When I say that the table, the tree, and so forth, are sensations of mine, there is contained in this, as contrasted with the method of representation of the ordinary man, an actual extension of my ego. And so, too, upon the emotional side, such extensions actually occur; as for the virtuoso, who possesses as perfect a mastery of his instrument as he does of his own body; for the skilful orator in whom the eyes of an audience converge, and who controls the thoughts of his hearers; for the energetic politician who directs with ease his party; and so on. In conditions of depression, on the other hand, such as nervous people often have to endure, the ego contracts and shrinks. A wall seems to separate it from the world.

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The ego is not sharply defined, its limits are very indefinite, and arbitrarily displaceable. Only by mistaking this, and by unconsciously narrowing these limits, as well also as by enlarging them, do metaphysical difficulties, in the conflict of points of view, arise.

As soon as we have recognised that the supposed unities "body" and "ego" are only make-shifts for a provisional survey and for certain practical ends (that we may apprehend bodies, protect ourselves from pain, and so forth), we are obliged, in many thorough-going scientific investigations, to abandon them as insufficient and inappropriate. The opposition between ego and world, sensation (or phenomenon) and thing, then vanishes, and we are brought to deal simply with the connection and relation of the elements α β γ … A B C … K L M …, for which indeed this very opposition was only a partially appropriate, imperfect expression. This connection is nothing more than the combination of those elements with other homologous elements (time and space). This connection science has simply to accept, and set itself aright with regard to it, without attempting to explain its existence.

Upon superficial examination the complex α β γ … appears to consist of much more evanescent elements than A B C … and K L M …, in which two last the elements appear to be joined with more stability and in a more permanent manner (being joined to solid nuclei as it were). Although upon closer inspection the elements of all complexes appear as homologous, yet even in spite of the recognition of this fact, the ancient notion of an opposition of body and spirit easily creeps in. The spiritualist feels, at times, the difficulty of imparting the necessary solidity to his world of substance created by mind: the materialist is at a loss what to do when called upon to animate and endow with sensation the world of matter. The monistic point of view that reflection and reason have evolved, is easily overcast by the older and more powerful instinctive notions.

VII.

The difficulty described is especially felt in the following considerations. In the complex A B C … which we have designated as the material world, we find as part, not only our own body K L M …, but also the bodies of other persons (or animals) K' L' M' …, K" L" M" …, annexed to which, after the analogy of the complex α β γ …, we conceive similar α' β' γ' …, α" β" γ". As long as we deal with K' L' M' …, we find ourselves in a thoroughly familiar province, at every point sensorially accessible to us. But when we inquire after the sensations or feelings that belong to the body K' L' M' …, we no longer find in the province of sense the elements we seek: but we add them in thought. Not only is the domain into which we now enter much less familiar to us, but also the transition to it is relatively unsafe. We are possessed of a feeling as if we were about to plunge into an abyss. They that always pursue this direction of thought and this direction only, will never get completely rid of the feeling of insecurity that is very productive as a source of apparent problems.

But we are not limited to this way of reasoning. Let us consider first the reciprocal relation of the elements of the complex A B C …, without regarding K L M … (our body). Every physical investigation is of this kind. A white bullet falls upon a bell; a sound is heard. The bullet turns yellow before a sodium lamp, red before a lithium lamp. Here the elements (A B C …) appear to be connected only among each other and to be independent of our body (K L M …). But if we take santonine the bullet turns yellow again. If we turn one eye sidewise we see two bullets. If we close our eyes entirely we see no bullet at all. If we sever our auditory nerve no sound is heard. The elements A B C …, therefore, are not only connected among each other, but also with K L M. To this extent and to this extent only do we call A B C … sensations, and regard A B C … as belonging to the ego. In this way, accordingly, we do not meet with the gap between bodies and sensations before described, between that which is without and that which is within, between the material and the spiritual world.[19] All elements A B C … K L M … constitute but one single coherent mass, which when any one element in it is disturbed all is put in motion; except that a disturbance has a more extensive and profound action in K L M …, than in A B C. A magnet in our neighborhood disturbs the particles of iron near it; a falling boulder shakes the earth; but the severing of a nerve sets in motion the entire system of elements. Quite involuntarily does this relation of things suggest the picture of a viscous mass, at certain places (as in the ego) more firmly coherent than at others.

[19] Compare my Grundlinien der Lehre von den Bewegungsempfindungen. Leipsic, Engelmann, 1875, p. 54.

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