356 PSYCHOLOGY. 



' run, as it were, into a single point of consciousness.' * 

 John Mill, annotating this account, says : 



" The pnenomenon of Self and that of Memory are merely two sides 

 of the same fact, or two different modes of viewing the same fact. We 

 may, as psychologists, set out from either of them, and refer the other 

 to it. . . . But it is hardly allowable to do both. At least it must 

 be said that by doing so we explain neither. We only show tliat the 

 two things are essentially the same ; that my memory of having as- 

 cended Skiddaw on a given day, and my consciousness of being the 

 same person who ascended Skiddaw on that day, are two modes of stat- 

 ing the same fact : a fact which psychology has as yet failed to resolve 

 into anything more elementary. In analyzing the complex phenomena 

 of consciousness, we must come to something ultimate ; and we seem 

 to have reached two elements which have a good prima facie claim to 

 that title. There is, first, . . . the difference between a fact and the 

 Thought of that fact : a distinction which we are able to cognize in the 

 past, and which then constitutes Memory, and in the future, when it 

 constitutes Expectation ; but in neither case can we give any account 

 of it except that it exists. . . . Secondly, in addition to this, and 

 setting out from the belief . . . that the idea I now have was de- 

 rived from a previous sensation . . . there is the further conviction 

 that this sensation . . . was my own ; that it happened to my self. 

 In other words, I am aware of a long and uninterrupted succession 

 of past feelings, going back as far as memory reaches, and terminating 

 with the sensations I have at the present moment, all of which are con- 

 nected by an inexplicable tie, that distinguishes them not only from any 

 succession or combination in mere thought, but also from the parallel 

 successions of feelings which I believe, on satisfactory evidence, to have 

 happened to each of the other beings, shaped like myself, whom I per- 

 ceive around me. This succession of feelings, which I call my memory 

 of the past, is that by which I distinguish my Self. ISIyself is the 

 person who had that series of feelings, and I know nothing of myself, 

 by direct knowledge, except that I had them. But there is a bond of 

 some sort among all the parts of the series, which makes me say that 

 they were feelings of a person who was the same person throughout 

 [according to us this is their ' warmth ' and resemblance to the ' central 

 spiritual self ' now actually felt] and a different person from those who 

 had any of the parallel successions of feelings ; and this bond, to me, 

 constitutes my Ego. Here I think the question must rest, until some 

 psychologist succeeds better than anyone else has done, in showing a 

 mode in which the analysis can be carried further." f 



* Analysis, etc.. J. S. Mill's Edition, vol. i. p. 331. The ' as it were ' 

 is delightfully characteristic of the school, 

 f J. Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. p. 175. 



