The simplest method and the most direct of studying the rise and nature of self-consciousness is in those experiences in coming to self-consciousness from deep sleep or from coma after severe accident. I say, “I regained consciousness,” “I came to consciousness,” meaning, not bare consciousness as in mere sensations or perceptions, but a self-consciousness involved therein. In becoming conscious I came to self-consciousness; in becoming aware of the objective, I at once realize my subjectivity, myself as experiencer. In coming out from under the influence of chloroform, there is, I have distinctly observed in my own case, a struggling to realize, which is both objective and subjective cognition. It is true a person having awakened under very strange circumstances, as in a bed in a hospital after an accident, may declare, “I did not know myself,” but this does not mean that he had no self-consciousness, but merely that for the moment he did not identify this self, himself, as John Smith, of Jonesville, etc. Sometimes it happens that self-identification is not reached at all, but the self, as bodily whole experiencing, is speedily aware of self, a new personality and sense of personality quickly grows up. Again, a lunatic mistaking _himself_ for Herod or Cæsar is thus always self-conscious. He has consciously established himself as the self playing a part in the world, but according to the opinion of his sane fellows he is much in error as to what that part is. Strictly speaking, there is no illusion of self-consciousness, except under the impossible supposition that a being not a real self or psychic individual should have self-sense; but the very act of self-cognizance implies reality of self-hood. It is plain that even the insane man who regards _himself_ as tree or stone, has, however, the act of self-regard, is really self-conscious. Strictly speaking, we cannot identify or recognise self, for sense of self is necessary in any recognition to make it such, a self-consciousness is a fundamental _prius_. You recognise a tree, a house, but you do not recognise yourself except as yourself is mere object related to you, to your experience. Self-identification means only objective act, and is not, then, the same as self-consciousness, though based upon it.