ABSTRACT
SO soon as ever the dawn of knowledge had broken upon us through the portals of the senses, we began to compare objects, to reflect upon them. The first work of thought was to set things in their places, to transform the chaos of sense-impressions into an intelligible cosmos. But after everything else has been arranged, there still remains something which has as yet no place,—ourselves: our feeling, willing, and thinking; so that the question arises: how can our own mental life be made the subject of investigation like the objects of this external world of things about us? And yet—can such a question be asked? Is it not really self-contradictory? It is as though we required that the tone should hear itself, or the ray of light be sensed by itself.
