THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 353 



Hurae is at bottom as mucli of a metapliysician as 

 Tiiomas Aquinas. No wonder lie can discover no ' hypoth- 

 esis.' The unity of the parts of the stream is just as ' real ' 

 a connection as their diversity is a real separation ; both 

 connection and separation are ways in which the past 

 thoughts appear to the present Thought; — unlike each 

 other in respect of date and certain qualities — this is the 

 separation ; alike in other qualities, and continuous in time 

 — this is the connection. In demanding a more ' real ' con- 

 nection than this obvious and verifiable likeness and con- 

 tinuity, Hume seeks ' the world behind the looking-glass,' 

 and gives a striking example of that Absolutism which is 

 the great disease of philosophic Thought. 



The chain of distinct existences into which Hume thus 

 chopped up our ' stream ' was adopted by all of his succes- 

 sors as a complete inventory of the facts. The associatiou- 

 ist Philosophy was founded. Somehow, out of 'ideas,' each 

 separate, each ignorant of its mates, but sticking together 

 and calling each other up according to certain laws, all the 

 higher forms of consciousness were to be exj)lained, and 

 among them the consciousness of our personal identity. 

 The task was a hard one, in which what we called the 

 psychologist's fallacy (p. 196 fi'.) bore the brunt of the 

 work. Two ideas, one of * A,' succeeded by another of * B,' 

 were transmuted into a third idea of 'B after A.' An idea 

 from last year returning now was taken to be an idea of last 

 year ; two similar ideas stood for an idea of similarity, and 

 the like ; palpable confusions, in which certain facts about 

 the ideas, possible only to an outside knower of them, were 

 put into the place of the ideas' own proper and limited de- 

 liverance and content. Out of such recurrences and resem- 

 blances in a series of discrete ideas and feelings a knowl- 

 edge was somehow supposed to be engendered in each 

 feeling that it was recurrent and resembling, and that it 

 helped to form a series to whose unity the name / came to 

 be joined. In the same way, substantially, Herbart,* in 



* Herbart believed in the Smil, too; but foi him the ' Self of which we 

 are ' conscious ' is the empirical Self — not the soul. 



