Consciousness Of The Ego
3. This unified self-consciousness is consciousness of the ego. It is only
by means of an artificial abstraction that we can leave out of account in
the consideration of processes of thought the peculiar factor of personal
relationship that absolutely attaches to every thought within us. There
are no thoughts in general that play their part of themselves alone. "It"
never "thinks" in me. On the contrary, all sensation, thought, and
has in every human being a peculiar central relationship to which we refer
when we say "my idea," "my sensation." What the "I" is cannot be defined.
It is that through which the relation of all experiences and actions is
referred to a point, and through which the treasuring of them for good or
ill, the appreciation, the valuation of them is accomplished. And it plays
its part even in the case of cold and indifferent items of knowledge. For
instance, that twice two are four is not simply a perception, it is my
perception. Of the ego itself nothing more can be said than that it is the
thought of me as the subject of all experience, willing, and action, and
if we try to take hold of it nothing more than this formula remains. Yet
the fact that the ego is the subject of all this, gives conduct, will, and
experience that peculiar character which distinguishes them from mere
action and reaction. For it is directly certain that all the psychical
contents are not only co-existences in one consciousness but that they are
possessed by it.
Thus in summing up we have to say, that it is through the ego that all
psychical activities and experiences are centred and related, that the ego
is itself the point of relation, that it is the reason of the unity of
consciousness and of the possibility of self-consciousness, and that in
all this it is the most certain reality, without which the simplest
psychical life would be impossible. At the same time, it is difficult to
state what the "ego" is in itself, apart from the effects in which it
reveals itself.
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Activity Of Consciousness
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