THE CONSCIO USNESS OF SELF. 335 



absolute Uuitj in which all diflferences are overwhelmed. 

 The past and present selves compared are the same just so 

 far as they are the same, and no farther. A uniform feeling 

 of * warmth,' of bodily existence (or an equally uniform feel- 

 ing of pure psychic energy ?) pervades them all ; and this is 

 what gives them a generic unity, and makes them the same 

 in kind. But this generic unity coexists with generic differ- 

 ences just as real as the unity. And if from the one point 

 of view they are one self, from others they are as truly 

 not one but many selves. And similarly of the attribute of 

 continuity ; it gives its own kind of unity to the self — that 

 of mere connectedness, or unbrokenness, a perfectly definite 

 phenomenal thing — but it gives not a jot or tittle more. 

 And this unbrokenness in the stream of selves, like the 

 unbrokenness in an exhibition of 'dissolving views,' in no 

 Avise implies any farther unity or contradicts any amount 

 of plurality in other respects. 



And accordingly we find that, where the resemblance and 

 the continuity are no longer felt, the sense of personal iden- 

 tity goes too. We hear from our parents various anecdotes 

 about our infant years, but we do not appropriate them as 

 we do our own memories. Those breaches of decorum 

 awaken no blush, those bright sayings no self-complacency. 

 That child is a foreign creature with which our present 

 self is no more identified in feeling than it is with some 

 stranger's living child to-day. Why ? Partly because 

 great time-gaps break up all these early years — we cannot 

 a.scend to them by continuous memories ; and partly be- 

 cause no representation of liow the child/e?^ comes up with 

 the stories. We know what he said and did ; but no senti- 

 ment of his little body, of his emotions, of his psychic striv- 

 ings as they felt to him, comes up to contribute an element 

 of warmth and intimacy to the narrative we bear, and the 

 main bond of union with our present self thus disappears. 

 It is the same with certain of our dimly-recollected experi- 

 ences. We hardly know whether to appropriate them or 

 to disown them as fancies, or things read or heard and not 

 lived through. Their animal heat has evaporated ; the feel- 

 ings that accompanied them are so lacking in the recall, or 



