THE PLACE OF THE “SELF” IN REALITY
§ 1. The “self” is (1) a teleological concept, (2) implies a contrasted
not-self (where this contrast is absent from an experience there is
no genuine sense of self); (3) but the limits which divide self and
not-self are not fixed but fluctuating. The not-self is not a merely
external limit, but consists of discordant elements within the
individual, which are extruded from it by a mental construction. (4)
The self is a product of development, and has its being in the
time-series. (5) The self is never given complete in a moment of
actual experience, but is an ideal construction; probably selfhood
implies some degree of _intellectual_ development. § 2. The Absolute
or Infinite Individual, being free from all internal discord, can
have no not-self, and therefore cannot properly be called a self. §
3. Still less can it be a person. § 4. In a _society_ of selves we
have a more genuinely self-determined individual than in the single
self. Hence it would be nearer the truth to think of the Absolute as
a Society, though no finite whole adequately expresses the
Absolute’s full nature. We must remember, however, (_a_) that
probably the individuals in the Absolute are not all in _direct_
relation, and (_b_) that in thinking of it as a Society we are not
denying its real individuality. § 5. The self is not in its own
nature imperishable; as to the particular problem of its continuance
after death, no decision can be arrived at on grounds of
Metaphysics. Neither the negative presumption drawn from our
inability to understand the conditions of continuance, nor the lack
of empirical evidence, is conclusive; on the other hand, there is
not sufficient metaphysical reason for taking immortality as
certain.
§ 1. We have already, in Book II. chap. 1, § 5, incidentally raised the
question whether the whole spiritual system which we found ground to
regard as the reality of the universe, can properly be spoken of as a
“self.” We decided that to apply such a predicate to it was at least
misleading, and might prepare the way for serious intellectual
sophistication. Our discussion of the general character of psychological
conceptions has now made it possible for us to return to the problem
with reasonable hopes of being able to treat it more fully, and to
arrive at some definite conclusion as to the amount of truth embodied by
the notion of “self.”
First of all, then, let us attempt to fix the general meaning of the
concept, and to single out some of its more prominent characteristics.
It would clearly require much more space than we can spare to enumerate
all the senses in which the notion of “self” has been used in
Psychology, and the work, when done, would not be entirely germane to
our metaphysical purpose. What I propose to attempt here will be simply
to consider certain aspects of the concept of “self” which are
manifestly indispensable for the purpose of ethical and historical
appreciation, and to ask what their value is for the metaphysical
interpretation of existence.
(1) It is manifest, to begin with, that “self” is a teleological
concept. The self whose quality is revealed in Biography and History,
and judged in Ethics, has for its exclusive material our emotional
interests and purposive attitudes towards the various constituents of
our surroundings; of these, and of nothing else, our self is made. And
the self, again, is one and individual, just in so far as these
interests and purposes can be thought of as forming the expression, in
the detail of succession, of a central coherent interest or purpose.
Where this central interest appears not to exist at all, we have no
logical right to speak of a succession of purposive acts as the
expression of a single self. Thus, though it may be necessary for some
of the practical purposes of police administration to take bodily
identity as evidence of identity of self, we all recognise that what a
man does in a state of mental alienation complete enough to abolish
continuity of purpose, is not material for his biographer except in so
far as the knowledge of it may modify his interests and purposes on his
return to sanity. And even in cases where we may acquiesce in the
necessity for assuming responsibility before the law for “deeds done in
the body,” conscience acquits us of moral guilt if we honestly feel we
can say, “I was not myself when it was done.”[184] The teleological
character of the unity we ascribe to the self is further illustrated by
the puzzles suggested by the “alternate” and “multiple” personalities
occasionally brought to light in the study of hypnotism and of mental
pathology. Finally, in the fairly numerous cases of “conversion,” where
a man, as we say, becomes a “new being” or parts with his “old self,” we
only recognise him as identical with his past self in so far as we
succeed in thinking of his “new life” as being the expression of aims
and interests which were, at least implicitly and as “tendencies,”
already present, though concealed, in the “old.”
(2) The self implies, and has no existence apart from, a not-self, and
it is only in the contrast with the not-self that it is aware of itself
as a self. This seems to me clear, as a matter of principle, though the
consequences of the principle are in much current speculation partly
misconceived, partly neglected. The most important among them, for our
purposes, are the following. The feeling of self is certainly not an
inseparable concomitant of all our experience. For it only arises—and
here nothing but direct experimentation can be appealed to as
evidence—as a contrast-effect in connection with our awareness of a
not-self, whether as imposing restraints upon the expression of the
self, or as undergoing modification by the self. Hence experiences from
which this contrast is absent seem to exhibit no trace of genuine
“self-consciousness.”[185] Feeling, where you can get it in its simple
form, seems to be universally allowed to be an instance in point. Much
of our perception appears to me, though I know the view is not widely
current among psychologists, to be in the same position. _E.g._,
normally when I am looking at an object, say for instance, a
white-washed wall, I do not find that I am in any real sense “conscious
of self.” The content of my awareness seems, to me at least, to be just
the wall in a setting of a mass of unanalysed feeling, organic and
other, which you may, if you please, from your standpoint as an external
observer, call my perceiving self, but of which I am only aware _as_ the
setting of the perceived wall.
It is only when attention to the content of the perception becomes
difficult (as, _e.g._, through fatigue of the organs of sense, or
conflict with some incompatible purpose) that I am normally aware of the
perceived object as a not-self opposed to and restricting my self. The
same is, I think, true of much of our life of conscious purposive
action. I do not find that in my intellectual pursuit of a chosen study,
or again in my social relations to the other members of my community, I
have explicit awareness of the “facts” of science, or the interests and
purposes of others as a not-self with which my own interests are
contrasted as those of the self, except in so far as I either find these
facts and interests in actual collision with some aim of my own, or
experience the removal of such a collision. In ordinary social life, for
instance, I have a strong feeling of self as opposed to not-self when
the plans of some member of my immediate circle clash with my own, and
again when I succeed in winning such a recalcitrant over to my own side;
my self in the one case feels repression, in the other expansion. But I
do not think it can be said that the self-feeling arises in actual life
where there is temporarily no consciousness of opposition or its
removal. For instance, while we are harmoniously working with other men
for a previously concerted end, the consciousness of self and its
contrasted not-self scarcely appears to enter into our experience.[186]
This is, I presume, why practical worldly wisdom has always regarded
“self-consciousness” as a source of weakness and moral failure. While we
are steadily engaged in the progressive execution of a purpose, we “lose
ourselves” in the work; it is only upon a check that we become
“self-conscious.”
(3) The next point to be noted is that there is no definite line of
demarcation between self and not-self. In particular, we must not fall
into the error of supposing that the whole _content_ of the relation
between self and not-self is _social_,—the self on its side consisting
of me, and the not-self of other men. It is true, no doubt, that the
_origin_ of the distinction is mainly social, since it is in the main
through experience of what it is to have my execution of a desired act
repressed by others, and again to have the stumbling-blocks which have
previously restricted my action removed by their co-operation, that I
come to be definitely aware of what I want, and of the fact that it is I
who want it. But it would be hard to show that the distinction between
the self and the not-self could not originate at all except in a social
medium, and it is clear that the range of its applicability, when
originated, is not limited to the social relation. There seems, on the
one hand, to be no feature in our experience whatever which is entirely
excluded from entering into the constitution of what is felt as the
self. My social intimates, my professional colleagues, my regular
occupations, even my clothes or articles of furniture, to which I have
grown accustomed, may be so essential to the continuity of my
characteristic interests in life that their removal would make my
character unrecognisable, or possibly even lead to insanity or death.
And as thus indispensable to the teleological unity or my existence, all
these “external” objects seem to be capable of passing into and becoming
part of the self.
We see an extreme instance of this in the case of the savage
transplanted into civilised surroundings, who fails in body and mind and
finally dies, without recognisable disease, simply from the
disappearance of the interests connected with his old surroundings; or
that of the clinging affectionate persons who, in the same way, fade
away upon the loss of a beloved relative or friend. In a minor degree we
see the same thing in those changes of character which common speech
happily describe by such phrases as “he has never been himself since—his
wife died, since he lost that money,” and so forth. In principle there
seems to be no factor of what we should currently call the self’s
environment which may not in this way come to be part of the content of
the self.[187]
On the other side, it seems difficult to say whether there is anything
which ordinarily forms part of the “self” which may not, under special
conditions, become a part of what we recognise as the “not-self.” Thus
our bodily feelings and sensations, our thoughts and desires, and in
particular our virtuous and vicious habits, are usually reckoned as
definitely belonging to our self. Yet in so far as we can think of any
desire or habit as an element which is discordant with the rest of our
self, and ought not to be there,—and the whole business of moral
progress depends on our being able to take up this attitude,—we, so far,
relegate that element to the not-self. To will the habit or desire to be
otherwise is already, in principle, to expel it from the teleological
unity which makes up our inner life. So again with our thoughts: in so
far as we can suspend our assent to a judgment, and balance reasons for
or against accepting it into the general system of our beliefs, the
judgment clearly belongs to the external not-self.
Yet it is at least conceivable that there may be intellectual as well as
moral habits so deeply engrained in our constitution that we cannot thus
set them over-against the self for judgment and sentence. We must not
deny that there are cases in which we could not will or think
differently, or even mentally entertain the possibility of thinking or
willing differently, without the destruction of our life’s continuity of
purpose. Again, our bodily sensations seem to belong in a very special
way to our self. Yet in so far as we can acquire the power of
voluntarily observing them, or again of withdrawing attention from them,
they are in principle reduced to the position of elements in the
not-self.
Even pleasure and pain do not seem to belong inalienably to the self’s
side of the contrast. _E.g._, to adapt a Platonic illustration, if I
feel pleasure in contemplating the vulgar or obscene, and at the same
time feel disgusted with myself for being so pleased, the pleasure seems
in the act of condemnation to be recognised as no part of my “true”
self, but an alien element obtruded on the self against its nature.
Pain, by reason of that urgency and insistency which give it its
biological importance, is much harder to banish from the self; but
experience, I think, will convince any one who cares to make the
experiment, that bodily pains, when not too intense (_e.g._, a
moderately severe toothache), can, by directing attention to their
sensational quality, be sometimes made to appear as definitely foreign
to the experiencing self. And the history of asceticism, ancient and
modern, as well as the practice of “mind-curers,” suggests that this
process of extrusion can be carried further than we commonly suspect.
Organic or “common” sensations of general bodily condition probably form
the element in experience which most obstinately resists all attempts to
sever it from the whole self and treat it as a foreign object, though in
some cases we certainly seem able to extrude the organic sensation from
the felt self by analysis of its quality and “localisation.” Still, it
must be admitted that if there are any elements in experience which are
absolutely incapable of transference to the not-self, they are probably
in the main masses of unanalysed and unanalysable organic
sensation.[188]
All these considerations make two points very clear. (_a_) The self in
which we are interested in Ethics and History is not anything with
definitely fixed boundaries. The line dividing it from its complement,
the not-self, is one which we cannot draw according to any precise
logical rule; and again, what is at one time on one side of the boundary
is at another on the other. If there is any part of our experience at
all which must be regarded as always and essentially belonging to the
self’s side of the dividing line, it will in all probability be merely
masses of bodily feeling which are manifestly _not_ the whole of what
Ethics and History contemplate when they appraise the worth of a
self.[189]
Further, a conclusion follows as to the nature of the opposition of self
to not-self. The not-self, as the readiness with which most of the
contents of experience can pass from one side of the antithesis to the
other shows, is in a sense included in at the very time that it is
excluded from the self. The various factors of which the not-self can,
at different times, be composed, our fellows, the physical world,
thoughts, habits, feelings, all agree in possessing one common
characteristic; when referred to the self, they are all elements of
discord within the whole of present experience, and it is on account of
this discordancy that we treat them as foreign to our real nature, and
therefore as belonging to the not-self. We may thus say with accuracy
that what is ascribed to the not-self is so ascribed because previously
found to be discrepant, and therefore excluded from the self; in other
words, the not-self is not an external limit which we somehow _find_ in
experience side by side with the self, but is _constructed_ out of
experience-data by the extrusion of those data which, if admitted into
the self, would destroy its harmony. Thus we finite beings are
confronted by a not-self ultimately because in our very finitude, as we
have seen in earlier chapters, we contain in ourselves a principle of
strife and disharmony. The not-self is no merely external environment,
but an inevitable consequence of the imperfection of internal structure
which belongs to all finitude.
(4) The self is essentially a thing of development, and as such has its
being in the time-process. This is a point upon which it seems for many
reasons necessary to insist. Its truth seems manifest from our previous
consideration of the nature of the experiences upon which the concept of
the self is based. As we have seen, it is primarily to our experience of
internal disharmony and the collision of purpose that we owe our
distinction between self and not-self. And such experience seems only
possible to beings who can oppose an ideal of what ought to be, however
dimly that ideal may be apprehended, to what is. A being who either was
already all that it was its nature to become, or was incapable of in
some way apprehending the fact that it was not so, would thus not have
in its experience any material for the distinction between the self and
the foreign and hostile elements in experience. And, as we have already
seen in our Third Book, time is the expression in abstract form of the
fundamental nature of an experience which has as yet attained only the
partial fulfilment of its purpose and aspirations, and is therefore
internally subject to that want of perfect harmony in which we have now
sought the origin of the distinction between self and not-self. Hence we
may, I think, take it as certain, at least for us who accept this
account of the origin of the self concept, that selves are necessarily
in time and as such are necessarily products of development.
This conclusion seems in accord with positive facts which are too well
established to permit of question. It is probable that there is not a
single element in what I call my present self which is not demonstrably
the product of my past development, physical and mental. Nor does it
appear reasonable to contend that though the material of my existing
self is a result of development, its form of selfhood is underived. It
is not merely that my present self is not as my past self, but we cannot
avoid the admission that my mental life is the result of a process of
development by which it is continuously connected with that of the
embryo and even the spermatozoon. And thus it seems to have its
beginnings in experiences which are probably so little removed from
simple feeling as to afford no opportunity for the sense of self as
contrasted with not-self. Or if we maintain that the contrast cannot be
altogether absent from even the crudest forms of experience, we still
have to reckon with the fact that, one stage further back in my personal
history, I had no existence even as an animalcule. An embryonic self is
at least not positively inconceivable, but where was Levi’s selfhood
while he was yet in the loins of his father? If we will consider what we
mean when we say we have all had parents, it will, I think, be confessed
that our self must be admitted to have been actually originated in the
course of development, impossible as we find it to imagine the stage of
such a process.[190]
(5) Finally, we must deal briefly with one more point of some
importance. The self, as we can now see, is never identical with
anything that could be found completely existing at any one moment in my
mental life. For one thing, it is thought of as having a temporal
continuity which goes far beyond anything that can be immediately
experienced at any given moment. It stretches out both into the past and
the future beyond the narrow limits of the “sensible present.” Again,
this temporal continuity is only an abstract expression of the inner
sameness and continuity of aims and interests we ascribe to the self. My
experiences are, as we have seen, thought of as being the life of one
self ultimately because I look on them as the harmonious expression of a
consistent attitude of interest in the world. And any elements in
experience which will not coalesce in such a harmony are, by one device
or another, extruded from the true self and declared to be alien
intruders from elsewhere. Now, in real life we never find this complete
and absolute harmony of the contents of experience; there are always, if
we look for them, elements in our actual experience which are
discordant, and conflict with the system of interests which, on the
whole, dominates it. Hence self, in the last resort, is seen to be an
_ideal_ which actual experience only imperfectly realises,—the ideal of
a system of purposes and interests absolutely in harmony with itself.
And there must be, at least, grave doubt as to the logical
self-consistency of this ideal, doubts which we must shortly face.
For the present the point to which I want to call attention is this.
Must we say that any degree of felt continuity of existence is enough to
constitute rudimentary selfhood, or ought we to hold that there is no
true self where there is not at least as much _intellectual_ development
as is implied in the power to _remember_ the past and _anticipate_ the
future, as one’s own? In other words, are we to make selfhood as wide in
its range as sentient life, or to limit it to life sufficiently rational
to involve some distinct and explicit _recognition_ of the contrast
between self and not-self? This is perhaps, in the main, a question as
to terminology; for my own part, I confess I find the second alternative
the more satisfactory. I do not see that such a degree of teleological
continuity as is implied in the mere feeling of pain, for instance,
deserves to be recognised as genuine selfhood; and there is, I think, in
the unrestricted use of the term self, selfhood, as applied to merely
feeling consciousness, a danger of ambiguity. When we have once applied
the terms in such a case, we are inevitably tempted to over-interpret
the facts of such simple mental life in order to bring them into fuller
accord with what we know of selfhood in our own life.[191] At the same
time, it is clear that we have no right dogmatically to deny the
presence of the intellectual processes involved in the recognition of
self where our methods of observation fail to detect them.
§ 2. We may now approach the problem of the degree of reality which
belongs to the self. We have to ask, how far is the conception of self
applicable to the individual experiences which in our Second Book we
identified as the contents of the system of real existence? Is the
infinite individual experience properly to be called a self? Again, is
every finite experience a self? And how must we take finite selves, if
they are real, to be related to each other? Lastly, perhaps, we might be
called on in this connection to face the question how far an individual
finite self is more than a _temporary_ feature in the system of
existence. Our conclusions on all these points were no doubt in
principle decided by the discussions of our Second Book, but it is
desirable to make some of them more explicit than was possible there.
First, then, I think it is clear that the infinite experience or
“Absolute” cannot properly be called a self. This is immediately
apparent if our view as to the essential implications of self-feeling be
accepted. We have urged that self is only apprehended as such in
contrast to a simultaneously apprehended not-self. And the not-self, we
have seen, is composed of all the discordant elements of experience, so
far as their discord has not been overcome. It was for this reason that
we held the self to be indissolubly bound up with that experience of the
world as a process in time, with a “no longer” and “not yet,” which is
the universal characteristic of finitude. It must follow that an
experience which contains no discordant elements, in their character as
unresolved discords, is not characterised by the contrast-effect which
is the foundation of selfhood. An experience which contains the whole of
Reality as a perfectly harmonious whole can apprehend nothing as outside
or opposed to itself, and for that very reason cannot be qualified by
what we know as the sense of self.
To put the same thing in another way, “self” as we have seen, is
essentially an ideal, and an ideal which is apprehended as contrasted
with the present actuality. Hence only beings who are aware of
themselves as in process of becoming more fully harmonious in their life
of feeling and purpose than they at present are, can be aware of
themselves as selves. Self and imperfection are inseparable, and any
being which knows nothing of the opposition between the ideal and the
actual, the _ought_ and the _is_, must also know nothing of the feeling
of self. Or in yet a third form of words, only creatures whose life is
in time—and therefore only finite creatures—can be selves, since the
time-experience is an integral constituent of selfhood.
One objection which might be brought against this inference is
sufficiently ingenious to deserve special examination. It may be urged
that though the experience of imperfection and thwarted purpose are
conditions without which we in particular could not come to the
apprehension of self, they do not remain as ingredients in the
experience of selfhood when once it has been developed. Hence, it might
be said, the “Absolute” may conceivably have the experience without
having to acquire it through these conditions. In general principle, no
doubt this line of argument is sound enough. It is perfectly true that
the special conditions through which we come to have experience of a
certain quality cannot, without investigation, be taken as everywhere
indispensable for that experience. _E.g._, even if it were proved that
the pessimists are right in saying that _we_ never experience pleasure
except as a contrast with previous pain, it would still not follow that
the pleasure, as felt, _is_ the mere rebound from the pain, and has no
further positive quality of its own, and it would then still be an open
question whether other beings might not experience the pleasure without
the antecedent pain. But the principle does not seem applicable to the
case now under consideration, since it is our contention that the
contrast of the discordant factor with the rest of the experience to
which it belongs is not simply an antecedent condition, but is in fact
the central core of the actual apprehension of self. It is not simply
that we do not, if our previous analysis has been correct, have the
feeling of self except in cases where such a contrast is present, but
that the feeling of self _is_ the feeling of the contrast. Hence our
result seems untouched by the undoubtedly sound general principle to
which we have referred.
That our conclusion is so frequently opposed by philosophers who adopt a
generally idealistic position, is, I believe, to be accounted for by the
prevalence of the belief that experience, as such, is essentially
characterised by consciousness of self. To experience at all, it is
commonly thought, is to be aware of one’s _self_ as in relation to an
environment of the not-self. Hence to deny that the absolute Reality is
a self is often thought to be equivalent to denying that it is an
experience at all and this, from the idealistic point of view, would
mean to deny that it is real. But if our previous analysis was sound, it
is not even true of human experience as such that it is everywhere
conditioned by the felt contrast of self with not-self. From the point
of view of that analysis, the contrast only exists where there is felt
discord between experience as a whole and some of its constituents. The
conception of our experience as essentially marked by a sense of self,
must therefore rest upon our intellectual reconstruction effected by the
transparent fiction of ascribing to every experience features which
analysis detects only in special cases and under special conditions.
Hence it is quite possible for us to unite the affirmation that all real
existence ultimately forms a single experience-system, with the denial
that that system is qualified by the contrast-effect we know as the
sense of self. How, indeed, should that outside which there is nothing
to afford the contrast, so distinguish itself from a purely imaginary
other?[192]
§ 3. If the Absolute is not a self, _a fortiori_ it is manifest that it
cannot be a “Person.” Exactly how much is intended when the
“personality” of the Absolute, or indeed of anything else, is affirmed,
it would not be easy to determine. A “self” does not seem to be
necessarily a “person,” since those philosophers who hold that there is
no reality but that of selves, while admitting that the lower animals
are selves, do not usually call them persons. But it is hard to say how
much more is included in personality than in selfhood. If we bear in
mind that personality is, in its origin, a _legal_ conception, and that
it is usually ascribed only to human beings, or to such superhuman
intelligences as are held capable of associating on terms of mutual
obligation with human beings, we may perhaps suggest the following
definition. A person is a being capable of being the subject of the
specific obligations attaching to a specific position in human society.
And it becomes manifest that, if this is so, personality is, as Mr.
Bradley has said, finite or meaningless.
For a society of persons is essentially one of ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι, social
peers, with purposes mutually complementary though not identical, and
standing in need of each other’s aid for the realisation of those
purposes. Only those beings are personal for me whose aims and purposes
are included along with mine in some wider and more harmonious system,
and to whom I therefore am bound by ties of reciprocal obligation. But
it is clear that, to ask whether the wider system which is thus the
foundation of our mutual rights and duties as persons, is itself a
person, would be ridiculous. Thus, _e.g._, there would be no sense in
asking whether “human society”—the foundation of our moral
personality—is itself a person. You might, in fact, as reasonably ask
whether it can be sued for trespass or assessed under schedule D for
Income Tax.
Still more manifestly is this true of the Absolute which includes within
it all the (conceivably infinitely numerous) groups of mutually
recognising persons, and all those other forms of experience which we
cannot properly call personal. Between the whole system and its
component elements there can be no such relation of mutual
supplementation and completion as is the essence of genuine personality.
If the system, as a whole, may be said to supplement and correct our
defects and shortcomings, we cannot be said, in any way, to supplement
it; the Absolute and I are emphatically not, in any true sense, ἴσοι καὶ
ὅμοιοι, and the relation between us cannot therefore be thought of as
personal. All this is so obvious, that, as I take it, the personality of
the Absolute or whole of existence would find no defenders but for the
gratuitous assumption that whatever is an individual experience or
spiritual unity must be personal. This, as far as I can see, is to
assume that such an individual _must_ have an external environment of
other experience-subjects of the same degree of harmonious and
comprehensive individuality. And for this assumption I can, speaking for
myself, see no ground whatever.[193]
§ 4. If we cannot, then, properly say that the Absolute, or the
Universe,—or whatever may be our chosen name for the infinite individual
which is the whole of existence,—is a self or person, can we say that
the finite individuals which compose it are one and all selves, and that
the Absolute is therefore a society of selves? Our answer to this
question must depend, I think, upon two considerations,—(_a_) the amount
of continuity we regard as essential to a self, and (_b_) the kind of
unity we attribute to a society.
(_a_) If we regard _any_ and every degree of felt teleological
continuity as sufficient to constitute a self, it is clear that we shall
be compelled to say that selves, and selves only, are the material of
which reality is composed. For we have already agreed that Reality is
exclusively composed of psychical fact, and that all psychical facts are
satisfactions of some form of subjective interest or craving, and
consequently that every psychical fact comprised in the whole system of
existence must form part of the experience of a finite individual
subject. Hence, if every such subject, whatever its degree of
individuality, is to be called a self, there will be no facts which are
not included somewhere in the life of one or more selves. On the other
hand, if we prefer, as I have done myself, to regard some degree of
intellectual development, sufficient for the _recognition_ of certain
permanent interests as those of the self, as essential to selfhood, we
shall probably conclude that the self is an individual of a relatively
high type, and that there are consequently experiences of so imperfect a
degree of teleological continuity as not to merit the title of selves.
And this conclusion seems borne out by all the empirically ascertained
facts of, _e.g._, the life of the lower animals, of human infants, and
again of adults of abnormally defective intellectual and moral
development. Few persons, unless committed to the defence of a theory
through thick and thin, would be prepared to call a worm a self, and
most of us would probably feel some hesitation about a new-born baby or
a congenital idiot. Again, finite societies are clearly components of
Reality, yet, as we have seen, it is probably an error to speak of a
society as a self, though every true society is clearly an individual
with a community and continuity of purpose which enable us rightly to
regard it as a unity capable of development, and to appreciate its
ethical worth. Hence it is, perhaps, less likely to lead to
misunderstandings if we say simply that the constituents of reality are
finite individual experiences, than if we say that they are selves. The
self, as we have seen, is a psychological category which only
imperfectly represents the facts of experience it is employed to
correlate.
(_b_) Again, if we speak of the Absolute as a society of finite
individuals, we ought at least to be careful in guarding ourselves
against misunderstanding. Such an expression has certainly some manifest
advantages. It brings out both the spiritual character of the system of
existence and the fact that, though it contains a plurality of finite
selves and contains them without discord, it is not properly thought of
as a self, but as a community of many selves.
At the same time, such language is open to misconstructions, some of
which it may be well to enumerate. We must not, for instance, assume
that all the individuals in the Absolute are necessarily in _direct_
social interrelation. For social relation, properly speaking, is only
possible between beings who are ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι at least in the sense of
having interests of a sufficiently identical kind to permit of
intercommunication and concerted cooperation for the realisation of a
common interest. And our own experience teaches us that the range of
existence with which we ourselves stand in this kind of relation is
limited. Even within the bounds of the human race the social relations
of each of us with the majority of our fellows are of an indirect kind,
and though with the advance of civilisation the range of those relations
is constantly being enlarged, it still remains to be seen whether a
“cosmopolitan” society is a realisable ideal or not. With the non-human
animal world our social relations, in consequence of the greater
divergence of subjective interest, are only of a rudimentary kind, and
with what appears to us as inanimate nature, as we have already seen,
direct social relation seems to be all but absolutely precluded.
Among the non-human animals, again, we certainly find traces of
relations of a rudimentarily social kind, but once more only within
relatively narrow limits; the different species and groups seem in the
main to be indifferent to one another. And we have no means of
disproving the possibility that there may be in the universe an
indefinite plurality of social groups, of an organisation equal or
superior to that of our human communities, but of a type so alien to our
own that no direct communication, not even of the elementary kind which
would suffice to establish their existence, is possible. We must be
prepared to entertain the possibility, then, that the individuals
composing the Absolute fall into a number of groups, each consisting of
members which have direct social relations of some kind with each other,
but not with the members of other groups.
And also, of course, we must remember that there may very well be
varieties of degree of structural complexity in the social groups
themselves. In some the amount of intelligent recognition on the part of
the individuals of their own and their fellows’ common scheme of
interests and purposes is probably less articulate, in others, again, it
may be more articulate than is the case in those groups of co-operating
human beings which form the only societies of which we know anything by
direct experience.
On the other hand, we must, if we speak of the Absolute as a society, be
careful to avoid the implication, which may readily arise from a false
conception of human societies, that the unity of the Absolute is a mere
conceptual fiction or “point of view” of our own, from which to regard
what is really a mere plurality of separate units. In spite of the now
fairly complete abandonment in words of the old atomistic theories,
which treated society as if it were a mere collective name for a
multitude of really independent “individuals,” it may be doubted whether
we always realise what the rejection of this view implies. We still tend
too much to treat the selves which compose a society, at least in our
Metaphysics, as if they were given to us in direct experience as
_merely_ exclusive of one another, rather than as complementary to one
another. In other words, of the two typical forms of experience from
which the concept of self appears to be derived, the experience of
conflict between our subjective interests and our environment, and that
of the removal of the discord, we too often pay attention in our
Metaphysics to the former to the neglect of the latter. But in actual
life it is oftener the latter that is prominent in our relations with
our fellow-men. _We_—the category of co-operation—is at least as
fundamental in all human thought and language as _I_ and _thou_, the
categories of mutual exclusion. That you and I are mutually
complementary factors in a wider whole of common interests, is at least
as early a discovery of mankind as that our private interests and
standpoints collide.
If we speak of existence as a society, then we must be careful to
remember that the individual unity of a society is just as real a fact
of experience as the individual unity of the members which compose it,
and that, when we call the Absolute a society rather than a self, we do
not do so with any intention of casting doubt upon its complete
spiritual unity as an individual experience. With these restrictions, it
would, I think, be fair to say that if the Absolute cannot be called a
society without qualification, at any rate human society affords the
best analogy by which we can attempt to represent its systematic unity
in a concrete conceptual form. To put it otherwise, a genuine human
society is an individual of a higher type of structure than any one of
the selves which compose it, and therefore more adequately represents
the structure of the one ultimately complete system of the Absolute.
We see this more particularly in the superior independence of Society as
compared with one of its own members. It is true, of course, that no
human society could exist apart from an external environment, but it
does not appear to be as necessary to the existence of society as to
that of a single self, that it should be sensible of the contrast
between itself and its rivals. As we have already sufficiently seen, it
is in the main from the experience of contrast with other human selves
that I come by the sense of my own selfhood. Though the contents of my
concept of self are not purely social, it does at least seem clear that
I could neither acquire it, nor retain it long, except for the presence
of other like selves which form the complement to it. But though history
teaches how closely similar is the part played by war and other
relations between different societies in developing the sense of a
common national heritage and purpose, yet a society, once started on its
course of development, does appear to be able to a large extent to
flourish without the constant stimulus afforded by rivalry or
co-operation with other societies. One man on a desert land, if left
long enough to himself, would probably become insane or brutish; there
seems no sufficient reason to hold that a single civilised community,
devoid of relations with others, could not, if its internal organisation
were sufficiently rich, flourish in a purely “natural” environment. On
the strength of this higher self-sufficiency, itself a consequence of
superior internal wealth and harmony, a true society may reasonably be
held to be a finite individual of a higher type than a single human
self.
The general result of this discussion, then, seems to be, that neither
in the self nor in society—at any rate in the only forms of it we know
to exist—do we find the complete harmony of structure and independence
of external conditions which are characteristic of ultimate reality.
Both the self and society must therefore be pronounced to be finite
appearance, but of the two, society exhibits the fuller and higher
individuality, and is therefore the more truly real. We found it quite
impossible to regard the universe as a single self; but, with certain
important qualifications, we said that it might be thought of as a
society without very serious error.[194] It will, of course, follow from
what has been said, that we cannot frame any finally adequate conception
of the way in which all the finite individual experiences form the unity
of the infinite experiences. That they must form such a perfect unity we
have seen in our Second Book; that the unity of a society is, perhaps,
the nearest analogy by which we can represent it, has been shown in the
present paragraph. That we have no higher categories which can
adequately indicate the precise way in which all existence ultimately
forms an even more perfect unity, is an inevitable consequence of the
fact of our own finitude. We cannot frame the categories, because we, as
finite beings, have not the corresponding experience. To this extent, at
least, it seems to me that any sound philosophy must end with a modest
confession of ignorance.
“There is in God, men say,
A deep but dazzling darkness,”
is a truth which the metaphysician’s natural desire to know as much as
possible of the final truth, should not lead him to forget.
§ 5. This is probably the place to make some reference to the question
whether the self is a permanent or only a temporary form in which
Reality appears. In popular thought this question commonly appears as
that of the immortality (sometimes, too, of the pre-existence) of the
soul. The real issue is, however, a wider one, and the problem of
immortality only one of its subsidiary aspects. I propose to say
something briefly on the general question, and also on the special one,
though in this latter case rather with a view to indicating the line
along which discussion ought to proceed, than with the aim of suggesting
a result.
It would not, I think, be possible to deny the temporary character of
the self after the investigations of the earlier part of this chapter. A
self, we said, is one and the same only in virtue of teleological
continuity of interest and purpose. But exactly how much variation is
enough to destroy this continuity, and how much again may exist without
abolishing it, we found it impossible to determine by any general
principle. Yet the facts of individual development seemed to make it
clear that new selves—_i.e._ new unique forms of interest in the
world—come into being in the time-process, and that old ones disappear.
And again, both from mental Pathology and from normal Psychology, we
found it easy to cite examples of the formation and disappearance,
within the life-history of a single man, of selves which it seemed
impossible to regard as connected by any felt continuity of interest
with the rest of life. In the case of multiple personality, and
alternating personality, we seemed to find evidence that a plurality of
such selves might alternate regularly, or even co-exist in connection
with the same body. The less striking, but more familiar, cases of the
passing selves of our dreams, and of temporary periods in waking life
where our interest and characters are modified, but not in a permanent
way by exceptional excitements, belong in principle to the same
category. In short, unless you are to be content with a beggarly modicum
of continuity of purpose too meagre to be more than an empty name, you
seem forced to conclude that the origination and again the disappearance
of selves in the course of psychical events is a fact of constant
occurrence. No doubt, the higher the internal organisation of our
interests and purposes, the more fixed and the less liable to serious
modification in the flux of circumstance our self becomes; but a self
absolutely fixed and unalterable was, as we saw, an unrealised and, on
the strength of our metaphysical certainty that only the absolute whole
is entirely self-determined, we may add, an unrealisable ideal. We seem
driven, then, to conclude that the permanent identity of the self is a
matter of degree, and that we are not entitled to assert that the self
corresponding to a single organism need be either single or persistent.
It is possible for me, even in the period between birth and death, to
lose my old self and acquire a new one, and even to have more selves
than one, and those of different degrees of individual structure, at the
same time. Nor can we assign any certain criterion by which to decide in
all cases whether the self has been one and identical through a series
of psychical events. Beyond the general assertion that the more
completely occupied our various interests and purposes are, the more
permanent is our selfhood, we are unable to go.[195]
These considerations have an important bearing on the vexed question of
a future life. If they are justified, we clearly cannot have any
positive demonstration from the nature of the self of its
indestructibility, and it would therefore be in vain to demand that
philosophy shall prove the permanence of all selves. On the other hand,
if the permanence of a self is ultimately a function of its inner unity
of aim and purpose, there is no _a priori_ ground for holding that the
physical event of death _must_ necessarily destroy this unity, and so
that the self _must_ be perishable at death. For Metaphysics, the
problem thus seems to resolve itself into a balancing of probabilities,
and, as an illustration of the kind of consideration which has to be
taken into account, it may be worth while to inquire what probable
arguments may fairly be allowed to count on either side.
On the negative side, if we dismiss, as we fairly may, the unproved
assertions of dogmatic Materialism, we have to take account of the
possibility that a body may, for all we know, be a necessary condition
for the existence of an individual experience continuous in interest and
purpose with that of our present life, and also of the alleged absence
of any positive empirical evidence for existence after death. These
considerations, however, scarcely seem decisive. As to the first, I do
not see how it can be shown that a body is indispensable, at least in
the sense of the term “body” required by the argument. It is no doubt
true that in the experience of any individual there must be the two
aspects of fresh teleological initiative and of already systematised
habitual and quasi-mechanical repetition of useful reactions already
established, and further, that intercourse between different individuals
is only possible through the medium of such a system of established
habits. As we have already seen, what we call our body is simply a name
for such a set of habitual reactions through which intercommunication
between members of human societies is rendered possible. Hence, if we
generalise the term “body” to stand for any system of habitual reactions
discharging this function of serving as a medium of communication
between individuals forming a society, we may fairly say that a body is
indispensable to the existence of a self. But it seems impossible to
show that the possibility of such a medium of communication is removed
by the dissolution of the particular system of reactions which
constitutes our _present_ medium of intercourse. The dissolution of the
present body _might_ mean no more than the individual acquisition of
changed types of habitual reaction, types which no longer serve the
purpose of communication with the members of _our_ society, but yet may
be an initial condition of communication with other groups of
intelligent beings.
As to the absence of empirical evidence, it is, of course, notorious
that some persons at least claim to possess such evidence of the
continued existence of the departed. Until the alleged facts have been
made the subject of serious and unbiassed collection and examination, it
is, I think, premature to pronounce an opinion as to their evidential
value. I will therefore make only one observation with respect to some
of the alleged evidence from “necromancy.” It is manifest that the only
kind of continuance which could fairly be called a survival of the self,
and certainly the only kind in which we need feel any interest, would be
the persistence after death of our characteristic interests and
purposes. Unless the “soul” continued to live for aims and interests
teleologically continuous with those of its earthly life, there would be
no genuine extension of our selfhood beyond the grave. Hence any kind of
evidence for continued existence which is not at the same time evidence
for continuity of interests and purposes, is really worthless when
offered as testimony to “immortality.” The reader will be able to apply
this reflection for himself if he knows anything of the “phenomena” of
the vulgar Spiritualism.[196]
When we turn to the positive side of the question, it seems necessary to
remark that though the negative considerations we have just referred to
are not of themselves enough to disprove “immortality,” provided there
is any strong ground for taking it as a fact, they would be quite
sufficient to decide against it, unless there is positive reason for
accepting it. That we have no direct evidence of such a state of things,
and cannot see precisely _how_ in detail it could come about, would not
be good logical ground for denying its existence if it were demanded by
sound philosophical principles. On the other hand, if there were no
reasons for believing in it, and good, though not conclusive, probable
reasons against it, we should be bound to come provisionally to a
negative conclusion.
Have we then any positive grounds at all to set against the negative
considerations just discussed? Pending the result of inquiries which
have recently been set on foot, it is hard to speak with absolute
confidence; still, the study of literature does, I think, warrant us in
provisionally saying that there seems to be a strong and widely diffused
feeling, at least in the Western world, that life without any hope of
continuance after death would be an unsatisfactory thing. This feeling
expresses itself in many forms, but I think they can all be traced to
one root. Normally, as we know, the extinction of a particular
teleological interest is effected by its realisation; our purposes die
out, and our self so far suffers change, when their result has been
achieved. (And incidentally this may help us to see once more that
dissatisfaction and imperfection are of the essence of the finite self.
The finite self lives on the division of idea from reality, of intent
from execution. If the two could become identical, the self would have
lost the atmosphere from which it draws its life-breath.) Hence, if
death, in our experience, always took the form of the dissolution of a
self which had already seen its purposes fulfilled and its aims
achieved, there would probably be no incentive to desire or believe in
future continuance. But it is a familiar fact that death is constantly
coming as a violent and irrational interrupter of unrealised plans and
inchoate work. The self seems to disappear not because it has played its
part and finished its work, but as the victim of external accident. I
think that analysis would show, under the various special forms which
the desire for immortality takes, such as the yearning to renew
interrupted friendships or the longing to continue unfinished work, as
their common principle, the feeling of resentment against this apparent
defeat of intelligent purpose by brute external accident.[197]
Now, what is the logical value of this feeling as a basis for argument?
We may fairly say, on the one hand, that it rests on a sound principle.
For it embodies the conviction, of which all Philosophy is the
elaboration, that the real world is a harmonious system in which
irrational accident plays no part, and that, if we could only see the
whole truth, we should realise that there is no final and irremediable
defeat for any of our aspirations, but all are somehow made good. On the
other side, we must remember that the argument from the desire for
continuance to its reality also goes on to assert not only that our
aspirations are somehow fulfilled and our unfinished work somehow
perfected, but that this fulfilment takes place in the particular way
which we, with our present lights, would wish. And in maintaining this,
the argument goes beyond the conclusion which philosophical first
principles warrant.
For it might be that, if our insight into the scheme of the world were
less defective, we should cease to desire this special form of
fulfilment, just as in growing into manhood we cease to desire the kind
of life which appeared to us as children the ideal of happiness. The
man’s life-work may be the realisation of the child’s dreams, but it
does not realise them in the form imagined by childhood. And conceivably
it might be so with our desire for a future life. Further, of course,
the logical value of the argument from feeling must to some extent
depend upon the universality and persistence of the feeling itself. We
must not mistake for a fundamental aspiration of humanity what may be
largely the effect of special traditions and training. Hence we cannot
truly estimate the worth of the inference from feeling until we know
both how far the feeling itself is really permanent in our own society,
and how far, again, it exists in societies with different beliefs and
traditions. In itself the sentiment, _e.g._, of Christian civilisation,
cannot be taken as evidence of the universal feeling of mankind, in the
face of the apparently opposite feelings, _e.g._, of Brahmins and
Buddhists.
I should conclude, then, that the question of a future life must remain
an open one for Metaphysics. We seem unable to give any valid
metaphysical arguments for a future life, but then, on the other hand,
the negative presumptions seem to be equally devoid of cogency.
Philosophy, in this matter, to use the fine phrase of Dr. McTaggart,
“gives us hope,”[198] and I cannot, for my own part, see that it can do
more. Possibly, as Browning suggests in _La Saisiaz_, it is not
desirable, in the interests of practical life, that it should do more.
And here I must leave the question with the reader, only throwing out
one tentative suggestion for his approval or rejection as he pleases.
Since we have seen that the permanence of the self depends upon its
degree of internal harmony of structure, it is at least conceivable that
its continuance as a self, beyond the limits of earthly life, may depend
on the same condition. Conceivably the self may survive death, as it
survives lesser changes in the course of physical events, _if_ its unity
and harmony of purpose are strong enough, and not otherwise. If so, a
future existence would not be a heritage into which we are safe to step
when the time comes, but a conquest to be won by the strenuous devotion
of life to the acquisition of a rich, and at the same time orderly and
harmonious, moral selfhood. And thus the belief in a future life, in so
far as it acts in any given case as a spur to such strenuous living,
might be itself a factor in bringing about its own fulfilment. It is
impossible to affirm with certainty that this is so, but, again, we
cannot deny that it may be the case. And here, as I say, I must be
content to leave the problem.[199]
_Consult further_:—B. Bosanquet, _Psychology of the Moral Self_, lect.
5; F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, chaps. 9 (The Meanings of
Self), 10 (The Reality of Self), 26 (The Absolute and its
Appearances,—especially the end of the chapter, pp. 499-511 of 1st ed.),
27 (Ultimate Doubts); L. T. Hobhouse, _Theory of Knowledge_, part 3,
chap. 5; S. Hodgson, _Metaphysic of Experience_, bk. iv. chap. 4; Hume,
_Treatise of Human Nature_, bk. i part 4, §§ 5, 6; W. James, _Principles
of Psychology_, vol. i. chap. 10; H. Lotze, _Metaphysic_, bk. iii chaps.
1 (especially § 245), 5; _Microcosmus_, bk. iii. c. 5; J. M. E.
McTaggart, _Studies in Hegelian Cosmology_, chap. 2 (for a detailed
hostile examination of Dr. McTaggart’s argument, which I would not be
understood to endorse except on special points, see G. E. Moore in
_Proceedings of Aristotelian Society_, N.S. vol. ii. pp. 188-211); J.
Royce, _The World and the Individual_, Second Series, lects. 6, 7.
-----
Footnote 184:
“Bodily identity” itself, of course, might give rise to difficult
problems if we had space to go into them. Here I can merely suggest
certain points for the reader’s reflection. (1) All identity appears
in the end to be teleological and therefore psychical. I believe this
to be the _same_ human body which I have seen before, because I
believe that the interests expressed in its actions will be
continuous, experience having taught me that a certain amount of
physical resemblance is a rough-and-ready criterion of psychical
continuity. (2) As to the ethical problem of responsibility referred
to in the text, it is obviously entirely one of less and more. Our
moral verdicts upon our own acts and those of others are in practice
habitually influenced by the conviction that there are degrees of
moral responsibility within what the immediate necessities of
administration compel us to treat as absolute. We do not, _e.g._,
think a man free from all moral blame for what he does when drunk, or
undeserving of all credit for what he performs when “taken out of
himself,” _i.e._ out of the rut of his habitual interests by
excitement, but we certainly do, when not under the influence of a
theory, regard him as deserving of _less_ blame or credit, as the case
may be, for his behaviour than if he had performed the acts when he
was “more himself.” On all these topics see Mr. Bradley’s article in
_Mind_ for July 1902.
Footnote 185:
So “self-consciousness,” in the bad sense, always arises from a sense
of an incongruity between the self and some contrasted object or
environment.
Footnote 186:
Though, of course, it does appear in the process of framing and
initiating the scheme of concerted action; the other self is here
contrasted with my own, precisely because the removal of the collision
between my purpose and my environment is felt as coming from without.
Footnote 187:
It might be said that it is not these features of the environment
themselves, but my “ideas” of them, which thus belong to the self.
This sounds plausible at first, but only because we are habitually
accustomed to the “introjectionist” substitution of psychological
symbols for the actualities of life. On the question of fact, see
Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, chap. 8, p. 88 ff. (1st ed.).
Footnote 188:
A colleague of my own tells me that in his case movements of the eyes
appear to be inseparable from the consciousness of self, and are
incapable of being extruded into the not-self in the sense above
described. I do not doubt that there are, in each of us, bodily
feelings of this kind which refuse to be relegated to the not-self and
that it would be well worth while to institute systematic inquiries
over as wide an area as possible about their precise character in
individual cases. It appears to me, however, as I have stated above,
that in ordinary perception these bodily feelings often are
apprehended simply as qualifying the perceived content without any
opposition of self and not-self. At any rate, the problem is one of
those fundamental questions in the theory of cognition which are too
readily passed over in current Psychology.
Footnote 189:
Of course, you can frame the concept of a “self” from which even these
bodily feelings have been extruded, and which is thus a mere
“cognitive subject” without concrete psychical quality. But as such a
mere logical subject is certainly not the self of which we are aware
in any concrete experience, and still more emphatically not the self
in which the historical and ethical sciences are interested, I have
not thought it necessary to deal with it in the text.
Footnote 190:
That we cannot imagine it does not appear to be any ground for denying
its actuality. It is never a valid argument against a conclusion
required to bring our knowledge into harmony with itself, that we do
not happen to possess the means of envisaging it in sensuous imagery.
Footnote 191:
I venture to think that some of the rather gratuitous hypotheses as to
the rational selfhood of animal species _quà_ species put forward by
Professor Royce in the second volume of _The World and the
Individual_, are illustrations of this tendency to unnecessary
over-interpretation.
Footnote 192:
Is it necessary to refer in particular to the suggestion that for the
Absolute the contrast-effect in question may be between itself and its
component manifestations or appearances? This would only be possible
if the finite appearances were contained in the whole in some way
which allowed them to remain at discord with one another, _i.e._ in
some way incompatible with the systematic character which is the
fundamental quality of the Absolute. I am glad to find myself in
accord, on the general principle at least, with Dr. McTaggart. See the
Third Essay in his recent _Studies in Hegelian Cosmology_.
Footnote 193:
It would be fruitless to object that “societies” can, in fact, have a
legal corporate personality, and so can—to revert to the illustration
used above—be sued and taxed. What can be thus dealt with is always a
mere _association_ of definite individual human beings, who may or may
not form a genuine spiritual unity. _E.g._, you might proceed against
the Commissioners of Income Tax, but this does not prove that the
Commissioners of Income Tax are a genuine society. On the other hand,
the Liberal-Unionist Party probably possesses enough community of
purpose to enable it to be regarded as a true society, but has no
legal personality, and consequently no legal rights or obligations,
_as a party_. Similarly, the corporation known as the Simeon Trustees
has a legal personality with corresponding rights and duties, and it
also stands in close relation with the evangelical party in the
Established Church. And this party is no doubt a true ethical society.
But the corporation is not the evangelical party, and the latter, in
the sense in which it is a true society, is not a legal person.
I may just observe that the question whether the Absolute is a self or
a person must not be confounded with the question of the “personality
of God.” We must not assume off-hand that “God” and the Absolute are
identical. Only special examination of the phenomena of the religious
life can decide for us whether “God” is necessarily the whole of
Reality. If He is not, it would clearly be possible to unite a belief
in “God’s” personality with a denial of the personality of the
Absolute, as is done, _e.g._, by Mr. Rashdall in his essay in
_Personal Idealism_. For some further remarks on the problem, see
below, Chapter V.
Footnote 194:
I suppose that any doctrine which denies the ultimate reality of the
finite self must expect to be confronted by the appeal to the alleged
revelation of immediate experience. _Cogito, ergo sum_, is often taken
as an immediately certain truth in the sense that the existence of
myself is something of which I am directly aware in every moment of
consciousness. This is, however, an entire perversion of the facts.
Undoubtedly the fact of there being experience is one which can be
verified by the very experiment of trying to deny it. Denial itself is
a felt experience. But it is (_a_) probably not true that we cannot
have experience at all without an accompanying perception of self, and
(_b_) certainly not true that the mere feeling of self as in contrast
with a not-self, when we do get it, is what is meant by the self of
Ethics and History. The self of these sciences always embraces more
than can be given in any single moment of experience, it is an ideal
construction by which we connect moments of experience according to a
general scheme. The value of that scheme for any science can only be
tested by the success with which it does its work, and its truth is
certainly not established by the mere consideration that the facts it
aims at connecting are actual. Metaphysics would be the easiest of
sciences if you could thus take it for granted that any construction
which is based upon some aspect of experienced fact must be valid.
Footnote 195:
This is why Plato seems justified in laying stress upon the dreams of
the wise man as evidence of his superiority (_Republic_, bk. ix. p.
571). His ideal wise man is one whose inner life is so completely
unified that there is genuine continuity of purpose between his waking
and sleeping state. Plato might perhaps have replied to Locke’s query,
that _Socrates_ waking and _Socrates_ asleep _are_ the same person,
and their identity is testimony to the exceptional wisdom and virtue
of Socrates.
If it be thought that at least the _simultaneous_ co-existence within
one of two selves is inconceivable, I would ask the reader to bear in
mind that the _self_ always includes more than is at any moment given
as actual matter of psychical fact. At any moment the self must be
taken to consist for the most part of unrealised _tendencies_, and in
so far as such ultimately incompatible tendencies are part of my whole
nature, at the same time it seems reasonable to say that I have
simultaneously more than one self. Ultimately, no doubt, this line of
thought would lead to the conclusion that “my whole nature” itself is
only relatively a whole.
Footnote 196:
Compare the valuable essay by Mr. Bradley on the “Evidence of
Spiritualism” in _Fortnightly Review_ for December 1885.
Footnote 197:
Death, however, though the most striking, is not the only illustration
of this apparently irrational interference of accident with
intelligent purpose. Mental and bodily disablement, or even adverse
external fortune, may have the same effect upon the self. This must be
taken into account in any attempt to deal with the general problem.
Footnote 198:
Dr. McTaggart’s phrase is more exactly adequate to describe my view
than his own, according to which “immortality” is capable of
philosophical proof. (See the second chapter of his _Studies in
Hegelian Cosmology_.) I have already explained why I cannot accept
this position. I believe Dr. McTaggart’s satisfaction with it must be
partly due to failure to raise the question _what it is_ that he
declares to be a “fundamental differentiation” of the Absolute.
Footnote 199:
I ought perhaps to say a word—more I do not think necessary—upon the
doctrine that immortality is a fundamental “moral postulate.” If this
statement means no more than that it would be inconsistent with the
rationality of the universe that our work as moral agents should be
simply wasted, and that therefore it must somehow have its
accomplishment whether we see it in our human society or not, I should
certainly agree with the general proposition. But I cannot see that we
know enough of the structure of the universe to assert that this
accomplishment is only possible in the special form of immortality. To
revert to the illustration of the text, (1) our judgment that the
world must be a worthless place without immortality _might_ be on a
level with the child’s notion that “grown-up” life, to be worth
having, must be a life of continual play and no work. (2) If it is
meant, however, that it is not “worth while” to be virtuous unless you
can look forward to remuneration—what Hegel, according to Heine,
called a _Trinkgeld_—hereafter for not having lived like a beast, the
proposition appears to me a piece of immoral nonsense which it would
be waste of time to discuss.
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