The ego, i. e. the centre of consciousness, is constantly shifting, while
the personality of a man is relatively constant, certain important ideas
being stable and thus lending character to the whole system of thoughts
and intentions.
The term personality indicating the self-hood of a man is used in several
ways. First, we understand by a man’s personality his bodily appearance;
secondly the whole system of his mentality, viz. his knowledge, his
temperament, his character; thirdly the history of his life, past,
present, and future; fourthly his position in life, his possessions,
his connections, his influence, or at last we mean by it all these four
items together. In all these applications the man and his personality are
conceived as a unity. And they are a unity. Wherever the term unity is
applicable, it is most certainly applicable here. All the many facts of
the history of his life are one continuous process; all the parts of his
body are parts of a system, and the world of his ideas also will under
normal conditions bear a certain harmonious character. Wherever in any
soul the concord among the ideas has been disturbed, a state of unrest
will ensue until the peace of soul is restored in one or another way. But
with the same necessity as every water surface tends to present a smooth
level, so the ideas in one and the same soul tend to come to a state of
agreement. As every water surface has its ripples so even that mind which
has attained an undisturbed peace of soul is constantly confronted with
some problems—be they ever so trifling—producing some slight disturbances
in his life.
The unity of a self, it is apparent, is the inevitable consequence
of given conditions. It is not something which exists outside the
personality and its constituent parts, it is in the personality and it
develops together with it. Mr. Conybeare supposes that “the unity of
a self remains the same throughout.” This is an error, and this error
vitiates Mr. Conybeare’s whole conception of growth and evolution. He
says:
“Properly speaking a thing can only be said to grow or develop
when it remains the same with itself all through the process
and unfolds therein capacities which were anyhow latent in it
to start with.”
The truth contained in this proposition may be expressed thus: When a
thing develops, some part of it remains the same during the change,
so that a continuity is preserved. Yet every change of a part of an
organism—such is the intimate interconnection of all its parts—produces
an alteration, be it ever so small, of the whole unity. And in the course
of evolution the character of the whole thing may be changed. Think of
the growth of a caterpillar into a butterfly, or of an egg-cell into a
man. However, the changes in the character of an adult man will become
slighter and slighter the stronger certain features of his existence
preserve their sameness, although the most stable personality will,
nevertheless, be subject to, at least, unimportant changes as long as
life lasts.
Mr. Conybeare, like his master Professor Green and all the
transcendentalists, is still under the influence of a belief in the
thing in itself. The unity of an organism which is the product of the
co-operation of its parts, is not some independent thing whose business
it is to gather up their single activities and bring them into relation
with one another. The unity of a self is the combination of all those
relations which make of its parts a systematised whole, and this unity
is changing together with its constituents; as a matter of fact, we have
to state that it does _not_ remain constant or the same with itself.
Mark that I do not deny the unity of the soul, nor do I underrate the
enormous importance of this unity. But I do deny that this unity exists
independent of its parts. It is as much immanent in its parts as is a
melody in its notes. There is as little a transcendental self-hood as a
melody in itself independent of its sounds.
The assumption of a transcendental unity which throughout the process
of evolution remains the same with itself naturally leads to a wrong
conception of what Mr. Conybeare calls “latent capacities.” The terms
potential existence and latent qualities are fertile and useful ideas but
we must beware not to employ them incorrectly. Any heap of iron ore can
be called a potential sword. This is a mode of speaking which expresses
the possibility that the ore can be changed somehow into a sword. But the
sword does not exist at all, not even as a latent quality of the ore.
The ore has no latent qualities of that kind. Those qualities of the ore
which represent the potential sword are very patent to everybody who
knows the art of using them properly and changing them into an actual
sword.
We may say that the hen’s egg contains a potential chick; but this is a
mere mode of speech devised to say that the egg can be changed into a
chick under certain conditions. There is no chick at all contained in the
egg and nothing that is like a chick.
Evolution is not, as the name suggests, a process of unfolding; evolution
is, as Christian Friedrich Wolff calls it, an “epigenesis,” i. e.
the process of the additional growth of new formations. The chick is
something different in kind from the egg. The unity of the egg-cell
organism in the yolk is radically different from the unity of the
full-fledged chick. The former shows traces of irritability but not
of consciousness, while the latter exhibits unmistakable symptoms of
psychical activity. The formation of the chicken-soul is a new formation
as much as the growth of feathers. The feathers of the chick are an
additional growth; there are no latent feathers in the egg. We might
express ourselves to the effect that the egg contains the potential
existence of feathers, but with the same logic we might say the egg
contains a potential chicken broth.
It is however true that something remains constant in the process of
growth. There is a preservation of form in the constant change of
material particles and this is the physiological basis of memory, so that
a man of eighty may say “I remember when I was a child,” although not one
particle of the substance of which the child consisted is left in him.
The continuity produced through this preservation of form makes growth
and evolution possible.
The preservation of memory-structures constitutes the possibility of
reviving the feelings of the past, it constitutes a preservation of
soul. The material parts of the body are thrown out but the form being
preserved, the soul remains. And this preservation of the soul is the
basis of its additional growth through new and enlarged experience. The
soul of the child is not lost in the man, it is preserved. It has lost
certain features and at the same time it has gained new features, it has
developed, and the unity of the soul has more or less changed with the
development.
What is true of the individual is also true of mankind. Mankind as a
whole is different in the savage and in civilised society. Nevertheless
the latter has developed from the former. Certain traits have been
dropped, other radically new features have appeared. That which was
valuable in the soul of primitive man is not lost. The better part of his
soul still lives in the highest developed man of to-day; the continuity
is preserved. And to-day all our moral instruction aims at this, so to
live that our souls also will be preserved in the future evolution of
humanity. The gist of ethics is to make the soul immortal.[49]