To estimate more accurately the effect, which this reference to self produces, let us imagine a human being to be born with his faculties perfect as in mature life, and let us suppose a sensation to arise for the first time in his mind. For the sake of greater simplicity, let us suppose the sensation to be of a kind as little complex as possible; such for example, as that which the fragrance of a rose excites. If, immediately after this first sensation, we imagine the sentient principle to be extinguished, what are we to call that feeling, which filled and constituted the brief moment of life? It was a simple sensation, and nothing more; and if only we say, that the sensation has existed,--whether we say, or do not say, that the mind was conscious of the sensation,--we shall convey precisely the same meaning; the consciousness of the sensation being, in that case, only a tautological expression of the sensation itself. There will be, in this first momentary state, no separation of _self_ and the _sensation_,--no little proposition formed in the mind, I feel, or I am conscious of a feeling; but the _feeling_ and the _sentient I_ will, for the moment, be the same. It is this simple feeling, and this alone, which is the whole consciousness of the first moment; and no reference can be made of this to a _self_, which is independent of the temporary _consciousness_; because the knowledge of self, as distinct from the particular feeling, implies the remembrance of former feelings,--of feelings, which, together with the present, we ascribe to _one_ thinking principle,--recognizing the _principle_, the _self_, the _one_, as the _same_, amid all its transient diversities of consciousness.