ABSTRACT
A sequence of one feeling upon another is not a consciousness of relation between them, much less of relation between facts which they represent. The dog’s conduct may be accounted for by the simple sequence of an imagination of pain upon a visual sensation, resembling one which actual pain has previously followed. It may be suggested, indeed, that although neither the perceived object nor any of its qualities is a vivid state of consciousness, yet the act of perception is so. The essential difference, therefore, does not lie between an initiation of the sound by vivid states and impossibility of its initiation by faint ones, but between its initiation by states of consciousness, whether vivid or faint, and the real causation of it. It is essential to Mr. Spencer’s doctrine, as he constantly shows himself to be aware, that the announcement of an independent non-ego as force should be an immediate and primitive deliverance of consciousness.
