Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 32:128 (Oct 1875)
Article: Consciousness
Author: John Bascom

BSac 32:128 (Oct 1875) p. 676

Consciousness

John Bascom

There is one universal condition of all knowledge, whether of external or internal facts, and that is consciousness. As the very words “to know” cover conscious or real knowledge, consciousness, as the condition of the act, becomes also the condition of all that the act yields.

However complete our philosophy aims to be, it starts with consciousness — with the impressions afloat in it, as clouds in the sky, and inquires into their origin, nature, and connections. It habitually errs by clinging only too closely to those inner visions, by refusing to recognize the constructive power of the mind, which, laying hold of these appearances as the mere symbols of being, imparts quite another stability to itself, and to the world about it. Philosophy, through the long range of speculation that separates Fichte from Taine, refuses to believe in the powers, the faculties of mind, because as faculties they are not phenomena witnessed in consciousness.

Whatever aid to mental science any may hope to derive from purely physical inquiries, they cannot interpret or apply this aid without that science itself as shaped by the facts yielded in consciousness. The crudest of the endeavors to substitute external for internal observation is that of phrenology; yet it well illustrates the complete dependence of the exterior suggestion on the interior facts. The skull alone, whatever its shape, and howsoever well defined may be its protuberances, tells us absolutely nothing of the number and nature of mental powers. Nor can these be reached by comparing the form of the skull with the actions of the man to whom it belongs. These actions must themselves be interpreted in consciousness by psychology before we can decide

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on the powers which they indicate. They are, moreover, very complicated in the emotional and intellectual activities indicated, and must be subjected to psychological analysis before we reach the simple, primitive powers included by them. Thus the phrenologist must have his philosophy first, derived from consciousness, before he can make use of the aid which he claims to be rendered by the formation of the skull. If he starts with a false philosophy, with inadequate analysis, his physical adjunct cannot correct it, and will most likely confirm it. If there were clearly twenty divisions of the brain and no more, we might conjecture that they indicated twenty powers, but should find no clue therein to the nature of these faculties. For that, we must still be remanded to consciousness. The twenty directions of intellectual activity must be made out prior to their reference to the twenty compartments.

It is so generally admitted by all schools, or so ...