350 PSYCHO LOGY. 



rate selves. As for insulation, it would be rasli, in view of 

 the phenomena of thought-transference, mesmeric influence 

 and spirit-control, whicli are being alleged nowadays on 

 better authority than ever before, to be too sure about 

 that point either. The definitively closed nature of our 

 personal consciousness is probably an average statistical 

 resultant of many conditions, but not an elementary force 

 or fact ; so that, if one wishes to preserve the Soul, the less 

 he draws his arguments from that quarter the better. So 

 long as our self, on the whole, makes itself good and prac- 

 tically maintains itself as a closed individual, why, as Lotze 

 says, is not that enough ? And why is the 6emgr-au-individ- 

 ual in some inaccessible metaphysical way so much prouder 

 an achievement ? * 



My final conclusion, then, about the substantial Soul is 

 that it explains nothing and guarantees nothing. Its suc- 

 cessive thoughts are the only intelligible and verifiable 

 things about it, and definitely to ascertain the correlations 

 cf these with brain-processes is as much as psychology can 

 empirically do. From the metaphysical point of view, it is 

 true that one may claim that the correlations have a ra- 

 tional ground ; and if the word Soul could be taken to mean 

 merely some such vague problematic ground, it would be 

 unobjectionable. But the trouble is that it professes to 

 give the ground in positive terms of a very dubiously cred- 

 ible sort. I therefore feel entirely free to discard the word 

 Soul from the rest of this book. If I ever use it, it will be 

 in the vaguest and most popular way. The reader who 

 finds any comfort in the idea of the Soul, is, however, per- 

 fectly free to continue to believe in it ; for our reasonings 

 have not established the non-existence of the Soul ; they 

 have only proved its superfluity for scientific purposes. 



The next theory of the pure Self to which we pass is 



The Associationist Theory. 



Lcrcke paved the way for it by the hypothesis he sug- 

 gested of the same substance having two successive cou- 



* Ou the empirical and trauscendental conceptions of the self's unity 

 see Lotze, Metaphysic, § 244. 



