342 PSYCHOLOGY. 



as a psychologic fact, can be fully described without sup- 

 posing any other agent than a succession of perishing 

 thoughts, endowed with the functions of appropriation and 

 rejection, and of which some can know aiid appropriate or 

 reject objects already known, appropriated, or rejected by 

 the rest. 



To illustrate by diagram, let A, B, and C stand for three 



Fig. 34. 



successive thoughts, each with its object inside of it. If B's 

 object be A, and C's object be B ; then A, B, and C would 

 stand for three pulses in a consciousness of personal iden- 

 tity. Each pulse would he something different from the 

 others ; but B would know and adopt A, and G would 

 know and adopt A and B. Three successive states of the 

 same brain, on which each experience in passing leaves its 

 mark, miglit very well engender thoughts differing from 

 each other in just such a Avay as this. 



The passing Thought then seems to be the Thinker ; 

 and though there may be another non-phenomenal Thinker 

 behind that, so far we do not seem to need him to express 

 the facts. But we cannot definitively make up our mind 

 about him until we have heard the reasons that have his- 

 torically been used to prove his reality. 



THE PURE SELF OK INNER PRINCIPLE OF PERSONAL UNITY. 



To a brief survey of the theories of the Ego let us then 

 next proceed. They are three in number, as follows : 



1) The Spiritualist theory ; 



2) The Associationist theory ; 



3) The Transcendentalist theory. 



The Theory of the Soul. 



In Chapter VI we were led ourselves to the spiritualist 

 theory < if the ' Soul,' as a means of escape from the unin- 

 telligibilities of mind-stuft' ' integrating ' with itself, and from 



