make a distinction. If this supposed thing had no variety in its nature, or, again, if its variety did not change in time within it, then it is impossible that it should be active. The idea, indeed, is self-contra- dictory. Nor could one thing again be said to be active as a whole; for that part of its nature which, changing, served as the occasion could not be in- cluded. I do not propose to argue these points, for I do not perceive anything on the other side beyond confusion or prejudice. And hence it is certain that activity implies hnitude, and otherwise possesses no meaning. But, on the other hand, naturally where there are a variety of elements, changing in time, we may have activity. For part of these elements may suffer change from, and may produce it in, others. Indeed, the question whether this is to go on inside one thing by itself, appears totally irrelevant, until at least we have some idea of what we mean by one thing. And our enquiries, so far, have not tended to establish any meaning. It is as if we enquired about hermaphroditism, where we do not know what we understand by a single animal. Indeed, if we returned at this point to our A and B connected in one single process, and enquired of them if they both were parts of one thing, or were each one thing con- taining a whole process of change, we should probably get no answer. They would once more recommend us to improve our own ideas before we went about applying them.
Our result up to this point appears to be much as follows. Activity, under any of the phrases used to carry that idea, is a mass of inconsistency. It is, in the first place, riddled by the contradictions of the preceding chapters, and if it cannot be freed from these, it must be condemned as appearance. And its own special nature, so far as we have discovered that, seems certainly no better. The activity of anything seems to consist in the way in which we choose to look at that which it is and becomes. For, 70 APPEARANCE.
apart trom the inner nature which comes out in the result, activity has no meaning. If this nature was not there, and was not real in the thing, is the thing really active? But when we press this question home, and insist on having something more than insincere metaphors, we find either nothing, or else the idea which we are pleased to entertain. And this, as an idea, we dare not attribute to the thing, and we do not know how to attribute it as anything else. But a confusion of this kind cannot belong to reality.
Throughout this chapter I have ignored a certain view about activity. This view would admit that activity, as we have discussed it, is untenable; but it would add that we have not even touched the real fact. And this fact, it would urge, is the activity of a self, while outside self the application of the term is metaphorical. And, with this question in prospect, we may turn to another series of con- siderations about reality.
CHAPTER VIII.
THINGS.
Before proceeding further we may conveniently pause at this point. The reader may be asked to reflect whether anything of what is understood by a thing is left to us. It is hard to say what, as a matter of fact, is generally understood when we use the wortl "thing." But, whatever that may be, it seems now undermined and ruined. I suppose we generally take a thing as possessing some kind of independence, and a sort of title to exist in its own right, and not as a mere adjective. But our ideas are usually not clear. A rainbow probably is not a thing, while a waterfall might get the name, and a flash of lightning be left in a doubtful position. Further, while many of us would assert stoutly that a thing must exist, if at all, in space, others would question this and fail to perceive its conclusiveness. We have seen how the attempt to reconstitute our ideas by the help of primary qualities broke down. And, since then, the results, which we have reached, really seem to have destroyed things from without and from within. If the connections of sub- stantive and adjective, and of quality and relation, have been shown not to be defensible; if the forms of space and of time have turned out to be full of contradictions; if, lastly, causation and activity have succeeded merely in adding inconsistency to incon- sistency,— if, in a word, nothing of all this can, as such, be predicated of reality, — what is it that is left? If things are to exist, then where and how?
72 APPEAR ANCfc.
But if these two questions are unanswerable, then we seem driven to the conclusion that things are but appearances. And I will add a few remarks, not so much in support of this conclusion as in order to make it possibly more plain.
I will come to the point at once. For a thing to exist it must possess identity; and identity seems a possession with a character at best doubtful. If it is merely ideal, the thing itself can hardly be real. First, then, let us inquire if a thing can exist without identity. To ask this question is at once to answer it; unless, indeed, a thing is to exist, and is to hold its diversity combined in an unity, somehow quite outside of time. And this seems untenable. A thing, if it is to be called such, must occupy some duration beyond the present moment, and hence succession is essential. The thing, to be at all, must be the same after a change, and the change must, to some extent, be predicated of the thing. If you suppose a case so simple as the movement of an atom, that is enough for our purpose. For, if this " thing " does not move, there is no motion. But, if it moves, then succession is predicated of it, and the thing is a bond of identity in differences. And, further, this identity is ideal, since it consists in the content, or in the " what we are able to say of the thing." For raise the doubt at the end of our atom's process, if the atom is the same. The ques- tion raised cannot be answered without an appeal to its character. It is different in one respect — namely, the change of place; but in another respect — that of its own character — it remains the same. And this respect is obviously identical content. Or, if any one objects that an atom has no content, let him throughout substitute the word "body," and settle with himself how, without any qualitative dif- ference (such as right and left), he distinguishes atoms. And this identical content is called ideal because it transcends given existence. Existence iHlNGS. 73 is given only in presentation; and, on the other hand, the thing is a thing only if its existence goes beyond the now, and extends into the past. I will not here dis- cuss the question as to the identity of a thing during a presented lapse, for I doubt if any one would wish to except to our conclusion on that ground.
Now I am not here raising the whole question of the Identity of Indiscernibles. I am urging rather that the continuity, which is necessary to a thing, seems to depend on its keeping an identity of character. A thing is a thing, in short, by being what it was. And it does not appear how this relation of sameness can be real. It is a relation connecting the past with the present, and this con- nection is evidently vital to the thing. But, if so, the thing has become, in more senses than one, the relation of passages in its own history. And if we assert that the thing is this inclusive relation, which transcends any given time, surely we have allowed that the thing, though not wholly an idea, is an idea essentially. And it is an idea which at no actual time is ever real.
And this problem is no mere abstract invented subtlety, but shows itself in practice. It is often impossible to reply when we are asked if an object is really the same. If a manufactured article has been worked upon and partly remade, such a ques- tion may have no sense until it has been specified. You must go on to mention the point or the par- ticular respect of which you are thinking. For questions of identity turn always upon sameness in character, and the reason why here you cannot reply generally, is that you do not know this general character which is taken to make the thing's essence. It is not always material substance, for we might call an organism identical, though its par- ticles were all different It is not always shape, or size, or colour, or, again, always the purpose which the thing fulfils. The general nature, in fact, of a 74 APPEARANCE.
74 APPEARANCE.
thing's identity seems to lie, first, in the avoidance of any absolute break in its existence, and, beyond that, to consist in some qualitative sameness which differs with different things. And with some things — because literally we do not know in what charac- ter their sameness lies — we are helpless when asked if identity has been preserved. If any one wants an instance of the value of our ordinary notions, he may find it, perhaps, in Sir John Cutlers silk stockings. These were darned with worsted until no particle of the silk was left in them, and no one could agree whether they were the same old stock- ings or were new ones. In brief, the identity of a thing lies in the view which you take of it. That view seems often a mere chance idea, and, where it seems necessary, it still remains an idea-. Or, if you prefer it, it is a character, which exists outside of and beyond any fact which you can take. But it is not easy to see how, if so, any thing can be real. And things have, so far, turned out to be merely appearances.
CHAPTER IX.
THE MEANINGS OF SELF.
Our facts, up to the present, have proved to be illusory. We have seen our things go to pieces, crumbled away into relations that can find no terms. And we have begun, perhaps, to feel some doubt whether, since the plague is so deep-rooted, it can be stayed at any point. At the close of our seventh chapter we were naturally led beyond the inanimate, and up to the self. And here, in the opinion of many, is the end of our troubles. The self, they will assure us, is not apparent, but quite real. And it is not only real in itself, but its reality, if I may say so, spreads beyond its own limits and rehabili- tates the selfless. It provides a fixed nucleus round which the facts can group themselves securely. Or it, in some way, at least provides us with a type, by the aid of which we may go on to comprehend the world. And we must now proceed to a serious examination of this claim. Is the self real, is it anything which we can predicate of reality? Or is it, on the other hand, like all the preceding, a mere appearance — something which is given, and, in a sense, most certainly exists, but which is too full of contradictions to be the genuine fact? I have been forced to embrace the latter conclusion.
There is a great obstacle in the path of the pro- posed inquiry. A man commonly thinks that he knows what he means by his self. He may be in doubt about other things, but here he seems to be at home. He fancies that with the self he at once j6 APPEARANCE.
comprehends both that it is and what it is. And of course the fact of one's own existence, in some sense, is quite beyond doubt. But as to the sense in which this existence is so certain, there the case is far otherwise. And I should have thought that no one who gives his attention to this question could fail to come to one preliminary result. We are all sure that we exist, but in what sense and what character — as to that we are most of us in help- less uncertainty and in blind confusion. And so far is the self from being clearer than things out- side us that, to speak generally, we never know what we mean when we talk of it. But the mean- ing and the sense is surely for metaphysics the vital point. For, if none defensible can be found, such a failure, I must insist, ought to end the question. Anything the meaning of which is inconsistent and unintelligible is appearance, and not reality.
I must use nearly the whole of this chapter in trying to fix some of the meanings in which self is used. And I am forced to trespass inside the limits of psychology; as, indeed, I think is quite necessary in several parts of metaphysics. I do not mean that metaphysics is based upon psychology. I am quite convinced that such a foundation is impossible, and that, if attempted, it produces a disastrous hybrid which possesses the merits of neither science. The metaphysics will come in to check a resolute analysis, and the psychology will furnish excuses for half- hearted metaphysics. And there can be really no such science as the theory of cognition. But, on the other hand, the metaphysician who is no psycholo- gist runs great dangers. For he must take up, and must work upon, the facts about the soul; and, if he has not tried to learn what they are, the risk is very serious. The psychological monster he may adopt is certain also, no doubt, to be monstrous metaphys- ically; and the supposed fact of its existence does not prove it less monstrous. But experience shows THE MEANINGS OF SELF. 77 that human beings, even when metaphysical, lack courage at some point. And we cannot afford to deal with monsters, who in the end may seduce us, and who are certain sometimes, at any rate, to be much in our way. But I am only too sensible that, with all our care, the danger nearest each is least seen.
I will merely mention that use of self which identifies it with the body. As to our perception of our own bodies, there, of course, exists some psycho- logical error. And this may take a metaphysical form if it tries to warrant, through some immediate revelation, the existence of the organism as some- how the real expression of the self. But I intend to pass all this by. For, at the point which we have reached, there seems no exit by such a road from familiar difficulties.
1. Let us then, excluding the body as an outward thing, go on to inquire into the meanings of self. And the first of these is pretty clear. By asking what is the self of this or that individual man, I may be enquiring as to the present contents of his experience. Take a section through the man at any given moment. You will then find a mass of feelings, and thoughts, and sensations, which come to him as the world of things and other persons, and again as himself; and this contains, of course, his views and his wishes about everything. Every- thing, self and not-self, and what is not distinguished as either, in short the total filling of the man's soul at this or that moment — we may understand this when we ask what is the individual at a given time. There is no difficulty here in principle, though the detail would naturally (as detail) be unmanageable. But, for our present purpose, such a sense is obviously not promising.
2. The congeries inside a man at one given moment does not satisfy as an answer to the question what is self. The self, to go no further, must be something beyond present time, and it j8 APPEARANCE.
cannot contain a sequence of contradictory varia tions. Let us then modify our answer, and say, Not the mass of any one moment, but the constant average mass, is the meaning of self. Take, as before, a section completely through the man, and expose his total psychical contents; only now take this section at different times, and remove what seems exceptional. The residue will be the normal and ordinary matter, which fills his experience; and this is the self of the individual. This self will contain, as before, the perceived environment — in short, the not-self so far as that is for the self — but it will contain now only the usual or average not-self. And it must embrace the habits of the individual and the laws of his character — whatever we mean by these. His self will be the usual manner in which he behaves, and the usual matter to which he behaves, that is, so far as he behaves to it.
We are tending here towards the distinction of the essential self from its accidents, but we have not yet reached that point. We have, however, left the self as the whole individual of one moment, or of succeeding moments, and are trying to find it as the individual's normal constituents, What is that which makes the man his usual self? We have answered, It is his habitual disposition and con- tents, and it is not his changes from day to day and from hour to hour. These contents are not merely the man's internal feelings, or merely that which he reflects on as his self. They consist quite as essen- tially in the outward environment, so far as relation to that makes the man what he is. For, if we try to take the man apart from certain places and persons, we have altered his life so much that he is not his usual self. Again, some of this habitual not-self, to use that expression, enters into the man's life in its individual form. His wife possibly, or his child, or, again, some part or feature of his THE MEANINGS OF SELF. 79 inanimate environment, could not, if destroyed, be so made good by anything else that the man's self would fail to be seriously modified. Hence we may call these the constituents which are indi- vidually necessary; requisite for the man, that is, not in their vague, broad character, but in their specialty as this or that particular thing. But other tracts of his normal self are filled by con- stituents necessary, we may say, no more than generically. His usual life gets its character, that is, from a large number of details which are variable within limits. His habits and his environment have main outlines which may still remain the same, though within these the special features have been greatly modified. This portion of the man's life is necessary to make him his average self, but, if the generic type is preserved, the special details are accidental.
This is, perhaps, a fair account of the man's usual self, but it is obviously no solution of theoretical difficulties. A man's true self, we should be told, cannot depend on his relations to that which fluctu- ates. And fluctuation is not the word; for in the lifetime of a man there are irreparable changes. Is he literally not the same man if loss, or death, or love, or banishment has turned the current of his life? And yet, when we look at the facts, and survey the man's self from the cradle to the coffin, we may be able to find no one average. The usual self of one period is not the usual self of another, and it is impossible to unite in one mass these con- flicting psychical contents. Either then we accept the man's mere history as his self, and, if so, why call it one? Or we confine ourselves to periods, and there is no longer any single self. Or, finally, we must distinguish the self from the usual con- stituents of the man's psychical being. We must try to reach the self which is individual by finding the self which is essential.
80 APPEARANCE.
80 APPEARANCE.
3. Let us then take, as before, a man's mind, and inspect its furniture and contents. We must try to find that part of them in which the self really consists, and which makes it one and not another. And here, so far as I am aware, we can get no assistance from popular ideas. There seems, how- ever, no doubt that the inner core of feeling, resting mainly on what is called Ccenesthesia, is the founda- tion of the self.1 But this inner nucleus, in the first place, is not separated from the average self of the man by any line that can be drawn; and, in the second place, its elements come from a variety of sources. In some cases it will contain, indivisibly from the rest, relation to a not- self of a certain character. Where an individual is such that alteration in what comes from the environment completely unsettles him, where this change may produce a feeling of self- estrangement so severe as to cause sickness and even death, we must admit that the self is not enclosed by a wall. And where the essential self is to end, and the accidental self to begin, seems a riddle without an answer.
For an attempt to answer it is baffled by a fatal dilemma. If you take an essence which can change, it is not an essence at all; while, if you stand on anything more narrow, the self has disappeared. What is this essence of the self which never is altered? Infancy and old age, disease and madness, bring new features, while others are borne away. It is hard indeed to fix any limit to the self's mutability. One self, doubtless, can suffer change in which another would perish. But, on the other hand, there comes a point in each where we should agree that the man is no longer himself. This 1 I may refer here to a few further remarks in Mind, 12, p. 368 and foil. I am not suggesting that ideas may not form part of the innermost self. One thinks here naturally of the strange selves suggested in hypnotism.
THE MEANINGS OF SELF. 8 1 creature lost in illusions, bereft of memory, trans- formed in mood, with diseased feelings enthroned in the very heart of his being — is this still one self with what we knew? Well, be it so; assert, what you are unable to show, that there is still a point untouched, a spot which never has been invaded. I will not ask you to point this out, for I am sure that is impossible. But I urge upon you the opposite side of the dilemma. This narrow per- sisting element of feeling or idea, this fixed essence not " servile to all the skyey influences," this wretched fraction and poor atom, too mean to be in danger — do you mean to tell me that this bare remnant is really the self? The supposition is pre- posterous, and the question wants no answer. If the self has been narrowed to a point which does not change, that point is less than the real self. But anything wider has a " complexion " which " shifts to strange effects," and therefore cannot be one self. The riddle has proved too hard for us.
We have been led up to the problem of personal identity, and any one who thinks that he knows what he means by his self, may be invited to solve this. To my mind it seems insoluble, but not because all the questions asked are essen- tially such questions as cannot be answered. The true cause of failure lies in this — that we will persist in asking questions when we do not know what they mean, and when their meaning perhaps pre- supposes what is false. In inquiries about identity, as we saw before in Chapter viii., it is all-important to be sure of the aspect about which you ask. A thing may be identical or different, according as you look at it Hence in personal identity the main point is to fix the meaning of person; and it is chiefly because our ideas as to this are confused, that we are unable to come to a further result. In the popular view a man's identity resides 82 * APPEARANCE.
82 * APPEARANCE.
mainly in his body.1 There, before we reflect much, lies the crucial point. Is the body the same? Has it existed continuously? If there is no doubt about this, then the man is the same, and presumably he has preserved his personal identity, whatever else we like to say has invaded or infected it. But, of course, as we have seen, this identity of the body is itself a doubtful problem (p. 73). And even apart from that, the mere oneness of the organism must be allowed to be a very crude way of settling personal sameness. Few of us would venture to maintain that the self is the body.
Now, if we add the requirement of psychical continuity, have we advanced much further? For obviously it is not known, and there seems hardly any way of deciding, whether the psychical current is without any break. Apparently, during sleep or otherwise, such intervals are at least possible; and, if so, continuity, being doubtful, cannot be used to prove identity. And further, if our psychical con- tents can be more or less transformed, the mere absence of an interval will hardly be thought enough to guarantee sameness. So far as I can judge, it is usual, for personal identity, to require both con- tinuity and qualitative sameness. But how much of each is wanted, and how the two stand to one another, — as to this I can find little else but sheer confusion. Let us examine it more closely.
We should perhaps say that by one self we under- stand one experience. And this may either mean one for a supposed outside observer, or one for the consciousness of the self in question, the latter kind of unity being added to or apart from the first kind. And the self is not one unless within limits its quality is the same. But we have already seen that if the individual is simply viewed from outside, it is quite impossible to find a limit within which change 1 In the Fortnightly Review, ccxxviii., p. 820, I have further discussed this question.
THE MEANINGS OF SELF. 83 may not come, and which yet is wide enough to embrace a real self. Hence, if the test is only same- ness for an outside observer, it seems clear that sometimes a man's life must have a series of selves. But at what point of difference, and on what precise principle, that succession takes place seems not de- finable. The question is important, but the decision, if there is one, appears quite arbitrary. But per- haps, if we quit the view of the outside observer, we may discover some principle. Let us make the attempt.
We may take memory as the criterion. The self, we may hold, which remembers itself is so far one; and in this lies personal identity. We perhaps may wish also to strengthen our case by regarding memory as something entirely by itself, and as, so to speak, capable of anything whatever. But this is, of course, quite erroneous. Memory, as a special application of reproduction, displays no exceptional wonders to a sane psychology, nor does it really offer greater diffi- culties than we find in several other functions. And the point I would emphasize here is its limits and defects. Whether you take it across its breadth, or down its length, you discover a great want of singleness. This one memory of which we talk is very weak for many aspects of our varied life, and is again disproportionately strong for other aspects. Hence it seems more like a bundle of memories run- ning side by side and in part unconnected. It is certain that at any one time what we can recall is most fragmentary. There are whole sides of our life which may be wanting altogether, and others which will come up only in various degrees of feebleness. This is when memory is at its best; and at other times there hardly seems any limit to its failure. Not only may some threads of our bundle be wanting or weak, but, out of those that remain, certain lengths may be missing. Pieces of our life, when we were asleep, or drugged, or otherwise distempered,