THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 401 



aggregate, neither for psychological purposes need it be 

 considered to be an unchanging metaphysical entity like 

 the Soul, or a j)rinciple like the pure Ego, viewed as ' out 

 of time.' It is a Thought, at each moment different from 

 that of the last moment, but approprkdive of the latter, 

 together with all that the latter called its own. All the 

 experiential facts find their place in this description, unen- 

 cumbered with any hypothesis save that of the existence of 

 passing thoughts or states of mind. The same brain may 

 subserve many conscious selves, either alternate or coexist- 

 ing ; but by what modifications in its action, or whether 

 ultra-cerebral conditions may intervene, are questions which 

 cannot now be answered. 



If anyone urge that I assign no reason why the succes- 

 sive passing thoughts should inherit each other's posses- 

 sions, or why they and the brain-states should be functions 

 (in the mathematical sense) of each other, I reply that the 

 reason, if there be any, must lie where all real reasons lie, 

 in the total sense or meaning of the world. If there be such 

 a meaning, or any approach to it (as we are bound to trust 

 there is), it alone can make clear to us why such finite 

 human streams of thought are called into existence in 

 such functional dependence upon brains. This is as much 

 as to say that the special natural science of psychology must 

 stop with the mere functional formula. If the passing thought 

 he the directly verifiable existent ivhich no school has hitherto 

 doubted it to be, then that thought is itself the thinJcer, and 

 psychology need not look beyond. The only pathwa}- that 

 I can discover for bringing in a more transcendental thinker 

 would be to deny that we have any direct knowledge of the 

 thought as such. The latter's existence would then be 

 reduced to a postulate, an assertion that there must be a 

 knower correlative to all this knoivn ; and the problem who 

 that knower is would have become a metaphj'sical jDroblem. 

 With the question once stated in these terms, the spirit- 

 ualist and transcendentalist solutions must be considered 

 as prima facie on a par with our own psychological one, 

 and discussed impartiall}^ But that carries us beyond the 

 psychological or naturalistic point of view. 



