er feeling is the first or original form of the religious
consciousness, or whether feeling be not consequent upon some idea or
cognition of God, is one which can not be determined on empirical
grounds. We are precluded from all scrutiny of the incipient stages of
mental development in the individual mind and in collective humanity. If
we attempt to trace the early history of the soul, its beginnings are
lost in a period of blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny of memory
or imagination. If we attempt the inquiry on the wider field of
universal consciousness, the first unfoldings of mind in humanity are
lost in the border-land of mystery, of which history furnishes no
authentic records. All dogmatic affirmation must, therefore, be
unjustifiable. The assertion that religious feeling precedes all
cognition,--that "the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being,
and the instinct of worship" are developed _first_ in the mind, before
the reason is exercised, is utterly groundless. The more probable
doctrine is that all the primary faculties enter into spontaneous action
_simultaneously_--the reason with the senses, the feelings with the
reason, the judgment with both the senses and the reason, and that from
their primary and simultaneous action arises the complex result, called
consciousness, or conjoint knowledge.[62] There can be no clear and
distinct consciousness without the cognition of a _self_ and a
_not-self_ in mutual relation and opposition. Now the knowledge of the
self--the personal ego--is an intuition of reason; the knowledge of the
not-self is an intuition of sense. All knowledge is possible only under
condition of plurality, difference, and relation.[63] Now the judgment
is "the Faculty of Relations," or of comparison; and the affirmation
"_this_ is not _that_" is an act of judgment; to know is, consequently,
to judge.[64] Self-consciousness must, therefore, be regarded as a
synthesis of sense, reason, and judgment, and not a mere self-feeling
(coenaesthesis).

[Footnote 62: Cousin, "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 357; vol. ii. p.
337.]

[Footnote 63: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 88.]

[Footnote 64: Hamilton, "Metaphys.," p. 277]

A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of
reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at
least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of
resistance can not give the notion of without the a priori idea of
s