ON IMMORTALITY. 151 



out of their definitions the desired conclusions which they 

 had already secretly placed there, or which at least they 

 could scarcely avoid knowing were implicitly folded up 

 in the hypotheses they started with. And it was one of 

 the great tasks which Kant imposed upon himself to 

 unmask and discredit all these pretended proofs of the 

 soul's necessary immortality a work accomplished by 

 him so very effectually as for ever to discredit this line 

 of argument for a future life. But strange to say, this 

 great destroyer of other metaphysical constructions, 

 having completely demolished the old theories of the 

 soul and destroyed the old proofs of its immortality, 

 raised up a theory of his own, which, though more pro- 

 found and possibly more invulnerable to logical or meta- 

 physical assault, is, for all practical purposes, and to 

 those not versed in the subtleties of metaphysical specu- 

 lations, substantially the same as the theories destroyed, 

 and open to hardly less weighty objections than lay 

 against them. For, after all, there was a self, or ego, 

 underlying our phenomenal consciousness, though, dive 

 we never so deep with introverted psychological eyes, 

 we could not find it or come into contact with it in any 

 way. There was a real self, though completely and 

 effectually shrouded from our view. There was a real 

 ego, different from the merely empirical ego, from the 

 common ego of our ordinary acquaintance, such as our 

 consciousness shows it to us ; but of this real ego we can 

 only know the existence and nothing more. Hume was 

 consequently right when he said, "We never find what 

 is called self, but only a conscious impression when we 

 look inward." He was only wrong in denying that there 

 was any self, an error corrected by Kant. The ego exists 

 beneath, or rather outside, consciousness. It is a nou- 

 menon, a ding-an-sich, an indescribable something, safely 



