created principle.  But it is one of the lower and least important of agencies, because it is blind.  It is destitute of the power of self-inspection.  It does not know what it does, or why.  “Man,” says Pascal,[1] “is but a reed, and the weakest in all nature; yet he is a reed that thinks.  The whole material universe does not need to arm itself, in order to crush him.  A vapor, a drop of water is enough to destroy him.  But if the whole universe of matter should combine to crush him, man would be more noble than that which destroyed him.  For he would be conscious that he was dying, while, of the advantage which the material universe had obtained over him, that universe would know nothing.”  The action of a little child is altogether nothing and vanity compared with the energy of the earthquake or the lightning, so far as the exhibition of force and the mere power to act is concerned; but, on the other hand, it is more solemn than centuries of merely natural processes, and more momentous than all the material phenomena that have ever filled the celestial spaces, when we remember that it is the act of a thinking agent, and a self-conscious creature.  The power to survey the act, when united with the power to act, sets mind infinitely above matter, and places the action of instinct, wonderful as it is, infinitely below the action of self-consciousness.  The proud words of one of the characters in the old drama are strictly true: 

  “I am a nobler substance than the stars,
  Or are they better since they are bigger? 
  I have a will and faculties of choice,
  To do or not to do; and reason why
  I do or not do this:  the stars have none. 
  They know not why they shine, more than this taper,
  Nor how they, work, nor what."[2]

But this characteristic of a rational being, though thus distinctive and common to every man that lives, is exceedingly marvellous.  Like the air we breathe, like the light we see, it involves a mystery that no man has ever solved.  Self-consciousness has been the problem and the thorn of the philosophic mind in all ages; and the mystery is not yet unravelled.  Is not that a wonderful process by which a man knows, not some other thing but, himself?  Is not that a strange act by which he, for a time, duplicates his own unity, and sets himself to look at himself?  All other acts of consciousness are comparatively plain and explicable.  When we look at an object other than ourselves,—­when we behold a tree or the sky,—­the act of knowledge is much more simple and easy to be explained.  For then there is something outside of us, and in front of us, and another thing than we are, at which we look, and which we behold.  But in this act of self-inspection there is no second thing, external, and extant to us, which we contemplate.  That which is seen is one and the same identical object with that which sees.  The act of knowledge which in all other instances requires the existence of two things,—­a thing to be known and a thing to know,—­in this instance is performed with only one.  It is the individual soul that sees, and it is that very same individual soul that is seen.  It is the individual man that knows, and it is that very identical man that is known.  The eyeball looks at the eyeball.