344 PSYCHOLOOY. 



If we ask what a Substance is, the only answer is that 

 it is a self-existent being, or one wliicli needs no other sub- 

 ject in which to inhere. At bottom its only positive deter- 

 mination is Being, and this is something whose meaning 

 we all realize even though we find it hard to explain. The 

 Soul is moreover an individual being, and if we ask what 

 that is, we are told to look in upon our Self, and we shall 

 learn by direct intuition better than through any abstract 

 reply. Our direct perception of our oAvn inward being is 

 in fact by many deemed to be the original prototype out 

 of which our notion of simple active substance in general is 

 fashioned. The consequences of the simplicity and substan- 

 tiality of the Soul are its incorruptibility and natural im- 

 mortcdity — nothing but God's direct ^o^ can annihilate it — 

 and its responsibility at all times for whatever it may have 

 ever done. 



This substantialist view of the soul was essentially the 

 view of Plato and of Aristotle. It received its completely 

 formal elaboration in the middle ages. It was believed in 

 by Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, Wolf, Berkeley, and 

 is now defended by the entire modern dualistic or spirit- 

 naKstic or common-sense school. Kant held to it while 

 denying its fruitfulness as a premise for deducing conse- 

 quences verifiable here below. Kant's successors, the abso- 

 lute idealists, profess to have discarded it, — how that may 

 be we shall inquire ere long. Let us make up our minds 

 what to think of it ourselves. 



It is at all events needless for expressing the actual sub- 

 jective 'phenomena of consciousness as they appear. We 

 have formulated them all without its aid, by the supposi- 

 tion of a stream of thoughts, each substantially diflerent 

 from the rest, but cognitive of the rest and ' appropriative ' 

 of each other's content. At least, if I have not already 

 succeeded in making this plausible to the reader, I am 

 hopeless of convincing him by anything I could add now. 

 The unity, the identity, the indi^dduality, and the immateri- 

 ality that appear in the psychic life are thus accounted for 

 as phenomenal and temporal facts exclusively, and with no 

 need of reference to any more simple or substantial agent 

 than the present Thought or ' section ' of the stream. IVe 



