THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 333 



present self tlie same with one of tlie past selves which it 

 has iu mind. 



We spoke a moment since of warmth and intimacy. 

 This leads us to the answer sought. For, whatever the 

 thought we are criticising may think about its present self, 

 that self comes to its acquaintance, or is actually felt, with 

 warmth and intimacy. Of course this is the case with the 

 bodily part of it ; we feel the whole cubic mass of our body 

 all the while, it gives us an unceasing sense of personal 

 existence. Equally do we feel the inner 'nucleus of the 

 spiritual self,' either in the shape of yon faint physiological 

 adjustments, or (adopting the universal psychological be- 

 lief), in that of the pure activity of our thought taking 

 place as such. Our remoter spiritual, material, and social 

 selves, so far as they are realized, come also with a glow 

 and a warmth ; for the thought of them infallibly brings 

 some degree of organic emotion in the shape of quickened 

 heart-beats, oppressed breathing, or some other alteration, 

 even though it be a slight one, in the general bodily tone. 

 The character of ' warmth,' then, in the present self, re- 

 duces itself to either of two things, — something in the feel- 

 ing which we have of the thought itself, as thinking, or else 

 the feeling of the body's actual existence at the moment, — 

 or finally to both. We cannot realize our present self with- 

 out simultaneously feeling one or other of these two things. 

 Any other fact which brings these two things with it into 

 consciousness will be thought Avith a Avarmth and an inti- 

 macy like those which cling to the j^resent self. 



Any distant self which fulfils this condition will be 

 thought with such warmth and intimacy. But which 

 distant selves do fulfil the condition, when represented? 



Obviously those, and only those, which fulfilled it when 

 they were alive. Them we shall imagine with the animal 

 warmth upon them, to them may possibly cling the aroma, 

 the echo of the thinking taken in the act. And by a natural 

 consequence, we shall assimilate them to each other and 

 to the warm and intimate self we now feel within us as we 

 think, and separate them as a collection from whatever 

 selves have not this mark, much as out of a herd of cattle 

 let loose for the winter on some wide western prairie the 



