THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 289 



black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds 

 of swarming atoms whicli science calls the only real world. 

 But all the while the world ive feel and live in will be that 

 which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes 

 of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by 

 simply rejecting certain portions of the given stuff. Otner 

 sculptors, other statues from the same stone ! Other minds, 

 other worlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive 

 chaos ! My world is but one in a million alike embedded, 

 alike real to those who may abstract them. How different 

 must be the worlds in the consciousness of ant, cuttle-fish, 

 or crab ! 



But in my mind and your mind the rejected portions and 

 the selected portions of the original world-stuff are to a 

 great extent the same. The human race as a whole largely 

 agrees as to what it shall notice and name, and what not. 

 And among the noticed parts we select in much the same 

 way for accentuation and preference or subordination and 

 dislike. There is, however, one entirely extraordinary case 

 in which no two men ever are known to choose alike. One 

 great splitting of the whole universe into two halves is 

 made by each of us; and for each of us almost all of the 

 interest attaches to one of the halves ; but we all draw 

 the line of division between them in a different place. 

 When I say that we all call the two halves by the same 

 names, and that those names are ' me ' and ' not-me ' re- 

 spectively, it will at once be seen what I mean. The alto- 

 gether unique kind of interest which each human mind 

 feels in those parts of creation which it can call me or mine 

 may be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychologi- 

 cal fact. No mind can take the same interest in his neigh- 

 bor's me as in his own. The neighbor's me falls togethei 

 with all the rest of things in one foreign mass, against which 

 his own me stands out in startling relief. Even the trodden 

 worm, as Lotze somewhere says, contrasts his own suffer- 

 ing self with the whole remaining universe, though he have 

 no clear conception either of himself or of what the uni- 

 verse may be. He is for me a mere part of the world ; 



