EEV. A. R. WHATELY, D.D., ON IMMORTALITY. 



15 



in Gocl. The unity of the goal brings into relief the diverse 

 nature of those who strive towards it. In other connections 

 James might even insist on this. But if so, there is a deeper 

 basis of personality than the succession of psychic states. 



Now, if it be true that the lower in us is meant to subserve 

 the higher, we have a right to maintain that the ideal for ichich 

 lue live gives the key to lohat we properly are. Here is the real 

 principle of unity in our lives, and the basis of our differences. 

 Here is the sphere of true self -consciousness, the experience of 

 self, not as a mere flow of feelings and ideas, nor yet as a mere 

 solid atom behind all its states, but as an eternal being in a 

 kingdom of eternal beings, an object of the personal love of God,, 

 and everlasting because that love is everlasting. 



This last sentiment is sufficiently familiar to us in itself. But 

 you see, I hope, why I have introduced it in connection with 

 James'" treatment of self-consciousness. My object is to indicate 

 the essentially one-sided and abstract character of psychological 

 introspection. For it is precisely by comparing and contrasting 

 the higher self-consciousness with the narrower and more 

 abstract, that the higher descends from the region of mist and 

 cloud, and becomes an object of intellectual apprehension. Other- 

 wise, though we mi^ht be dissatisfied with the narrower 

 conception, and find the broader and higher standpoint on the 

 whole also a much firmer one, yet this higher standpoint might 

 seem to lack the scientific precision of the other, and to be too 

 dependent upon mood and temperament. But now we have 

 met Empiricism on its own ground. It has appealed to experience 

 and to experience it has had to go. It is true that this experience 

 is super-psychological and even super-philosophical, but Psycho- 

 logy and Philosophy can both serve it by revealing the abstract- 

 ness of all rival theories, even when these theories conjure with 

 the name of Common Sense. 



What I have said about Empiricism in general is emphatically 

 true of Naturalism. But all science, psychological as well as 

 physical, is bound to ignore, in fact studiously to eliminate, 

 the personal equation ; and to eliminate the personal equation 

 in the search for the meaning of personality is to condemn 

 the search to futility from the outset. The Common Sense 

 point of view is relatively concrete, for at least it deals 

 with real persons, not with psychic streams, phases of the 

 Absolute, or mere counters representing the class " person." 

 But Common Sense is not the most concrete basis, because it is 

 not the highest. Philosophy, when it does real justice to 

 Common Sense, is higher : Religion is the highest of all. For 



