It is likewise the
commencement of experience, and the result of all other experience.
In other words, conscience in this its simplest form, must be
supposed in order to consciousness, that is, to human consciousness.
Brutes may be and are scions, but those beings only who have an I,
scire possunt hoc vel illud una cum seipsis; that is, conscire vel
scire aliquid mecum, or to know a thing in relation to myself, and in
the act of knowing myself as acted upon by that something.
Now the third person could never have been distinguished from the
first but by means of the second. There can be no He without a
previous Thou. Much less could an I exist for us except as it exists
during the suspension of the will, as in dreams; and the nature of
brutes may be best understood by considering them as somnambulists.
This is a deep meditation, though the position is capable of the
strictest proof, namely, that there can be no I without a Thou, and
that a Thou is only possible by an equation in which I is taken as
equal to Thou, and yet not the same.
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