644 THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF INDIVIDUALITY 



acter. On the other hand, we often attribute to the outside and we blame others 

 for what is essentially determined by our own inherited and acquired consti- 

 tutions. 



Our mental processes, and in particular the thoughts concerned with our- 

 selves, function in a definite mental milieu, in a medium of nerve and 

 endocrine gland activity, to which we are accommodated. We have adapted 

 ourselves to a certain intensity of feeling, energy or lassitude, to a certain 

 kind of emotional reaction, to a certain mode of thinking and rhythm of 

 reactions taking place within ourselves and within others. In this milieu we 

 feel at home; it is here that we are accustomed to direct our thoughts, our 

 movements, to talk and to respond to other persons. If these processes take 

 place smoothly, we do not especially become aware of ourselves, of the control 

 we exert over ourselves and we take the continuity of our personality for 

 granted. We do not usually notice very gradual and connected changes. But 

 if our milieu is abruptly, acutely changed, our reactions are changed in a 

 sudden way. also; thus, under unfavorable environmental conditions, under 

 the influence of drugs, in sickness, we may become tense, irritable, involved in 

 conflict with others and with ourselves. Our usually self-controlling thoughts 

 cannot at once accommodate themselves to the altered organism on which 

 they have to act ; they find different effects, different responses ; there is an 

 interference with our personality, a disturbance in our continuity, a rift 

 within us. 



Similarly we are accustomed to the set of suggestions in which we live. 

 Often insidious in their action, these function in a mild way because we are 

 adapted to them, because they have been with us for a long time. They are 

 not considered as strange to us, as an outside product forced on us, but as 

 something adopted by us, or as having originated in our own thought system ; 

 they arouse no sensation of discontinuity in our self-directing personality. 

 But if we receive a sudden command, then we react to it as an interference 

 and as opposed to us. This changed situation is no longer compatible with 

 our feeling of freedom, continuity and self-consistency. The same result 

 follows if forced thoughts, new to us, incompatible with the rest of our 

 personality, develop in us. Then the idea of continuity in our individuality 

 is interrupted ; we experience an interference with our individuality, especially 

 if under the changed circumstances our responses become different and un- 

 controlled. However, should other disturbing factors interfere also with 

 our ability to reason, to analyze, then the consciousness of cleavage and of 

 discontinuity in our personality may be lacking. 



But under normal conditions we have the feeling that we are constant in 

 a changing world. We have an intimate acquaintance with our environment, 

 we have the knowledge of what to expect in it ; there is a certain permanence 

 from day to day in our bodily organism and it is distinct from other organ- 

 isms. Thus we are satisfied that our individuality is continuous, forming one 

 definite entity, that there is identity of the self in one moment with the self 

 of the past and of the future. 



And furthermore, the individual himself, as well as those around him, 



