330 PSYCHOLOGY. 



be said of the constituents of tlie phenomenal self, and 

 of the nature of self-regard. Our decks are consequently 

 cleared for the struggle with that pure principle of personal 

 identity which has met us all along our preliminary expo- 

 sition, but which we have always shied from and treated as 

 a difficulty to be postponed. Ever since Hume's time, it 

 has been justly regarded as the most puzzling puzzle wdth 

 w'hich psychology has to deal ; and whatever view one may 

 espouse, one has to hold his position against heavy odds. 

 If, with the Spiritualists, one contend for a substantial soul^ 

 or transcendental principle of unity, one can give no positive 

 account of what that may be. And if, with the Humians, 

 one deny such a principle and say that the stream of pass- 

 ing thoughts is all, one runs against the entire common- 

 sense of mankind, of which the belief in a distinct principle 

 of selfhood seems an integral part. Whatever solution be 

 adopted in the pages to come, we may as well make up our 

 minds in advance that it will fail to satisfy the majority of 

 those to whom it is addressed. The best way of approach- 

 ing the matter wall be to take up first — 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 



In the last chapter it was stated in as radical a way as 

 possible that the thoughts which we actually know to exist 

 do not fly about loose, but seem each to belong to some one 



Bain, in this place, as an emotion diverted to ourselves from a more im- 

 mediate object, "in a manner that -vve may term fictitious and unreal. 

 Still, as we can view self in the light of another person, we can feel towards 

 it the emotion of pity called forth by others in our situation." 



This account of Professor Bain's is, it will be observed, a good specimen 

 of the old-fashioned mode of explaining the several emotions as rapid cal- 

 culations of results, and the transfer of feeling from one object to another, 

 associated by contiguity or similarity with the first. Zoological evolu- 

 tionism, which came up since Professor Bain first wrote, has made us see, on 

 the contrary, that many emotions mir4 be primitively aroused by special 

 objects. Xone are more worthy of being ranked primitive than the self- 

 gratulation and humiliation attendant on our own successes and failures in 

 the main functions of life. We need no borrowed reflection for these feel- 

 ings. Profes.sor Bain's account applies to but that small fraction of our 

 self-feeling which reflective criticism can mid to, or subtract from, the 

 total mass. — Lotze has some pages on the modifications of our self-regard 

 by universal judgments, in Microcosmus, bonk v. chap, v g 5. 



