Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/132

 we could not admit it as being the truth about reality. It would merely be an experience, unintelligible or deceptive. And it is an experience which, we have now seen, has no existence in fact.

(c) We found the self, as mere feeling, gave us no key to our puzzles, and we have not had more success in our attempt with self-consciousness. So far as that transcends mere feeling, it is caught in, and is dissipated by, the old illusory play of relations and qualities. It repeats this illusion, without doubt, at a higher level than before; the endeavour is more ambitious, but the result is still the same. For we have not been taught how to understand diversity in unity. And though, in my judgment, the further task should now be superfluous, I will briefly touch upon some other claims made for the self. The first rests on the consciousness of personal identity. This may be supposed to have some bearing on the reality of the self, but to my mind it appears to be almost irrelevant. Of course the self, within limits and up to a certain point, is the same; and I will leave to others the attempt to fix those limits by a principle. For, in my opinion, there is none which at bottom is not arbitrary. But what I fail to perceive is the metaphysical conclusion which comes from a consciousness of self-sameness. I quite understand that this fact disproves any doctrine of the self’s mere discreteness. Or, more correctly, it is an obvious instance against a doctrine which evidently contradicts itself in principle. The self is not merely discrete; and therefore (doubtless by some wonderful alternative) we are carried to a positive result about its reality. But the facts of the case seem merely to be thus. As long as there remains in the self a certain basis of content, ideally the same, so long may the self recall anything once associated with that basis. And this identity of content, working by redintegration and so bringing