all, they never are non-perceived (i.e. they exist in so far only as we
are conscious of them). It is thus clear that we have no consciousness
of consciousness itself--just as the tip of a finger, although touching
other things, is incapable of touching itself.

All this reasoning, we reply, is entirely spun out of your own fancy,
without any due consideration of the power of consciousness. The fact is,
that in perceiving colour and other qualities of things, we are not
aware of a 'shining forth' as an attribute of those things, and as
something different from consciousness; nor can the assumption of an
attribute of things called 'light,' or 'shining forth,' be proved in any
way, since the entire empirical world itself can be proved only through
consciousness, the existence of which we both admit. Consciousness,
therefore, is not something which is inferred or proved through some
other act of knowledge; but while proving everything else it is proved
by itself. This may be expressed in technical form as follows--
Consciousness is, with regard to its attributes and to the empirical
judgments concerning it, independent of any other thing, because through
its connexion with other things it is the cause of their attributes and
the empirical judgments concerning them. For it is a general principle
that of two things that which through its connexion with the other is
the cause of the attributes of--and the empirical judgments about--the
latter, is itself independent of that other as to those two points. We
see e.g. that colour, through its conjunction with earth and the like,
produces in them the quality of visibility, but does not itself depend
for its visibility on conjunction with colour. Hence consciousness is
itself the cause of its own 'shining forth,' as well as of the
empirically observed shining forth of objects such as jars and the like.

Consciousness is eternal and incapable of change.