[189]. Of course, you can frame the concept of a “self” from which even these bodily feelings have been extruded, and which is thus a mere “cognitive subject” without concrete psychical quality. But as such a mere logical subject is certainly not the self of which we are aware in any concrete experience, and still more emphatically not the self in which the historical and ethical sciences are interested, I have not thought it necessary to deal with it in the text.
[190]. That we cannot imagine it does not appear to be any ground for denying its actuality. It is never a valid argument against a conclusion required to bring our knowledge into harmony with itself, that we do not happen to possess the means of envisaging it in sensuous imagery.
[191]. I venture to think that some of the rather gratuitous hypotheses as to the rational selfhood of animal species quà species put forward by Professor Royce in the second volume of The World and the Individual, are illustrations of this tendency to unnecessary over-interpretation.
[192]. Is it necessary to refer in particular to the suggestion that for the Absolute the contrast-effect in question may be between itself and its component manifestations or appearances? This would only be possible if the finite appearances were contained in the whole in some way which allowed them to remain at discord with one another, i.e. in some way incompatible with the systematic character which is the fundamental quality of the Absolute. I am glad to find myself in accord, on the general principle at least, with Dr. McTaggart. See the Third Essay in his recent Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.
[193]. It would be fruitless to object that “societies” can, in fact, have a legal corporate personality, and so can—to revert to the illustration used above—be sued and taxed. What can be thus dealt with is always a mere association of definite individual human beings, who may or may not form a genuine spiritual unity. E.g., you might proceed against the Commissioners of Income Tax, but this does not prove that the Commissioners of Income Tax are a genuine society. On the other hand, the Liberal-Unionist Party probably possesses enough community of purpose to enable it to be regarded as a true society, but has no legal personality, and consequently no legal rights or obligations, as a party. Similarly, the corporation known as the Simeon Trustees has a legal personality with corresponding rights and duties, and it also stands in close relation with the evangelical party in the Established Church. And this party is no doubt a true ethical society. But the corporation is not the evangelical party, and the latter, in the sense in which it is a true society, is not a legal person.
I may just observe that the question whether the Absolute is a self or a person must not be confounded with the question of the “personality of God.” We must not assume off-hand that “God” and the Absolute are identical. Only special examination of the phenomena of the religious life can decide for us whether “God” is necessarily the whole of Reality. If He is not, it would clearly be possible to unite a belief in “God’s” personality with a denial of the personality of the Absolute, as is done, e.g., by Mr. Rashdall in his essay in Personal Idealism. For some further remarks on the problem, see below, Chapter V.
[194]. I suppose that any doctrine which denies the ultimate reality of the finite self must expect to be confronted by the appeal to the alleged revelation of immediate experience. Cogito, ergo sum, is often taken as an immediately certain truth in the sense that the existence of myself is something of which I am directly aware in every moment of consciousness. This is, however, an entire perversion of the facts. Undoubtedly the fact of there being experience is one which can be verified by the very experiment of trying to deny it. Denial itself is a felt experience. But it is (a) probably not true that we cannot have experience at all without an accompanying perception of self, and (b) certainly not true that the mere feeling of self as in contrast with a not-self, when we do get it, is what is meant by the self of Ethics and History. The self of these sciences always embraces more than can be given in any single moment of experience, it is an ideal construction by which we connect moments of experience according to a general scheme. The value of that scheme for any science can only be tested by the success with which it does its work, and its truth is certainly not established by the mere consideration that the facts it aims at connecting are actual. Metaphysics would be the easiest of sciences if you could thus take it for granted that any construction which is based upon some aspect of experienced fact must be valid.
[195]. This is why Plato seems justified in laying stress upon the dreams of the wise man as evidence of his superiority (Republic, bk. ix. p. 571). His ideal wise man is one whose inner life is so completely unified that there is genuine continuity of purpose between his waking and sleeping state. Plato might perhaps have replied to Locke’s query, that Socrates waking and Socrates asleep are the same person, and their identity is testimony to the exceptional wisdom and virtue of Socrates.
If it be thought that at least the simultaneous co-existence within one of two selves is inconceivable, I would ask the reader to bear in mind that the self always includes more than is at any moment given as actual matter of psychical fact. At any moment the self must be taken to consist for the most part of unrealised tendencies, and in so far as such ultimately incompatible tendencies are part of my whole nature, at the same time it seems reasonable to say that I have simultaneously more than one self. Ultimately, no doubt, this line of thought would lead to the conclusion that “my whole nature” itself is only relatively a whole.
[196]. Compare the valuable essay by Mr. Bradley on the “Evidence of Spiritualism” in Fortnightly Review for December 1885.