ON IMMORTALITY : COUNTERTHESIS. 181 



say, that other will be all as good as me, if the same 

 feeling of individuality and self-consciousness gathers 

 round it then and there, as here and now. And it may 

 be me to all intents and purposes without memory. For 

 memory is not necessary to the peculiar unique feeling of 

 self- consciousness which I have at this moment. Memory 

 is necessary to connect my present with my past ex- 

 perience, my present with my past consciousness ; but 

 it is not necessary in order to have the peculiar feeling 

 of individuality or self-consciousness unshared by any 

 other being, which is the essence of the fact of self. 

 There may have been past existence without memory; 

 there may be a future existence without memory, just 

 as my present feeling of conscious existence is inde- 

 pendent of memory. This last feeling may have place 

 if all memory were suddenly annihilated, as it sometimes 

 is under certain diseases, under abnormal psychical 

 states, and even every morning in all of us for a moment 

 after waking from sleep. JBut how, without the absurdest 

 metaphysical theories, objects the positivist, could that 

 other and future consciousness be you ? How and in 

 what sense can another being be you, more than any one 

 else, without the fact of memory to make the identifica- 

 tion ? The reply, then, in a word, is We cannot tell 

 how; but also it is to be particularly noted that the 

 feeling of self -consciousness, and of how. I am myself 

 now, is equally indescribable, equally beyond analysis 

 or explanation. None can tell what makes it, how I 

 have it, why it did not associate itself with another 

 rather than me, why it did not become the conscious 

 covering to another ego as its real core rather than mine, 

 why, in a word, to put it in the extremest form, it was 

 not another being rather than I which was born when I 

 was born, and which slowly awoke into consciousness 



