In using the word self, we may have reference either to what is immediately known as appearing in the circle of consciousness, the phenomenon, or to a something supposed to lie beyond this sphere and to be known only through its representative in consciousness.
Now this something beyond may be looked at in various ways. John Locke, in discussing the not-self, made the three-fold division of idea, bundle of "real" qualities, and substance. He might with equal reason have distinguished in a similar way between the self as idea (the immediately known), the self as a bundle of "real" qualities (not immediately known), and the self as substance. As a matter of fact, however, he did not put the not-self and the self upon the same plane. He seemed to think that we know the self more immediately, and to hold that it enters consciousness as the bundle of "real" qualities[24] which, in the case of matter, is assumed to lie beyond. The "substance" of the self, however, he condemns to outer darkness and the company of material substance. To me there seems no reason, admitting the right to pass at all beyond the immediately perceived, for making the distinction which he does make. And as one, who has followed him with assent in his treatment of the not-self, may, with some justice complain of his inconsistency and refuse to follow him here, I mention the position he might have taken as well as the position he actually did take with respect to the self and its existences.
Sec. 11. The word self may then be regarded as referring either:
1. To the self as phenomenon, a something immediately perceived, a part or the whole of our conscious experience;
2. To a complex of "real" qualities beyond and represented by the self as it appears in consciousness;
3. To the substance of self, or self as noumenon, a vague and ill-defined something, supposed to be distinct from and to underlie phenomena or "real" qualities; or
4. To two, or to all, of these taken together.
If the word is used in the last of these senses any inquiry concerning sameness must split up its complex meaning and treat separately the different elements included. It remains, then, to inquire what kinds of sameness we may attribute to the self in the first three senses given. I will take them in reverse order.
Sec. 12. With respect to the third sense, which makes it refer to the "substance" of Locke or the "noumenon" of other writers: all the difficulties which arise out of the endeavor to attribute sameness of any kind to any substance or noumenon obtain here also. But it seems on the surface more glaringly inconsistent in the adherent of noumena to discriminate between different kinds as admitting of differences of treatment than it does for him to suppose them capable of treatment at all. Things that differ cannot be conceived as differing except in qualities, and here there is question not of qualities but of noumena. If one is to retain any appearance of consistency, he must not maintain that the word same is applicable in any given sense to certain noumena and not to others. If he does so, he openly abandons his noumena to a phenomenal fate. And, as a matter of fact, I think it is plain that those believers in noumena, who distinguish them from one another, yet think of them in just the one way. If we take the utterances of a good representative of the class, Sir William Hamilton, we may see that although he distinguishes between the noumenal ego and the noumenal non-ego, not only do his clearest statements make such a distinction out of the question, but the distinction drawn is so vague and insignificant[25] that the two noumena may be thought of and reasoned about in the one way. Phenomena being abstracted, what was in his mind when he spoke of the one was probably in no respect different from what was in his mind when he spoke of the other. In so far, then, as the noumena themselves are concerned, it would seem that any kind of sameness which we may predicate of the noumenal not-self we may predicate on the same ground and with equal justice of the noumenal self, and vice versa. If, however, any sense of the word same marks a relation between a noumenon and some other thing or things, and if the two noumena differ as respects this relation, then this kind of sameness may be attributed to the one and not to the other. It may be claimed that we indicate just such a relation in using the word same in Sense VI; and that, whatever one might do, one would under no circumstances speak of two men as perceiving the same self, noumenal or any other. I shall discuss this point when I come to discuss the sameness of self as phenomenon.
I may add here that when one obliterates the distinction between noumena by plunging them into the darkness of the "unknowable," there can, of course, be no question of a new sense of the word same in the field I am discussing. On the general question of noumenal sameness, all that it seems to me necessary to say I have said before.