Pre-eminence Of Consciousness
But we have already spent too much time over this naive mode of looking at
things, which, though it professes to place things in their true light, in
reality distorts them and turns them upside down. As if this world of the
external and material, all these bodies and forces, were our first and
most direct data, and were not really all derived from, and only
discoverable by, consciousness. We have here to do with the ancient view
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of all philosophy and all reflection in general, although in modern days
it has taken its place as a great new discovery even among naturalists
themselves, by whom it is extolled and recognised as "the conquest of
materialism." Such exaggerated emphasis tends to conceal the fact that
this truth has been regarded as self-evident from very early times.
What is a body, extension, movement, colour, smell and taste? What do I
possess of them, or know of them, except through the images, sensations
and feelings which they call up in my receptive mind? No single thing
wanders into me as itself, or reveals itself to me directly; only through
the way in which they affect me, the peculiar changes which they work in
me, do things reveal to me their existence and their special character. I
have no knowledge of an apple-tree or of an apple, except through the
sense perceptions they call up in me. But these sense perceptions, what
are they but different peculiar states of my consciousness, peculiar
determinations of my mind? I see that the tree stands there, but what is
it to see? What is the perception of a colour, of light, of shade, and
their changes? Surely only a peculiar change of my mind itself, a
particular state of stimulus and awareness brought about in myself. And in
the same way I can feel that the apple lies there. But what is the
perception of resistance, of hardness, of impenetrability? Nothing more
than a feeling, a change in my psychical state, which is unique and cannot
be described in terms of anything but itself. Even as regards "attraction
and repulsion," external existence only reveals itself to us through
changes in the mind and consciousness, which we then attribute to a cause
outside ourselves.
It is well enough known that this simple but incontrovertible fact has
often led to the denial of the existence of anything outside of ourselves
and our consciousness. But even if we leave this difficult subject alone,
it is quite certain that, if the question as to the pre-eminence of
consciousness and its relation to external things is to be asked at all,
it should be formulated as follows, and not conversely: "How can I,
starting from the directly given reality and certainty of consciousness
and its states, arrive at the certainty and reality of external things,
substances, forces, physics and chemistry?"