But one day Kant undermined
the soul and brought in the transcendental
ego, and ever since then the bipolar
relation has been very much off its balance.
The transcendental ego seems nowadays in
rationalist quarters to stand for everything, in
empiricist quarters for almost nothing. In the
hands of such writers as Schuppe, Rehmke,
Natorp, Munsterberg -- at any rate in his
2
earlier writings, Schubert-Soldern and others,
the spiritual principle attenuates itself to a
thoroughly ghostly condition, being only a
name for the fact that the 'content' of experience
_is_known_. It loses personal form and activity
-- these passing over to the content --
and becomes a bare _Bewusstheit_ or _Bewusstsein_
_uberhaupt_ of which in its own right absolutely
nothing can be said.
I believe that 'consciousness,' when once it
has evaporated to this estate of pure diaphaneity,
is on the point of disappearing altogether.
It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right
to a place among first principles. Those who
still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the
faint rumor left behind by the disappearing
'soul' upon the air of philosophy. During the
past year, I have read a number of articles
whose authors seemed just on the point of abandoning
the notion of consciousness,(1) and substituting
for it that of an absolute experience
not due to two factors.
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