If we consider the first of these factors more closely, we shall discover that self-consciousness exists under limitations and conditions. Man can not become clearly conscious of _self_ without distinguishing himself from the outer world of sensation, nor without distinguishing self and the world from another being upon whom they depend as the ultimate substance and cause. Mere _cœnœesthesis_ is not consciousness. Common feeling is unquestionably found among the lowest forms of animal life, the protozoa; but it can never rise to a clear consciousness of personality until it can distinguish itself from sensation, and acquire a presentiment of a divine power, on which self and the outer world depend. The _Ego_ does not exist for itself, can not perceive itself, but by distinguishing itself from the ceaseless flow and change of sensation, and by this act of distinguishing, the _Ego_ takes place in consciousness. And the _Ego_ can not perceive itself, nor cognize sensation as a state or affection of the _Ego_ except by the intervention of the reason, which supplies the two great fundamental laws of causality and substance. The facts of consciousness thus comprehend three elements--self, nature, and God. The determinate being, the _Ego_, is never an absolutely independent being, but is always in some way or other codetermined by another; it can not, therefore, be an absolutely original and independent, but must in some way or another be a _derived_ and _conditioned_ existence. Now that which limits and conditions human self-consciousness can not be mere _nature_, because nature can not give what it does not possess; it can not produce what is _toto genere_ different from itself. Self-consciousness can not arise out of unconsciousness. This new beginning is beyond the power of nature. Personal power, the creative principle of all new beginnings, is alone adequate to its production. If, then, self-consciousness exists in man, it necessarily presupposes an absolutely _original_, therefore _unconditioned, self-consciousness_. Human self-consciousness, in its temporal actualization, of course presupposes a nature-basis upon which it elevates itself; but it is only possible on the ground that an eternal self-conscious Mind ordained and rules over all the processes of nature, and implants the divine spark of the personal spirit with the corporeal frame, to realize itself in the light-flame of human self-consciousness. The original light of the divine self-consciousness is eternally and absolutely first and before all. "Thus, in the depths of our own self-consciousness, as its concealed background, the God-consciousness reveals itself to us. This descent into our inmost being is at the same time an ascent to God. Every deep reflection on ourselves breaks through the mere crust of world-consciousness, which separates us from the inmost truth of our existence, and leads us up to Him in whom we live and move and are."[115]