E. Mach has recently represented the universe as a coherent mass, and the egos as points in which the coherent mass has greater consistency. The only realities are the perceptions, which are connected in one individual strongly, but which are weaker in another individual who is thus differentiated from the first.
The contents of the perceptions are the realities, and they persist externally to the worthless personal recollections. The ego is not a real but only a practical entity and cannot be isolated, and, therefore, the idea of individual immortality must be rejected. None the less the idea of an ego is not wholly to be rejected; here and there, as, for instance, in Darwin’s struggle for existence, it appears to have some validity.
It is extraordinary how an investigator who has accomplished so much, not only as a historian of his special branch and as a critic of ideas, but who is also fully equipped with knowledge of biology, should have paid no heed to the fact that every organic being is indivisible from the first, and is not composed of anything like atoms, monads, &c. The first distinctive mark of the living as opposed to inorganic matter is that the former is always differentiated into dissimilar, mutually dependent parts, and is not homogeneous like a crystal. And so it should have been borne in mind that it was at least possible that individuation, the fact that organic beings are not united, like Siamese twins, would prove to have importance in psychical matters, and the ego, therefore, was more than Mach’s idea of it as a mere waiting-hall of perceptions.
It may be that there exists a psychical correlation even amongst animals. Everything that an animal feels and perceives has a different “note” or “colour” in every individual. This individual quality is not only characteristic of the class, genus, species, race, and family, but also is different in every individual of the same family, &c. The idioplasm is the physiological equivalent of this specific individual quality of the sensations and perceptions, and there are reasons analogous with those in favour of the supposition of an idioplasm for the supposition of an individual character amongst animals. The sportsman who has to do with dogs, the trainer with horses, and the keeper with animals will readily admit the existence of this individuality as a constant element. It is clear that we have to do here with something more than a mere rendezvous of perceptions.
But even if this psychical analogue of the idioplasm were proved to exist in the case of animals, it could not be ranked with the intelligible character, the existence of which in any living creature except man cannot be maintained. The intelligible character of men, their individuation, has the same relation to empirical character that memory has to the simple power of recognition. And finally we come to identity, by which the structure, form, law, and cosmos persist even through the change of contents. The considerations from which is drawn the proof of the existence in man of such a noumenal, trans-empirical subject must now be stated briefly. They come from logic and ethics.
Logic deals with the true significance of the principle of identity (also with that of contradiction; the exact relation of these two, and the various modes of stating it are controversial matters outside the present subject). The proposition A = A is axiomatic and self-evident. It is the primitive measure of truth for all other propositions; however much we may think over it we must return to this fundamental proposition. It is the principle of the distinction between truth and error; and he who regards it as meaningless tautology, as was the case with Hegel and many of the later empiricists (this being not the only surprising point of contact between two schools apparently so different) is right in a fashion, but has misunderstood the nature of the proposition. A = A, the principle of all truth, cannot itself be a special truth. He who finds the proposition of identity or that of non-identity meaningless does so by his own fault.
He must have expected to find in these propositions special ideas, a source of positive knowledge. But they are not in themselves knowledge, separate acts of thought, but the common standard for all acts of thought. And so they cannot be compared with other acts of thought. The rule of the process of thought must be outside thought. The proposition of identity does not add to our knowledge; it does not increase but rather founds a kingdom. The proposition of identity is either meaningless or means everything. Upon what do the propositions of identity and of non-identity depend? The common view is that they are judgments. Sigwart, for instance, who has recently discussed the matter, puts it as follows: The two judgments A is B and A is not B cannot be true at the same time because the judgment “An unlearned man is learned” would involve a contradiction because the predicate “learned” is affirmed of a subject of which the judgment has been made implicitly that he is unlearned, so that in reality two judgments are made, X is learned and X is unlearned. The “psychologismus” of this method of argument is plain. It has recourse to a temporary judgment preceding the formation of the conception “unlearned man.” The proposition, however, A is not A claims validity quite apart from the past, present, or future existence of other judgments. It depends on the conception “unlearned man.” It makes the conception more certain by excluding contradictory instances.
This, then, gives us the true function of the principles of identity and non-identity. They are materials for conceptions.
This function concerns only logical conceptions, but not what have been called psychological conceptions. The conception is always represented psychologically by a generalisation; and this presentation in a certain fashion is included in the conception. The generalisation represents the conception psychologically, but is not identical with it. It can, so to speak, be richer (as when I think of a triangle) or it can be poorer (the conception of a lion contains more than my generalisation of lions). The logical conception is the plumb-line which the attention tries to follow; it is the goal and pole-star of the psychological generalisation.
Pure logical thought cannot occur in the case of men; it would be an attribute of deity. A human being must always think partly psychologically because he possesses not only reason but also senses, and his thought cannot free itself from temporal experiences but must remain bound by them. Logic, however, is the supreme standard by which the individual can test his own psychological ideas and those of others. When two men are discussing anything it is the conception and not the varying individual presentations of it that they aim at. The conception, then, is the standard of value for the individual presentations. The mode in which the psychological generalisation comes into existence is quite independent of the conception and has no significance in respect to it. The logical character which invests the conception with dignity and power is not derived from experience, for experience can give only vague and wavering generalisations. Absolute constancy and absolute coherence which cannot come from experience are the essence of the conception of that power concealed in the depths of the human mind whose handiwork we try hard but in vain to see in nature. Conceptions are the only true realities, and the conception is not in nature; it is the rule of the essence not of the actual existence.
When I enunciate the proposition A = A, the meaning of the proposition is not that a special individual A of experience or of thought is like itself. The judgment of identity does not depend on the existence of an A. It means only that if an A exists, or even if it does not exist, then A = A. Something is posited, the existence of A = A whether or no A itself exists. It cannot be the result of experience, as Mill supposed, for it is independent of the existence of A. But an existence has been posited; it is not the existence of the object; it must be the existence of the subject. The reality of the existence is not in the first A or the second A, but in the simultaneous identity of the two. And so the proposition A = A is no other than the proposition “I am.”
From the psychological point of view, the real meaning of the proposition of identity is not so difficult to interpret. It is clear that to be able to say A = A, to establish the permanence of the conception through the changes of experience, there must be something unchangeable, and this can be only the subject. Were I part of the stream of change I could not verify that the A had remained unchanged, had remained itself. Were I part of the change, I could not recognise the change. Fichte was right when he stated that the existence of the ego was to be found concealed in pure logic, inasmuch as the ego is the condition of intelligible existence.
The logical axioms are the principle of all truth. These posit an existence towards which all
