Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/101

 creature lost in illusions, bereft of memory, transformed in mood, with diseased feelings enthroned in the very heart of his being—is this still one self with what we knew? Well, be it so; assert, what you are unable to show, that there is still a point untouched, a spot which never has been invaded. I will not ask you to point this out, for I am sure that is impossible. But I urge upon you the opposite side of the dilemma. This narrow persisting element of feeling or idea, this fixed essence not “servile to all the skyey influences,” this wretched fraction and poor atom, too mean to be in danger—do you mean to tell me that this bare remnant is really the self? The supposition is preposterous, and the question wants no answer. If the self has been narrowed to a point which does not change, that point is less than the real self. But anything wider has a “complexion” which “shifts to strange effects,” and therefore cannot be one self. The riddle has proved too hard for us.

We have been led up to the problem of personal identity, and any one who thinks that he knows what he means by his self, may be invited to solve this. To my mind it seems insoluble, but not because all the questions asked are essentially such questions as cannot be answered. The true cause of failure lies in this—that we will persist in asking questions when we do not know what they mean, and when their meaning perhaps presupposes what is false. In inquiries about identity, as we saw before in Chapter viii., it is all-important to be sure of the aspect about which you ask. A thing may be identical or different, according as you look at it. Hence in personal identity the main point is to fix the meaning of person; and it is chiefly because our ideas as to this are confused, that we are unable to come to a further result.

In the popular view a man’s identity resides