We might speak of ego-sense as an experience knowing itself. But since cognition implies always a knowing and the known, an experience cannot, and does not, know itself. The consciousness knowing is never the consciousness known; and to speak of a consciousness as aware of itself is misleading and inaccurate. To speak of the cognizance of a pain as pain self-cognizant is an erroneous expression, for the pain does not know itself; but it is known by a cognition which is not it. To be aware of pain as such is awareness of consciousness, but is, interpreted strictly, in no wise self-consciousness. I may even speak of a self-conscious self-consciousness. This does not really mean what it directly implies, but can only mean a self-consciousness _plus_ a consciousness of it as one’s own; that is, the self-consciousness is not actually conscious of itself. Even if a consciousness could both be and know its being as an absolute, simple act, yet this would not be self-sense, an individual realizing its own individuality, but merely a single psychic act existing, and at the same time conscious of its existence. Self-consciousness is more and other than any consciousness which is self-conscious, if that were possible. Consciousness of consciousness is not, then, self-consciousness. It is, indeed, conceivable that an _ego_, in objective sense, might know his own consciousness not as _his own_—the act of self-consciousness—but merely as consciousness, and he would thus exist as an individual, yet without subjective individuality. Yet, as matter of fact, consciousness of consciousness always carries self-consciousness with it. If I become conscious of a consciousness which is my own, I know it, not merely as a consciousness, but as my own consciousness; if I am conscious of anger, I am conscious of being angry. Hume, in his chapter on Personal Identity, observes, “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call _myself_, I always stumble on some particular perception or other of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch _myself_ at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.” This is a good illustration of a futile and mistaken attempt to absorb self-consciousness in consciousness of consciousness. Of course Hume was not the hypothetical _ego_ which we have instanced as purely objective observer of his own consciousness; when he was conscious of any consciousness, as a heat or light sensation, a pleasure or a pain, he was assuredly, like other mortals, conscious of it as his own. The sense of mine-ness as psychic fact he should not have ignored, whatever might be his conclusions as to the _myself_ But metaphysical psychology is always apt to swerve from fact.