[Illustration: Square a2, next to smaller square b2. Above them are horizontal lines a and b, the same lengths as the widths of the squares below them. Caption: a and b only associated. Squares of a and b in juxtaposition.]
[Illustration: Square c2. Above it is horizontal line c, the same length as the width of the square below it. Caption: a and b really synthetised to c. Square of a + b as a true unity = c2.]
Given that, through some association, the image of the line a calls up that of the line b, and both are associatively ranged together, we have still not made the real synthesis a + b = c. For to think of a and b side by side is not the same thing as thinking of c, as we shall readily see if we square them. The squares of a and b thought of beside one another, that is, a2 and b2, are something quite different from the square of the really [pg 313] synthetised a and b, which is (a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2, or c 2. This requires quite a new view, a spontaneous synthesis, which is an action and not a mere experience.
The Ego.
It was customary in earlier psychology, as it still is in all apologetic psychology, to regard the soul as a unified, immaterial, indivisible and therefore indestructible substance, as a monad, which, as a unity without parts, superior to its own capacities and the changes of its states, is at all times one and the same subject. Many attempts have been made since the time of Plotinus to accumulate proofs of this substantial unity. We may leave this question untouched here, and need not even inquire whether these definitions are not themselves things of the external world employed as images and analogies and pushed too far. But there are three factors which may be established in regard to the psychical in spite of all naturalistic opposition; and those who have attempted to find proofs for the traditional idea we have noted, have usually really had these three in mind, and quite rightly so: they are, self-consciousness, the unity of consciousness, and the consciousness of the ego.
Self-Consciousness.
1. Our consciousness is not merely a knowledge of many individual things, the possession of concrete and abstract, particular or general conceptions and ideas, the cherishing of sensations, feelings and the like. We [pg 314] not only know, but we know that we know, and we can ponder in thought over the very fact that we are able thus to reflect in thought. Thought can turn its attention upon itself, can establish that it takes place, and how it runs its course, can reflect upon the forms in which it expresses itself, its powers, its laws, possibilities, and limits, and can ponder over the general nature of thought and the contingent individual nature of the particular thinking subject. (The very possibility and preliminary condition of moral freedom is implied in this.) How naturalism is to do justice to this fact it is not easy to see. Even if it were possible that the mental content was gained through mere experience, that comparisons, syntheses, and abstractions were formed simply according to the laws of association, and that these were sublimed and refined to general ideas, and could grow into axioms of logic and of geometry, or crystallise into necessary and axiomatic principles—none of which can happen—yet it would always be a knowledge of something. But how this something could be given to itself remains undiscoverable. The soul is a tabula rasa and a mere mirror, says this theory. But it would still require to show how the silver layer behind the mirror began to see itself in the mirror.