct to call the belief of our own
existence a colncomitant, or accessory, of the exercise of consciousness, than to say, that our own existence is a fact falling
under tile immediate cognizance of consciousness, like the existence of the various agreeable or painful sensations which
external objects excite in our minds.
2. Not consciousness, but memory, proves our personal identity.
That we cannot, without a very blallable latitude in the use
of words, be said to be conscious of our personal identity, is a
proposition still more indisputable; inasmuch as the very idea
of personal identity involves the idea of time, and, consequently,
presupposes the exercise not only of consciousness, but of
nmemory. The belief connected with this idea is implied in
every thought and every action of the mind, and may be justly
regarded as one of the simplest and most essential elements of
the understanding. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive either
an intellectual or an active being to exist without it. It is,
however, extremely worthy of remark, with respect to this
belief; that, universal as it is among our species, nobody but a
metaphysician ever thinks of expressing it in words, or of reducing into the shape of a proposition, the truth to which it relates.
To the rest of mankind, it forms, not an object of knowledlge,
but a condition or supposition, necessarily and unconsciously
involved in the exercise of all their faculties. On a part of our
colnstitution, which is obviously one of the last or primordial
elements at Mwhich it is possible to arrive in analyzing our intel