From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



a directing and centralising principle, creating the Self 

 and maintaining its permanence. 



Le Dantec thus explains the permanence of the 

 Self. 



' Individual consciousness,' he says, * is not 

 invariable; it is slowly and continuously modified 

 along with the incessant changes produced in our 

 organism by the functional assimilation which accom- 

 panies all our acts; it is this which constitutes the 

 variation of our personality; but in accordance with 

 the laws of assimilation and the specific coherence 

 of plastic substances, there will be continuity in 

 time between these successive personalities; and it 

 is for this reason that the psychological Self accom- 

 panies the physiological individual through all its 

 unceasing modifications from birth to death.' 



By a reaction against the old vitalist or spiritualist 

 hypotheses, this concept of the Self as an elementary 

 synthesis is accepted by the vast majority of contem- 

 porary psycho-physiologists, all their efforts being 

 directed to force it into agreement with the usual con- 

 sciousness of personal unity. Hoeffding, 1 Paulhan, 2 

 Wundt, 8 and many others have rivalled each other in 

 this impossible task. To get over the difficulty they 

 sometimes have recourse to psycho-metaphysical entities. 

 Claude Bernard in physiology invoked the ' Directing 

 Idea.' Wundt, in psychology, attributes the unifying 

 function to what he calls ' apperception.' 



These subtleties have not advanced the matter a 

 single step. ' Whatever point of view we take,' says 

 Boutroux, ' multiplicity does not contain a reason for 

 unity.' * 



1 Hoeffding : Esquisse d'une Psychologie Fondie sur l'E*p6riei 

 8 Paulhan : L'ActiviU Mentale. 



Wundt : Physiologische Psychologie. 



* Boutroux : De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature. 



76 



ence. 



