THE REALITY OF THE SELF. 139 



consciousness (cf. iii. § 3) : It was concerned only to 

 establish the existence of an irreconcilable discord 

 within the soul. 



Nor does Pessimism care to deny the reality oi 

 the soul, for suffering could hardly be the supreme 

 reality, if the soul which suffered were not real. 

 The only thing that Scepticism and Pessimism 

 would protest against would be the attempt to 

 derive from the admission of the reality of the Self 

 an admission of its existence as a simple and Im- 

 mortal substance, after the fashion of the *' rational 

 psychology" of old; but this we have no intention of 

 doing. The existence of the Self is at present 

 asserted only as the basis of all knowledge, and in 

 this sense it cannot be validly doubted. Accord- 

 ingly it has been denied by Agnosticism rather than 

 by Scepticism, i.e. by a doctrine which turned out 

 inadequate on its own presuppositions. 



Among these denials of the existence of the Self 

 or soul, Hume's argument has the first claim on our 

 attention. 



He contends that the soul does not exist because 

 he never finds it existing without some particular 

 content, never catches himself without some " Im- 

 pression or Idea." This argument may be regarded 

 as an Ingenious rediictio ad abstirdum of Berkeley's- 

 nominalism, which denied the existence of universal 

 conceptions on the ground that the psychical images 

 in the mind always contained some irrelevant ac- 

 cessories. But It has no efficacy against all who- 

 avoid confounding the idea (or conception) as a 

 universal predicate with the (Image or) idea as a 

 psychological fact (cp. iii. § 15). And the conditions 

 upon which Hume would admit the existence of the 

 soul would seem to be of a ridiculous severity. So- 



