of mental phenomena save mere "possibilities of feeling," then present feelings are the only existences, the only reality, and a loss of immediate consciousness, as in narcosis and coma, is the loss of all personality, all self-hood, and of all real being. [Footnote 240: "Exam. of Hamilton," vol. i. p. 260.] [Footnote 241: Ibid, p. 262.] [Footnote 242: Ibid.] 2. What, then, is the verdict of consciousness as to the existence of a permanent substance, an abiding existence which is the subject of all the varying phenomena? Of what are we really conscious when we say "I think," "I feel," "I will?" Are we simply conscious of thought, feeling, and volition, or of a self, a person, which thinks, feels, and wills? The man who honestly and unreservedly accepts the testimony of consciousness in all its integrity must answer at once, _we have an immediate consciousness, not merely of the phenomena of mind, but of a personal self as passively or actively related to the phenomena_. We are conscious not merely of the act of volition, but of a self, a power, producing the volition. We are conscious not merely of feeling, but of a being who is the subject of the feeling. We are conscious not simply of thought, but of a real entity that thinks. "It is clearly a flat contradiction to maintain that I am not immediately conscious of myself, but only of my sensations or volitions. Who, then, is that _I_ that is conscious, and how can I be conscious of such states as _mine?_"[243] [Footnote 243: Mansel, "Prolegomena Logica," p. 122, and note E, p. 281.] The testimony of consciousness, then, is indubitable that we have a direct, immediate cognition of _self_--I know myself as a distinctly existing being. This permanent self, to which I refer the earlier and later stages of consciousness, the past as well as the present feeling, and which I know abides the same under all phenomenal changes, constitutes my personal identity. It is this abiding self which unites the past and the present, and, from the present stretches onward to the future. We know self immediately, as existing, as in active operation, and as having permanence--or, in other words, as a "_substance_." This one immediately presented substance, myself, may be regarded as furnishing a positive basis for that other notion of substance, which is representatively thought, as the subject of all sensible qualities. 3. We may now inquire what is the testimony of consciousness as to the existence of the extra-mental world? Are we conscious of perceiving external objects immediately and in themselves, or only mediately through some vicarious image or representative idea to which we fictitiously ascribe an objective reality?