§ 3
We have not yet gone deep enough to discover this "I." It is hardly necessary to ask the next question which some foolish people are speculating about to-day. Am I merely the TRAIN OF THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS? Am "I" but like an Eolian harp, played on by the wind of sensations from without?
Surely not. This mysterious "I" is constantly and persistently claiming to be a real conscious person behind all these—greater than all these—possessing all these. Listen to the voice down deep in your consciousness—COGITO, ERGO SUM. "I" think—therefore "I" exist. I am not the thoughts and feelings and emotions—I am greater than them all. I am the possessor of them all. They are mine. They are not Me. They are only passing phases of my being. They are always changing. Everything around is changing. I remain the same being always. Nothing else in the universe remains the same being—except God. God and I. God and these selves that are in every one of us.
I cannot escape that conviction that "I" am the permanent being behind all the changes. No human vision can see me. No surgeon's knife can detect me. But I am there, behind everything.
The particles of my body, of brain and nerves and heart are constantly being changed—every few years they are completely renewed. I have had a dozen new bodies, a dozen new sets of brains and heart since I was born—I am always wearing them out. I change them when they are worn out and throw them aside like old clothes. My thoughts and feelings are ever changing, like the ripples on the sea.
But I am absolutely certain that "I" am still there—that I am the same—just as God is the same. The same "I" that played as a little child—the same "I" that lived and desired and thought and felt and worked and sinned years and years ago.
Not a particle remains of the brain, or nerves, or tongue, or eyes, or hands, or feet, with which I did a good or evil deed twenty years since—but it is impossible for me to doubt that it was "I" who did it, that I to-day deserve the praise or blame which is due to it.
Every man on earth, when he thinks about it, has this conviction of himself as an "I"—as a person separate from all other persons, as a self separate from all other selves, as remaining always the same being, whatever changes may take place around him. That is what constitutes man—a self conscious of itself. As far as we can discover, the lower animals have no such idea. Children, at first, have not. Did you ever notice how a little child never says "I" till he is about three years old? He always speaks in the third person. It is always "Baby does this," "Baby likes that," until the Divine revelation of his personality gradually grows and he recognizes himself as a person. Then, without any teaching on your part, the child, of his own accord, will begin to say "I."
§ 4
Oh, who or what is this awful, mysterious "I" that dwells somewhere in the centre of my being, and rules and possesses and is responsible for everything? What is this self, in each of you, that is hidden behind your faces as behind a mask—that is looking out through your eyes, and receiving, through your ears, the thoughts that others are trying to express for you? Can the surgeon's knife find any trace of it? Is it possible to destroy it? Is it possible to get away from it? It has survived the putting away of every part of the body a dozen times over. Will it survive the final putting away of the whole body at death? Will it survive everything? Shall "I" be "I," the same identical person through all the ages of eternity?