appearing as (x, y, z), so that 4 (x, y, z) represents my past. The natural conclusion is, that an unbroken continuity of existence between the present self and the past is proved to demonstration; not that the present self is identical with the past in any abstract sense, but that there has been from the past a continuous process of germination of mental capacity, assimilation of experience, and selforganisation.1 The constant, normal interruptions of consciousness during sleep, and the occasional abnormal interruptions, due to physical or mental shock or the application of drugs or gases, are no real obstacle to the view which finds the real self essentially manifested in the concrete contents of consciousness. For across the interval there is not merely a qualitative resemblance; my experience of to-day does not merely bear the same kind of general resemblance to my experience of yesterday as my experience of to-day does to yours. There is a special kind of relation here, evinced in the fact that my present is not only affected by my past, but is affected by it in a unique manner. My past experiences have left behind psychical dispositions which partially determine the character of my present consciousness, and which are of such a nature that they cause in my present consciousness an explicit reference back to my past. This connection is the ultimate ground and meaning of personal continuity and identity, and of memory. For memory, in its developed form, means that a present idea of mine (1) bears a time-reference to a past which (2) is my past. To deal psychologically with this personal time-reference is, 1 The logical difficulties to which this view is supposed to give rise have been dealt with in chap. iii. truly, a very complex and difficult problem; but the fact would be not only hard to explain, it would be altogether inexplicable and miraculous, if the apparently discontinuous portions of consciousness were really and verily what Mr Bradley calls them, "divided existences." 1 The occurrence of the personal time-reference, in connection with representations, seems further to render evident the futility of all attempts to substitute for the notion of a psychical disposition or tendency (left behind by past experience) the notion of a physiological retention of molecular motions in the brain; founding mental continuity on the continuity of cerebral processes. We have in memory (a) the explicit distinction of the present from the past, and (b) the explicit reference of a presented content to our past, or to a past with which ours was in relation. These processes are altogether different from the mere survival of past changes, which is all that physiological retention implies. When considering the gaps in consciousness, of which I have been speaking, we must remember that it is the merest dogmatic assumption to regard the discontinuity as absolute. An absolute break in a personal consciousness ex vi terminorum could never be known by that consciousness, for if it were thus known, it would not be an absolute break. At most it could only be assumed by an outside observer. We have no evidence that there is such a state as perfectly' dreamless' sleep, or that in any accidental state of so-called 1 Mr Bradley's chapter on the Self, in his Appearance and Reality, is an able and thorough attack upon the notion of personal identity; but in the end he admits that "somehow an identical self is real." The hopeless emphasis that has to be laid on the 'somehow' arises from what seems to me to be an erroneous view of the nature and demands of Intellect. ' unconsciousness' the mind is a perfect blank. Fleeting and faint presentations may be constantly occurring to consciousness, and on waking be forgotten beyond recall. We need not even suppose that discrimination entirely ceases; but if it does, and nothing remains but an 'anoetic' state of merely felt differences, then the absence of memory on waking is easily explained. There is another point deserving of consideration, though it is so ridiculously obvious that its import is generally overlooked: we are conscious, after any such interruption, that there has been an interval — a distinct interval of time for which memory supplies no contents. This suggests that all modes. of consciousness could not have been entirely in abeyance. What is discontinuous is distinct consciousness; but before assuming that consciousness entirely ceases we must be sure of the limits of mental life within which the term 'consciousness' is applicable. The same connection between present and past which is evinced in memory, also renders it possible that the conscious life should gradually organise itself, in reaction upon its social and physical environment, into a relatively permanent and stable Character. This does not mean only part of the man,-a mere tendency to act in this way or that in outward conduct: man is not merely a "walking bundle of habits." Character is the whole individuality, in which certain broad features remain the same, constituting what we should call a finite personality. This, as we have seen reason for maintaining, is partly (with more or less of truth) represented in the content of the idea of Self as it is for each individual. The diseases of personality,-cases of mania, the "strange selves of hypnotism," and similar pathological states of mind on which Mr Bradley dwells,1 seem to me to have no bearing on the view of finite self-consciousness here defended, simply because they are what M. Ribot called them des maladies de la personnalité. We cannot say whether a mind reduced to such a state has any personality or character at all, or is a self in any sense; but whenever we actually find self-consciousness realised in the normal individual, its characteristics are as we have stated them. How the possibility of diseased and abnormal selves proves that it is an illusion to regard the normal concrete self as a continuous self-determining growth, I confess I cannot see. Take the case of knowledge; in these pathological states the rational power is disorganised, more or less, as it is in ordinary insanity; does it therefore follow that the idea of a systematic, coherent, or rational knowledge is illusory? Indeed we may maintain the general proposition, that until the normal, in every case of scientific inquiry, is itself understood, the abnormal can throw no light on it for the abnormal is simply the exceptional. There may be cases of disorganised selves, but these can tell us nothing about the nature or destiny of the self which is not disorganised. It would seem that there is only one argument possible to those who are bent on proving that the idea of a real individuality of selfhood is an illusion: to maintain that everything characteristic of concrete individuality is dependent on physiological and physical conditions, and that the diseases of personality afford the best illustrations of this fact.' This is a large question, which has to be contested and discussed not merely by mad-doctors, but at every stage through the whole region of psychological inquiry, 1 Loc. cit. |