336 PSYCIIOLOO Y. 



so different from those we now enjoj^ tliat no judgment oi 

 identity c:in be decisively cast. 



Resemblance among the parts of a continuum of feelings 

 (especially bodily feelings) experienced along with things 

 widely different in all other regards, thus constitutes the real 

 and verifahle 'personal identity ' ivhich ive feel. There is 

 no other identity than this in the ' stream ' of subjective 

 consciousness which we described in the last chapter. Its 

 parts differ, but under all their differences they are knit 

 in these two ways ; and if either way of knitting disappears, 

 the sense of unity departs. If a man wakes up some fine 

 day unable to recall any of his past experiences, so that 

 he has to learn his biography afresh, or if he only recalls 

 the facts of it in a cold abstract way as things that he is sure 

 once happened ; or if, without this loss of memory, his 

 bodily and spiritual habits all change during the night, each 

 organ giving a different tone, and the act of thought becom- 

 ing aware of itself in a different way ; he feels, and he says, 

 that he is a changed person. He disowns his former me, 

 gives himself a new name, identifies his present life Avith 

 nothing from out of the older time. Such cases are not 

 rare in mental pathology ; but, as we still have some rea- 

 soning to do, we had better give no concrete account of 

 them until the end of the chapter. 



This description of jDersonal identity will be recognized 

 by the instructed reader as the ordinary doctrine professed 

 by the empirical school. Associatiouists in England and 

 France, Herbartians in Germany, all describe the Self as 

 an aggregate of which each part, as to its being, is a separate 

 fact. So far so good, then ; thus much is true whatever 

 farther things may be true ; and it is to the imperishable 

 glory of Hume and Herbart and their successors to have 

 taken so much of the meaning of personal identity out of 

 the clouds and made of the Self an empirical and verifia- 

 ble thing. 



But in leaving the matter here, and saying that this sum 

 of passing things is all, these writers have neglected certain 

 more subtle aspects of the Unity of Consciousness, to which 

 we next must turn. 



