28o MAN AND THE WORLD. 



with Kant's phraseology, it is called " transcend- 

 ent^/," because its existence is not directly pre- 

 sented, but inferred, based upon a metaphysical 

 inference from the phenomenal to the transcendent} 

 On the other hand, our ordinary selves 2X^ phenome- 

 nal, just as phenomenal as the phenomenal world. 

 We can discover our character only from our 

 thoughts, feelings, and actions, and introspective 

 psychology is a science of observation. It is by 

 experience and experiment that we arrive at a 

 knowledge of ourselves, by an examination of the 

 varying flow of consciousness. But in order to be 

 conscious of the connection of the flow of phenomena 

 in consciousness, in order to be convinced that my 

 feelings to-day and yesterday both belong to me, 

 it is necessary that there should be something 

 pe7'manent which connects them (cp. ch. v. § 3). This 

 permanent being, which holds together the Becoming 

 of the phenomenal selves, is secured by the Trans- 

 cendental Ego, which is, as it were, the for7n con- 

 taining as its content the whole of our psychic life. 

 But the form cannot be separated from its conteHt 

 (ch. ii. § 14), and hence the Ego cannot be rediv:ed 

 to an empty form, or regarded as different fro«i the 

 Self. They must be in some way one, an-^ their 

 unity must correspond to our conviction ^hat we 

 change and yet are the same. What, tb^n, is the 

 relation of the Ego to the Self? For i* seems that 



1 7'here is, however, this difference : in Ka'^^ " transcenden- 

 tal" = that which is reached by an epistemy^gical argument, 

 a truth imphed in the nature of our knowlec^- Having, how- 

 ever, rejected epistemology, we must modi/ ^^e meaning of a 

 ''transcendental proof" into being "a proc/^f the transcendent," 

 viz., that which transcends— not expe/"ce generally, as in 

 Kant— but our actual presentations, />./hich is based on meta- 

 physical necessities. 



