240 Heredity. 



nomena of different classes a sensation and an image, a sentiment 

 and an idea. 



Every analysis, therefore, of whatever kind, issues in this : that 

 consciousness conveys to me only a small part of what passes 

 within me. My personality is complex ; my unity is that of a 

 regiment, rather than that of a mathematical point. For, without 

 attempting the long and delicate task of analysing our personality, 

 we may say that it comprises at least four essential elements : (i) 

 We have as a basis for all the others, the general sense of the 

 existence of our body, of the play of its functions, of its normal or 

 morbid state. (2) The knowledge of our perceptions or actual 

 ideas. (3) The knowledge of our previous states. (4) The sense 

 of our activity that is to say, the faculty of knowing how we act 

 upon the outer world, and how we are acted on by it. 



But the same question constantly presents itself. How does all 

 this attain unity ? We are brought back again to this unavoidable 

 difficulty. Is the unity, without which there is no consciousness, 

 a reality or an abstraction ? There is here, we take it, an insoluble 

 antinomy. 



On the one hand, if we suppose the unit, the ego, the person, 

 to have any reality beyond the phenomena, we attribute real 

 existence to an abstraction. For if, ex hypothesi, I abstract from 

 my ego all the phenomenal plurality which manifests it my sensa- 

 tions, sentiments, ideas, resolutions, etc. the subject so denuded 

 is a mere possibility ; that is to say, the poorest, emptiest, hollowest 

 of abstractions. 



On the other hand, if we suppose that the phenomena alone are 

 real, and that the unit, the ego, the person, is but a sum, a result- 

 ant that is to say, an abstraction we enunciate an unintelligible 

 proposition ; for these phenomena which constitute me possess the 

 twofold character of being given to me as phenomena, and of 

 being given to me as mine. My sensations, sentiments, ideas in 

 short, all my states of consciousness imply a synthetic judgment, 

 in virtue of which they are referred to my personality and inte- 

 grated therewith. Without this synthetic judgment, all those 

 phenomena which are most intimate to me would be as foreign to 

 me as those which take place beyond Herschel's nebulae. Scat- 

 tered pearls do not make a necklace, there is need of a string to 



