[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The unity into which the Thought - as I shall for a time proceed to call, with a capital T, thepresent mental state - binds the individual past facts with each other and with itself, does notexist until the Thought is there.It is as if wild cattle were lassoed by a newly-created settler andthen owned for the first time.But the essence of the matter to common-sense is that the pastthoughts never were wild cattle, they were always owned.The Thought does not capture them,but as soon as it comes into existence it finds them already its own.How is this possible unlessthe Thought have a substantial identity with a former owner, - not a mere continuity or aresemblance, as in our account, but a real unity? Common-sense in fact would drive us to admitwhat we may for the moment call an Arch-Ego, dominating the entire stream of thought and allthe selves that may be represented in it, as the ever self-same and changeless [p.339] principleimplied in their union.The 'Soul' of Metaphysics and the 'Transcendental Ego' of the KantianPhilosophy, are, as we shall soon see, but attempts to satisfy this urgent demand of common-sense.But, for a time at least, we can still express without any such hypotheses that appearanceof never-lapsing ownership for which common-sense contends.For how would it be if the Thought, the present judging Thought, instead of being in any waysubstantially or transcendentally identical with the former owner of the past self, merelyinherited his 'title,' and thus stood as his legal representative now? It would then, if its birthGet any book for free on: www.Abika.com THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY209coincided exactly with the death of another owner, find the past self already its own as soon as itfound it at all, and the past self would thus never be wild, but always owned, by a title that neverlapsed.We can imagine a long succession of herdsmen coming rapidly into possession of thesame cattle by transmission of an original title by bequest.May not the 'title' of a collective selfbe passed from one Thought to another in some analogous way?It is a patent fact of consciousness that a transmission like this actually occurs.Each pulse ofcognitive consciousness, each Thought, dies away and is replaced by another.The other, amongthe things it knows, knows its own predecessor, and finding it 'warm,' in the way we havedescribed, greets it, saying: "Thou art mine, and part of the same self with me." Each laterThought, knowing and including thus the Thoughts which went before, is the final receptacle -and appropriating them is the final owner - of all that they contain and own.Each Thought isthus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it realized as its Self to its own laterproprietor.As Kant says, it is as if elastic balls were to have not only motion but knowledge of it,and a first ball were to transmit both its motion and its consciousness to a second, which tookboth up into its consciousness and passed them to a third, until the last ball held all that the otherballs had held, and realized it as its own.It is this trick which the nascent thought has ofimmediately taking up the expiring thought and 'adopting' it, which is the foundation of the [p.340] appropriation of most of the remoter constituents of the self.Who owns the last self ownsthe self before the last, for what possesses the possessor possesses the possessed.It is impossible to discover any verifiable features in personal identity, which this sketch does notcontain, impossible to imagine how any transcendent non-phenomenal sort of an Arch-Ego, werehe there, could shape matters to any other result, or be known in time by any other fruit, than justthis production of a stream of consciousness each 'section' of which should know, and knowing,hug to itself and adopt, all those that went before, - thus standing as the representative of theentire past stream; and which should similarly adopt the objects already adopted by any portionof this spiritual stream.Such standing-as-representative, and such adopting, are perfectly clearphenomenal relations.The Thought which, whilst it knows another Thought and the Object ofthat Other, appropriates the Other and the Object which the Other appropriated, is still a perfectlydistinct phenomenon form that Other; it may hardly resemble it; it may be far removed from it inspace and time.The only point that is obscure is the act of appropriation itself.Already in enumerating theconstituents of the self and their rivalry, I had to use the word appropriate [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]