144. In principle, indeed, the answer to both questions, as given by Locke, is the same: for the reasons which he alleges for being assured of the ‘existence of a thing without us corresponding to the idea of sensation’ reduce themselves, as we have seen, to the reiteration of that reference of the idea to a thing, which according to him is originally involved in it, and which is but the correlative of its reference to a subject. This, however, is what he was not himself aware of. To him the outer and the inner substance were separate and independent things, for each of which the question of real existence had to be separately settled. To us, according to the view already indicated, it is the presence of self-consciousness, or thought as an object-to-itself, to feeling that converts it into a relation between feeling thing and felt thing, between ‘cogitative and incogitative substance.’ The source of substantiation upon each side being the same, the question as to the real existence of either substance must be the same, and equally so the answer to it. It is an answer that must be preceded by a counter question.--Does real existence mean existence independent of thought? To suppose such existence is to suppose an impossibility--one which is not the less so though the existence be supposed material, if ‘material’ means in ‘space’ and space itself is a relation constituted by the mind, ‘bringing things to and setting them by one another.’ Yet is the supposition itself but a mode of the logical substantiation we have explained, followed by an imaginary abstraction of the work of the mind from this, its own creation. Does real existence mean a possible feeling? If so, it is as clear that what converts feeling into a relation between felt thing and feeling subject cannot in this sense be real, as it is that without such conversion no distinction between real and fantastic would be possible. Does it, finally, mean individuality, in such a sense that unless I can say this or that is substance, thinking or material, substance does not really exist? If it does, the answer is that substance, being constituted by a relation by which self-conscious thought is for ever determining feelings, and which every predication represents, cannot be identified with any ‘this or that,’ though without it there could be no ‘this or that’ at all. But he ignores this in treating of the self.