Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/110

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This book is an earnest and, in some ways, suggestive study of some of the basic problems of metaphysics. Its scope is indicated by the problems considered: the self and mind, personal identity, perception, mind and body, space, time, causality, nature of knowledge and the status of universals, theory of relations, unity of minds. The point of view of the whole book is determined by the conclusions of the first two chapters; consequently, the present notice will confine itself to a brief statement and criticism of these conclusions.

The effort made by the author here is to define adequately the self, its unity and continuity, and mind or consciousness—these two terms are used interchangeably. Between mind, or consciousness, and the self the author draws the following distinction: mind is the "whole of things findable," while the self is only a part of this whole—the part, namely, which may be identified with what are termed 'activities': "striving, feeling and thinking, in their various modes and with their attendant images and organic reverberations" (p. 23). Just as there is a distinction between mind and self, so there is a difference between the unity of mind and the unity of self. "The primary unity of mind consists in the contact of self with content: I am conscious of, have in mind, whatever I am in contact with" (p. 25)—by 'content' here is meant everything in mind which is not the self (p. 5), and by 'contact' is meant "that unique being together of content with the self which everybody who observes his own mind will understand" (p. 24). What, then, is the unity of self? "The unity within the self is open for any man to inspect. ... The unity is an interweaving of activities. It is nothing besides them [sic]; it is a growing together of them, an interpenetration of them. Just as colour and shape are grown together in a flower, so thought and feeling and striving are grown together in the self" (p. 26). As regards personal identity, we must be less slow to admit that identity is a fact of experience which is as indisputable as any fact can be. "I claim that identity is found in experience. Everybody admits that we seem to find it, that we have an 'impression' or 'feeling' of it; I claim that this feeling is a fact" (p. 43). The reason why we are inclined to doubt it is primarily because of a false conception of the nature of time: we assume that from moment to moment experiences die beyond the power of resurrection, and that, as a result, our successive experiences are only similar and not the same. "But a difference in moments does not involve a difference in existences; for the same thing may exist at many different moments and quite irrespective of whether they are continuous or discontinuous. The very same experience that was can exist anew at separate moments of time; and these reappearances are not duplicates of the old; they are just the old recreated .... the very stuff of the old is born again, and when reborn is the same past thing which was destroyed and had ceased to exist until now " (pp. 40-41 ).

With these conclusions the present reviewer finds himself partly in agreement and partly in conflict. The distinction drawn between consciousness