Pain and pleasure are ordinarily regarded as different from sensory sensations. Yet not only tactile sensations, but also all other kinds of sensations, can gradually pass into pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain can also justly be called sensations. Only they are not so well analysed and so familiar as sensory sensations. Sensations of pleasure and pain, however faint the mode of their appearance, make up indeed the real content of all so-called feelings. Thus perceptions, as well as ideas, volition, and feelings, in short the entire inner and outer world, are composed of a small number of homologous elements united in relations now more evanescent and now more lasting. These elements are commonly called sensations. But since vestiges of a one-sided theory now inhere in this term, we prefer to speak simply of elements, as we have already done. All research aims at the resolution of the union of these elements.[21]
[21] Compare the remarks appended to my treatise: Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes der Erhaltung der Arbeit. Prague. Calve. 1872.
XI.
That out of this complex of elements which at bottom is simply one, the limits of bodies and the ego do not admit of being fixed in a manner certain and sufficient for all cases, has already been said. The composition of the elements, intimately connected with pleasure and pain, into an ideal mental-economical unity, the ego, is a work of the highest significance for the intellectual functions that act in the service of the pain-avoiding, pleasure-seeking will. The formation of the ego by this process of circumscription and delimitation is therefore instinctively effected, it grows familiar and natural, and fixes itself perhaps through heredity. By their high practical value, not only for the individual, but also for the entire race, the composites "ego" and "body" instinctively assert their existence, and operate with the power of original elements. In special circumstances, however, in which practical ends are not concerned, but knowledge becomes an object in itself, this delimitation often turns out to be insufficient, obstructive, and untenable.
Professional esprit de corps, and even professional bias, the sentiment of nationality, the most narrow-minded local patriotism may also have a high value, for certain purposes. But such conceptions will not characterise the far-sighted investigator, at least not in the moment of research. All these egoistic conceptions are adequate for practical purposes only. Of course, even the investigator can succumb to custom. Trifling scholastic fiddle-faddle, the cunning appropriation of others' labor and perfidious silence with regard to it, the numerous objections and complaints when unavoidably compelled to give recognition, and the scanty illumination of others' performances on such occasions, abundantly show that the scientist and scholar have also to fight the battle of existence, that the ways of science yet lead to the mouth, and that the pure quest of knowledge amid our present social relations is still an ideal.
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The primary fact is not the I, the ego, but the elements (sensations). The elements constitute the I. I perceive the sensation green, means, that the element green occurs in a given complex of other elements (sensations, memories). When I cease to perceive the sensation green, when I die, then the elements no longer occur in their customary, common way of association. That is all. Only an ideal mental-economical unity, not a real unity, has ceased to exist.
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The ego is not an unchangeable, definite, sharply-defined unity. The important factor is not unchangeability, not determinate distinguishability from other things, and not accurate limitation, for all these factors even vary within the sphere of individual life itself, and their alteration is even sought by the individual. Continuity alone is important. This view admirably accords with that to which Weismann recently attained by biological investigations ("Regarding the Immortality of Unicellular Beings," Biolog. Centralbl., Vol. IV, Nos. 21, 22; compare especially pp. 654 and 655, where the division of the individual into two equal halves is spoken of). But this continuity is only a means to dispose and to assure the content of the ego. This content and not the ego is the principal thing. But this content is not confined to the individual. With the exception of insignificant, valueless, personal memories or reminiscences, it remains preserved in others even after the death of the individual. The ego is unsavable. It is partly the discernment of this fact, partly the fear of the same, that leads to the most extravagant pessimistic and optimistic, religious and philosophical absurdities. We shall not be able in the long run to close our eyes to this simple truth, the immediate result of psychological analysis. We shall then no longer place so high a value upon the ego which even during individual life greatly changes, and which, indeed, in sleep or during absorption in some conception or in some thought, just in our happiest moments, may be partially or wholly absent. We shall then gladly renounce individual immortality, and shall not place more value upon the accessory elements than upon the principal. We shall in this way arrive at a freer and a more enlightened conception of life, which will exclude the neglect of other egos and the over-estimation of our own.
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