"Essays" - читать интересную книгу автора (James William)

V. THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD

OF PURE EXPERIENCE 137

VI. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 155

VII. THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM 190
VIII. LA NOTION DE CONSCIENCE 206

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I

DOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST?

'THOUGHTS' and 'things' are names for two
sorts of object, which common sense will always
find contrasted and will always practically
oppose to each other. Philosophy, reflecting
on the contrast, has varied in the
past in her explanations of it, and may be
expected to vary in the future. At first,
'spirit and matter,' 'soul and body,' stood for
a pair of equipollent substances quite on a par
in weight and interest. But one day Kant undermined
the soul and brought in the transcendental
ego, and ever since then the bipolar
relation has been very much off its balance.
The transcendental ego seems nowadays in
rationalist quarters to stand for everything, in
empiricist quarters for almost nothing. In the
hands of such writers as Schuppe, Rehmke,
Natorp, Munsterberg -- at any rate in his

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earlier writings, Schubert-Soldern and others,
the spiritual principle attenuates itself to a
thoroughly ghostly condition, being only a
name for the fact that the 'content' of experience
_is_known_. It loses personal form and activity
-- these passing over to the content --
and becomes a bare _Bewusstheit_ or _Bewusstsein_
_uberhaupt_ of which in its own right absolutely
nothing can be said.

I believe that 'consciousness,' when once it
has evaporated to this estate of pure diaphaneity,
is on the point of disappearing altogether.
It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right