CHAPTER VIII 

 SELF 



ATTENTION is generally given to the thinking 

 device of the human being, with the idea, 

 that it is "the self," a changeless ego. 

 Descartes founded his philosophy upon this 

 idea. He said: "I attentively examined what I was, 

 and I observed that I could suppose, that I had no 

 body, and there was no world, nor any place in which 

 I might be, but that I could not therefore suppose that 

 I was not; I thence concluded that I was a substance 

 whose sole essence, or nature, consists only in thinking, 

 and which, that it may exist, has no need of place, nor 

 is dependent on any material thing; so that 'I,' that 

 is to say, the mind, by which I am what I am, is wholly 

 distinct from the body, and is more easily known than 

 the latter, and is such that although the latter were 

 not, it would still continue to be all that it is." This 

 means that the process of co-ordination of sensations, 

 in the encephalon, into ideas, i. e., the process of think- 

 ing, is an entity, the only abiding thing in the indi- 

 vidual, or body. It means what later phychologists 

 call "consciousness," or "pure experience." in which 

 the only real thing is the object, is something entirely 

 different from the rest of nature. 



Bergson calls this ' ' a flux of fleeting shades, merging 

 into each other." "An ego which does not change, 

 does not endure. ' ' All reality is a constant change. It 

 is apparent, from the argument of the preceding pages, 

 that this is only a passing phenomenon, that accom- 

 panies matter, when that matter is in the form of 

 living tissue. 



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