1 90 Immortality [CH. 



perhaps even debarred from using the argument from 

 the uniqueness of individuality 1 . All these are, in a 

 sense, founded on experience, but the discussion of them 

 is bound to be along lines more or less remote from the 

 principles of evolution. 



But with the argument from the experience of per- 

 sonal existence it is otherwise. This touches both 

 change, and persistence through change, since it deals 

 with that form of change which is progress, and further, 

 is conscious progress. 



7 change. That is the most vital of realities for a man, 

 and the statement embraces both factors. The change 

 is there, but it is not mere change, but the change of a 

 person who so persists in his self-identity that we can 

 speak of him as 7 throughout. It is not x who changes 

 into y and y into z. If that were so x would change to- 

 day, y to-morrow and z the next day. There would be no 

 continuity for the experient, however definite a serial 

 continuity there might appear to be for an outside 

 observer. A series of numbers in arithmetical progres- 

 sion has a certain continuity for us; each term is in- 

 volved in the previous ones, and we can determine with 

 absolute certainty any future term. But this continuity 

 only exists for us; they are different numbers, and even 

 if they could 'come alive,' as in a child's dream, they 

 would still be different numbers, not one number that is 

 changing. 



So too if change were all that we experienced there 

 would be no possibility of our experiencing anything at 

 all. It would not be our experience, for we should not 

 persist, nor have memories to enable us to relate our 

 various experiences. (This, incidentally, is one of the 

 strongest arguments against the doctrine of reincarna- 

 tion as usually held.) 



1 See Royce's Ingersoll Lectures on The Conception of Immor- 

 tality. 



