CHAPTER III. The Place of the “self” in Reality

THE PLACE OF THE “SELF” IN REALITY

§ 1. The “self” is (1) a teleological concept, (2) implies a contrasted not-self (where this contrast is absent from an experience there is no genuine sense of self); (3) but the limits which divide self and not-self are not fixed but fluctuating. The not-self is not a merely external limit, but consists of discordant elements within the individual, which are extruded from it by a mental construction. (4) The self is a product of development, and has its being in the time-series. (5) The self is never given complete in a moment of actual experience, but is an ideal construction; probably selfhood implies some degree of intellectual development. § 2. The Absolute or Infinite Individual, being free from all internal discord, can have no not-self, and therefore cannot properly be called a self. § 3. Still less can it be a person. § 4. In a society of selves we have a more genuinely self-determined individual than in the single self. Hence it would be nearer the truth to think of the Absolute as a Society, though no finite whole adequately expresses the Absolute’s full nature. We must remember, however, (a) that probably the individuals in the Absolute are not all in direct relation, and (b) that in thinking of it as a Society we are not denying its real individuality. § 5. The self is not in its own nature imperishable; as to the particular problem of its continuance after death, no decision can be arrived at on grounds of Metaphysics. Neither the negative presumption drawn from our inability to understand the conditions of continuance, nor the lack of empirical evidence, is conclusive; on the other hand, there is not sufficient metaphysical reason for taking immortality as certain.

§ 1. We have already, in Book II. chap. 1, § 5, incidentally raised the question whether the whole spiritual system which we found ground to regard as the reality of the universe, can properly be spoken of as a “self.” We decided that to apply such a predicate to it was at least misleading, and might prepare the way for serious intellectual sophistication. Our discussion of the general character of psychological conceptions has now made it possible for us to return to the problem with reasonable hopes of being able to treat it more fully, and to arrive at some definite conclusion as to the amount of truth embodied by the notion of “self.”

First of all, then, let us attempt to fix the general meaning of the concept, and to single out some of its more prominent characteristics. It would clearly require much more space than we can spare to enumerate all the senses in which the notion of “self” has been used in Psychology, and the work, when done, would not be entirely germane to our metaphysical purpose. What I propose to attempt here will be simply to consider certain aspects of the concept of “self” which are manifestly indispensable for the purpose of ethical and historical appreciation, and to ask what their value is for the metaphysical interpretation of existence.

(1) It is manifest, to begin with, that “self” is a teleological concept. The self whose quality is revealed in Biography and History, and judged in Ethics, has for its exclusive material our emotional interests and purposive attitudes towards the various constituents of our surroundings; of these, and of nothing else, our self is made. And the self, again, is one and individual, just in so far as these interests and purposes can be thought of as forming the expression, in the detail of succession, of a central coherent interest or purpose. Where this central interest appears not to exist at all, we have no logical right to speak of a succession of purposive acts as the expression of a single self. Thus, though it may be necessary for some of the practical purposes of police administration to take bodily identity as evidence of identity of self, we all recognise that what a man does in a state of mental alienation complete enough to abolish continuity of purpose, is not material for his biographer except in so far as the knowledge of it may modify his interests and purposes on his return to sanity. And even in cases where we may acquiesce in the necessity for assuming responsibility before the law for “deeds done in the body,” conscience acquits us of moral guilt if we honestly feel we can say, “I was not myself when it was done.” The teleological character of the unity we ascribe to the self is further illustrated by the puzzles suggested by the “alternate” and “multiple” personalities occasionally brought to light in the study of hypnotism and of mental pathology. Finally, in the fairly numerous cases of “conversion,” where a man, as we say, becomes a “new being” or parts with his “old self,” we only recognise him as identical with his past self in so far as we succeed in thinking of his “new life” as being the expression of aims and interests which were, at least implicitly and as “tendencies,” already present, though concealed, in the “old.”

(2) The self implies, and has no existence apart from, a not-self, and it is only in the contrast with the not-self that it is aware of itself as a self. This seems to me clear, as a matter of principle, though the consequences of the principle are in much current speculation partly misconceived, partly neglected. The most important among them, for our purposes, are the following. The feeling of self is certainly not an inseparable concomitant of all our experience. For it only arises—and here nothing but direct experimentation can be appealed to as evidence—as a contrast-effect in connection with our awareness of a not-self, whether as imposing restraints upon the expression of the self, or as undergoing modification by the self. Hence experiences from which this contrast is absent seem to exhibit no trace of genuine “self-consciousness.” Feeling, where you can get it in its simple form, seems to be universally allowed to be an instance in point. Much of our perception appears to me, though I know the view is not widely current among psychologists, to be in the same position. E.g., normally when I am looking at an object, say for instance, a white-washed wall, I do not find that I am in any real sense “conscious of self.” The content of my awareness seems, to me at least, to be just the wall in a setting of a mass of unanalysed feeling, organic and other, which you may, if you please, from your standpoint as an external observer, call my perceiving self, but of which I am only aware as the setting of the perceived wall.

It is only when attention to the content of the perception becomes difficult (as, e.g., through fatigue of the organs of sense, or conflict with some incompatible purpose) that I am normally aware of the perceived object as a not-self opposed to and restricting my self. The same is, I think, true of much of our life of conscious purposive action. I do not find that in my intellectual pursuit of a chosen study, or again in my social relations to the other members of my community, I have explicit awareness of the “facts” of science, or the interests and purposes of others as a not-self with which my own interests are contrasted as those of the self, except in so far as I either find these facts and interests in actual collision with some aim of my own, or experience the removal of such a collision. In ordinary social life, for instance, I have a strong feeling of self as opposed to not-self when the plans of some member of my immediate circle clash with my own, and again when I succeed in winning such a recalcitrant over to my own side; my self in the one case feels repression, in the other expansion. But I do not think it can be said that the self-feeling arises in actual life where there is temporarily no consciousness of opposition or its removal. For instance, while we are harmoniously working with other men for a previously concerted end, the consciousness of self and its contrasted not-self scarcely appears to enter into our experience. This is, I presume, why practical worldly wisdom has always regarded “self-consciousness” as a source of weakness and moral failure. While we are steadily engaged in the progressive execution of a purpose, we “lose ourselves” in the work; it is only upon a check that we become “self-conscious.”

(3) The next point to be noted is that there is no definite line of demarcation between self and not-self. In particular, we must not fall into the error of supposing that the whole content of the relation between self and not-self is social,—the self on its side consisting of me, and the not-self of other men. It is true, no doubt, that the origin of the distinction is mainly social, since it is in the main through experience of what it is to have my execution of a desired act repressed by others, and again to have the stumbling-blocks which have previously restricted my action removed by their co-operation, that I come to be definitely aware of what I want, and of the fact that it is I who want it. But it would be hard to show that the distinction between the self and the not-self could not originate at all except in a social medium, and it is clear that the range of its applicability, when originated, is not limited to the social relation. There seems, on the one hand, to be no feature in our experience whatever which is entirely excluded from entering into the constitution of what is felt as the self. My social intimates, my professional colleagues, my regular occupations, even my clothes or articles of furniture, to which I have grown accustomed, may be so essential to the continuity of my characteristic interests in life that their removal would make my character unrecognisable, or possibly even lead to insanity or death. And as thus indispensable to the teleological unity or my existence, all these “external” objects seem to be capable of passing into and becoming part of the self.

We see an extreme instance of this in the case of the savage transplanted into civilised surroundings, who fails in body and mind and finally dies, without recognisable disease, simply from the disappearance of the interests connected with his old surroundings; or that of the clinging affectionate persons who, in the same way, fade away upon the loss of a beloved relative or friend. In a minor degree we see the same thing in those changes of character which common speech happily describe by such phrases as “he has never been himself since—his wife died, since he lost that money,” and so forth. In principle there seems to be no factor of what we should currently call the self’s environment which may not in this way come to be part of the content of the self.

On the other side, it seems difficult to say whether there is anything which ordinarily forms part of the “self” which may not, under special conditions, become a part of what we recognise as the “not-self.” Thus our bodily feelings and sensations, our thoughts and desires, and in particular our virtuous and vicious habits, are usually reckoned as definitely belonging to our self. Yet in so far as we can think of any desire or habit as an element which is discordant with the rest of our self, and ought not to be there,—and the whole business of moral progress depends on our being able to take up this attitude,—we, so far, relegate that element to the not-self. To will the habit or desire to be otherwise is already, in principle, to expel it from the teleological unity which makes up our inner life. So again with our thoughts: in so far as we can suspend our assent to a judgment, and balance reasons for or against accepting it into the general system of our beliefs, the judgment clearly belongs to the external not-self.

Yet it is at least conceivable that there may be intellectual as well as moral habits so deeply engrained in our constitution that we cannot thus set them over-against the self for judgment and sentence. We must not deny that there are cases in which we could not will or think differently, or even mentally entertain the possibility of thinking or willing differently, without the destruction of our life’s continuity of purpose. Again, our bodily sensations seem to belong in a very special way to our self. Yet in so far as we can acquire the power of voluntarily observing them, or again of withdrawing attention from them, they are in principle reduced to the position of elements in the not-self.

Even pleasure and pain do not seem to belong inalienably to the self’s side of the contrast. E.g., to adapt a Platonic illustration, if I feel pleasure in contemplating the vulgar or obscene, and at the same time feel disgusted with myself for being so pleased, the pleasure seems in the act of condemnation to be recognised as no part of my “true” self, but an alien element obtruded on the self against its nature. Pain, by reason of that urgency and insistency which give it its biological importance, is much harder to banish from the self; but experience, I think, will convince any one who cares to make the experiment, that bodily pains, when not too intense (e.g., a moderately severe toothache), can, by directing attention to their sensational quality, be sometimes made to appear as definitely foreign to the experiencing self. And the history of asceticism, ancient and modern, as well as the practice of “mind-curers,” suggests that this process of extrusion can be carried further than we commonly suspect.

Organic or “common” sensations of general bodily condition probably form the element in experience which most obstinately resists all attempts to sever it from the whole self and treat it as a foreign object, though in some cases we certainly seem able to extrude the organic sensation from the felt self by analysis of its quality and “localisation.” Still, it must be admitted that if there are any elements in experience which are absolutely incapable of transference to the not-self, they are probably in the main masses of unanalysed and unanalysable organic sensation.

All these considerations make two points very clear. (a) The self in which we are interested in Ethics and History is not anything with definitely fixed boundaries. The line dividing it from its complement, the not-self, is one which we cannot draw according to any precise logical rule; and again, what is at one time on one side of the boundary is at another on the other. If there is any part of our experience at all which must be regarded as always and essentially belonging to the self’s side of the dividing line, it will in all probability be merely masses of bodily feeling which are manifestly not the whole of what Ethics and History contemplate when they appraise the worth of a self.

Further, a conclusion follows as to the nature of the opposition of self to not-self. The not-self, as the readiness with which most of the contents of experience can pass from one side of the antithesis to the other shows, is in a sense included in at the very time that it is excluded from the self. The various factors of which the not-self can, at different times, be composed, our fellows, the physical world, thoughts, habits, feelings, all agree in possessing one common characteristic; when referred to the self, they are all elements of discord within the whole of present experience, and it is on account of this discordancy that we treat them as foreign to our real nature, and therefore as belonging to the not-self. We may thus say with accuracy that what is ascribed to the not-self is so ascribed because previously found to be discrepant, and therefore excluded from the self; in other words, the not-self is not an external limit which we somehow find in experience side by side with the self, but is constructed out of experience-data by the extrusion of those data which, if admitted into the self, would destroy its harmony. Thus we finite beings are confronted by a not-self ultimately because in our very finitude, as we have seen in earlier chapters, we contain in ourselves a principle of strife and disharmony. The not-self is no merely external environment, but an inevitable consequence of the imperfection of internal structure which belongs to all finitude.

(4) The self is essentially a thing of development, and as such has its being in the time-process. This is a point upon which it seems for many reasons necessary to insist. Its truth seems manifest from our previous consideration of the nature of the experiences upon which the concept of the self is based. As we have seen, it is primarily to our experience of internal disharmony and the collision of purpose that we owe our distinction between self and not-self. And such experience seems only possible to beings who can oppose an ideal of what ought to be, however dimly that ideal may be apprehended, to what is. A being who either was already all that it was its nature to become, or was incapable of in some way apprehending the fact that it was not so, would thus not have in its experience any material for the distinction between the self and the foreign and hostile elements in experience. And, as we have already seen in our Third Book, time is the expression in abstract form of the fundamental nature of an experience which has as yet attained only the partial fulfilment of its purpose and aspirations, and is therefore internally subject to that want of perfect harmony in which we have now sought the origin of the distinction between self and not-self. Hence we may, I think, take it as certain, at least for us who accept this account of the origin of the self concept, that selves are necessarily in time and as such are necessarily products of development.

This conclusion seems in accord with positive facts which are too well established to permit of question. It is probable that there is not a single element in what I call my present self which is not demonstrably the product of my past development, physical and mental. Nor does it appear reasonable to contend that though the material of my existing self is a result of development, its form of selfhood is underived. It is not merely that my present self is not as my past self, but we cannot avoid the admission that my mental life is the result of a process of development by which it is continuously connected with that of the embryo and even the spermatozoon. And thus it seems to have its beginnings in experiences which are probably so little removed from simple feeling as to afford no opportunity for the sense of self as contrasted with not-self. Or if we maintain that the contrast cannot be altogether absent from even the crudest forms of experience, we still have to reckon with the fact that, one stage further back in my personal history, I had no existence even as an animalcule. An embryonic self is at least not positively inconceivable, but where was Levi’s selfhood while he was yet in the loins of his father? If we will consider what we mean when we say we have all had parents, it will, I think, be confessed that our self must be admitted to have been actually originated in the course of development, impossible as we find it to imagine the stage of such a process.

(5) Finally, we must deal briefly with one more point of some importance. The self, as we can now see, is never identical with anything that could be found completely existing at any one moment in my mental life. For one thing, it is thought of as having a temporal continuity which goes far beyond anything that can be immediately experienced at any given moment. It stretches out both into the past and the future beyond the narrow limits of the “sensible present.” Again, this temporal continuity is only an abstract expression of the inner sameness and continuity of aims and interests we ascribe to the self. My experiences are, as we have seen, thought of as being the life of one self ultimately because I look on them as the harmonious expression of a consistent attitude of interest in the world. And any elements in experience which will not coalesce in such a harmony are, by one device or another, extruded from the true self and declared to be alien intruders from elsewhere. Now, in real life we never find this complete and absolute harmony of the contents of experience; there are always, if we look for them, elements in our actual experience which are discordant, and conflict with the system of interests which, on the whole, dominates it. Hence self, in the last resort, is seen to be an ideal which actual experience only imperfectly realises,—the ideal of a system of purposes and interests absolutely in harmony with itself. And there must be, at least, grave doubt as to the logical self-consistency of this ideal, doubts which we must shortly face.

For the present the point to which I want to call attention is this. Must we say that any degree of felt continuity of existence is enough to constitute rudimentary selfhood, or ought we to hold that there is no true self where there is not at least as much intellectual development as is implied in the power to remember the past and anticipate the future, as one’s own? In other words, are we to make selfhood as wide in its range as sentient life, or to limit it to life sufficiently rational to involve some distinct and explicit recognition of the contrast between self and not-self? This is perhaps, in the main, a question as to terminology; for my own part, I confess I find the second alternative the more satisfactory. I do not see that such a degree of teleological continuity as is implied in the mere feeling of pain, for instance, deserves to be recognised as genuine selfhood; and there is, I think, in the unrestricted use of the term self, selfhood, as applied to merely feeling consciousness, a danger of ambiguity. When we have once applied the terms in such a case, we are inevitably tempted to over-interpret the facts of such simple mental life in order to bring them into fuller accord with what we know of selfhood in our own life. At the same time, it is clear that we have no right dogmatically to deny the presence of the intellectual processes involved in the recognition of self where our methods of observation fail to detect them.

§ 2. We may now approach the problem of the degree of reality which belongs to the self. We have to ask, how far is the conception of self applicable to the individual experiences which in our Second Book we identified as the contents of the system of real existence? Is the infinite individual experience properly to be called a self? Again, is every finite experience a self? And how must we take finite selves, if they are real, to be related to each other? Lastly, perhaps, we might be called on in this connection to face the question how far an individual finite self is more than a temporary feature in the system of existence. Our conclusions on all these points were no doubt in principle decided by the discussions of our Second Book, but it is desirable to make some of them more explicit than was possible there.

First, then, I think it is clear that the infinite experience or “Absolute” cannot properly be called a self. This is immediately apparent if our view as to the essential implications of self-feeling be accepted. We have urged that self is only apprehended as such in contrast to a simultaneously apprehended not-self. And the not-self, we have seen, is composed of all the discordant elements of experience, so far as their discord has not been overcome. It was for this reason that we held the self to be indissolubly bound up with that experience of the world as a process in time, with a “no longer” and “not yet,” which is the universal characteristic of finitude. It must follow that an experience which contains no discordant elements, in their character as unresolved discords, is not characterised by the contrast-effect which is the foundation of selfhood. An experience which contains the whole of Reality as a perfectly harmonious whole can apprehend nothing as outside or opposed to itself, and for that very reason cannot be qualified by what we know as the sense of self.

To put the same thing in another way, “self” as we have seen, is essentially an ideal, and an ideal which is apprehended as contrasted with the present actuality. Hence only beings who are aware of themselves as in process of becoming more fully harmonious in their life of feeling and purpose than they at present are, can be aware of themselves as selves. Self and imperfection are inseparable, and any being which knows nothing of the opposition between the ideal and the actual, the ought and the is, must also know nothing of the feeling of self. Or in yet a third form of words, only creatures whose life is in time—and therefore only finite creatures—can be selves, since the time-experience is an integral constituent of selfhood.

One objection which might be brought against this inference is sufficiently ingenious to deserve special examination. It may be urged that though the experience of imperfection and thwarted purpose are conditions without which we in particular could not come to the apprehension of self, they do not remain as ingredients in the experience of selfhood when once it has been developed. Hence, it might be said, the “Absolute” may conceivably have the experience without having to acquire it through these conditions. In general principle, no doubt this line of argument is sound enough. It is perfectly true that the special conditions through which we come to have experience of a certain quality cannot, without investigation, be taken as everywhere indispensable for that experience. E.g., even if it were proved that the pessimists are right in saying that we never experience pleasure except as a contrast with previous pain, it would still not follow that the pleasure, as felt, is the mere rebound from the pain, and has no further positive quality of its own, and it would then still be an open question whether other beings might not experience the pleasure without the antecedent pain. But the principle does not seem applicable to the case now under consideration, since it is our contention that the contrast of the discordant factor with the rest of the experience to which it belongs is not simply an antecedent condition, but is in fact the central core of the actual apprehension of self. It is not simply that we do not, if our previous analysis has been correct, have the feeling of self except in cases where such a contrast is present, but that the feeling of self is the feeling of the contrast. Hence our result seems untouched by the undoubtedly sound general principle to which we have referred.

That our conclusion is so frequently opposed by philosophers who adopt a generally idealistic position, is, I believe, to be accounted for by the prevalence of the belief that experience, as such, is essentially characterised by consciousness of self. To experience at all, it is commonly thought, is to be aware of one’s self as in relation to an environment of the not-self. Hence to deny that the absolute Reality is a self is often thought to be equivalent to denying that it is an experience at all and this, from the idealistic point of view, would mean to deny that it is real. But if our previous analysis was sound, it is not even true of human experience as such that it is everywhere conditioned by the felt contrast of self with not-self. From the point of view of that analysis, the contrast only exists where there is felt discord between experience as a whole and some of its constituents. The conception of our experience as essentially marked by a sense of self, must therefore rest upon our intellectual reconstruction effected by the transparent fiction of ascribing to every experience features which analysis detects only in special cases and under special conditions. Hence it is quite possible for us to unite the affirmation that all real existence ultimately forms a single experience-system, with the denial that that system is qualified by the contrast-effect we know as the sense of self. How, indeed, should that outside which there is nothing to afford the contrast, so distinguish itself from a purely imaginary other?

§ 3. If the Absolute is not a self, a fortiori it is manifest that it cannot be a “Person.” Exactly how much is intended when the “personality” of the Absolute, or indeed of anything else, is affirmed, it would not be easy to determine. A “self” does not seem to be necessarily a “person,” since those philosophers who hold that there is no reality but that of selves, while admitting that the lower animals are selves, do not usually call them persons. But it is hard to say how much more is included in personality than in selfhood. If we bear in mind that personality is, in its origin, a legal conception, and that it is usually ascribed only to human beings, or to such superhuman intelligences as are held capable of associating on terms of mutual obligation with human beings, we may perhaps suggest the following definition. A person is a being capable of being the subject of the specific obligations attaching to a specific position in human society. And it becomes manifest that, if this is so, personality is, as Mr. Bradley has said, finite or meaningless.

For a society of persons is essentially one of ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι, social peers, with purposes mutually complementary though not identical, and standing in need of each other’s aid for the realisation of those purposes. Only those beings are personal for me whose aims and purposes are included along with mine in some wider and more harmonious system, and to whom I therefore am bound by ties of reciprocal obligation. But it is clear that, to ask whether the wider system which is thus the foundation of our mutual rights and duties as persons, is itself a person, would be ridiculous. Thus, e.g., there would be no sense in asking whether “human society”—the foundation of our moral personality—is itself a person. You might, in fact, as reasonably ask whether it can be sued for trespass or assessed under schedule D for Income Tax.

Still more manifestly is this true of the Absolute which includes within it all the (conceivably infinitely numerous) groups of mutually recognising persons, and all those other forms of experience which we cannot properly call personal. Between the whole system and its component elements there can be no such relation of mutual supplementation and completion as is the essence of genuine personality. If the system, as a whole, may be said to supplement and correct our defects and shortcomings, we cannot be said, in any way, to supplement it; the Absolute and I are emphatically not, in any true sense, ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι, and the relation between us cannot therefore be thought of as personal. All this is so obvious, that, as I take it, the personality of the Absolute or whole of existence would find no defenders but for the gratuitous assumption that whatever is an individual experience or spiritual unity must be personal. This, as far as I can see, is to assume that such an individual must have an external environment of other experience-subjects of the same degree of harmonious and comprehensive individuality. And for this assumption I can, speaking for myself, see no ground whatever.

§ 4. If we cannot, then, properly say that the Absolute, or the Universe,—or whatever may be our chosen name for the infinite individual which is the whole of existence,—is a self or person, can we say that the finite individuals which compose it are one and all selves, and that the Absolute is therefore a society of selves? Our answer to this question must depend, I think, upon two considerations,—(a) the amount of continuity we regard as essential to a self, and (b) the kind of unity we attribute to a society.

(a) If we regard any and every degree of felt teleological continuity as sufficient to constitute a self, it is clear that we shall be compelled to say that selves, and selves only, are the material of which reality is composed. For we have already agreed that Reality is exclusively composed of psychical fact, and that all psychical facts are satisfactions of some form of subjective interest or craving, and consequently that every psychical fact comprised in the whole system of existence must form part of the experience of a finite individual subject. Hence, if every such subject, whatever its degree of individuality, is to be called a self, there will be no facts which are not included somewhere in the life of one or more selves. On the other hand, if we prefer, as I have done myself, to regard some degree of intellectual development, sufficient for the recognition of certain permanent interests as those of the self, as essential to selfhood, we shall probably conclude that the self is an individual of a relatively high type, and that there are consequently experiences of so imperfect a degree of teleological continuity as not to merit the title of selves.

And this conclusion seems borne out by all the empirically ascertained facts of, e.g., the life of the lower animals, of human infants, and again of adults of abnormally defective intellectual and moral development. Few persons, unless committed to the defence of a theory through thick and thin, would be prepared to call a worm a self, and most of us would probably feel some hesitation about a new-born baby or a congenital idiot. Again, finite societies are clearly components of Reality, yet, as we have seen, it is probably an error to speak of a society as a self, though every true society is clearly an individual with a community and continuity of purpose which enable us rightly to regard it as a unity capable of development, and to appreciate its ethical worth. Hence it is, perhaps, less likely to lead to misunderstandings if we say simply that the constituents of reality are finite individual experiences, than if we say that they are selves. The self, as we have seen, is a psychological category which only imperfectly represents the facts of experience it is employed to correlate.

(b) Again, if we speak of the Absolute as a society of finite individuals, we ought at least to be careful in guarding ourselves against misunderstanding. Such an expression has certainly some manifest advantages. It brings out both the spiritual character of the system of existence and the fact that, though it contains a plurality of finite selves and contains them without discord, it is not properly thought of as a self, but as a community of many selves.

At the same time, such language is open to misconstructions, some of which it may be well to enumerate. We must not, for instance, assume that all the individuals in the Absolute are necessarily in direct social interrelation. For social relation, properly speaking, is only possible between beings who are ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι at least in the sense of having interests of a sufficiently identical kind to permit of intercommunication and concerted cooperation for the realisation of a common interest. And our own experience teaches us that the range of existence with which we ourselves stand in this kind of relation is limited. Even within the bounds of the human race the social relations of each of us with the majority of our fellows are of an indirect kind, and though with the advance of civilisation the range of those relations is constantly being enlarged, it still remains to be seen whether a “cosmopolitan” society is a realisable ideal or not. With the non-human animal world our social relations, in consequence of the greater divergence of subjective interest, are only of a rudimentary kind, and with what appears to us as inanimate nature, as we have already seen, direct social relation seems to be all but absolutely precluded.

Among the non-human animals, again, we certainly find traces of relations of a rudimentarily social kind, but once more only within relatively narrow limits; the different species and groups seem in the main to be indifferent to one another. And we have no means of disproving the possibility that there may be in the universe an indefinite plurality of social groups, of an organisation equal or superior to that of our human communities, but of a type so alien to our own that no direct communication, not even of the elementary kind which would suffice to establish their existence, is possible. We must be prepared to entertain the possibility, then, that the individuals composing the Absolute fall into a number of groups, each consisting of members which have direct social relations of some kind with each other, but not with the members of other groups.

And also, of course, we must remember that there may very well be varieties of degree of structural complexity in the social groups themselves. In some the amount of intelligent recognition on the part of the individuals of their own and their fellows’ common scheme of interests and purposes is probably less articulate, in others, again, it may be more articulate than is the case in those groups of co-operating human beings which form the only societies of which we know anything by direct experience.

On the other hand, we must, if we speak of the Absolute as a society, be careful to avoid the implication, which may readily arise from a false conception of human societies, that the unity of the Absolute is a mere conceptual fiction or “point of view” of our own, from which to regard what is really a mere plurality of separate units. In spite of the now fairly complete abandonment in words of the old atomistic theories, which treated society as if it were a mere collective name for a multitude of really independent “individuals,” it may be doubted whether we always realise what the rejection of this view implies. We still tend too much to treat the selves which compose a society, at least in our Metaphysics, as if they were given to us in direct experience as merely exclusive of one another, rather than as complementary to one another. In other words, of the two typical forms of experience from which the concept of self appears to be derived, the experience of conflict between our subjective interests and our environment, and that of the removal of the discord, we too often pay attention in our Metaphysics to the former to the neglect of the latter. But in actual life it is oftener the latter that is prominent in our relations with our fellow-men. We—the category of co-operation—is at least as fundamental in all human thought and language as I and thou, the categories of mutual exclusion. That you and I are mutually complementary factors in a wider whole of common interests, is at least as early a discovery of mankind as that our private interests and standpoints collide.

If we speak of existence as a society, then we must be careful to remember that the individual unity of a society is just as real a fact of experience as the individual unity of the members which compose it, and that, when we call the Absolute a society rather than a self, we do not do so with any intention of casting doubt upon its complete spiritual unity as an individual experience. With these restrictions, it would, I think, be fair to say that if the Absolute cannot be called a society without qualification, at any rate human society affords the best analogy by which we can attempt to represent its systematic unity in a concrete conceptual form. To put it otherwise, a genuine human society is an individual of a higher type of structure than any one of the selves which compose it, and therefore more adequately represents the structure of the one ultimately complete system of the Absolute.

We see this more particularly in the superior independence of Society as compared with one of its own members. It is true, of course, that no human society could exist apart from an external environment, but it does not appear to be as necessary to the existence of society as to that of a single self, that it should be sensible of the contrast between itself and its rivals. As we have already sufficiently seen, it is in the main from the experience of contrast with other human selves that I come by the sense of my own selfhood. Though the contents of my concept of self are not purely social, it does at least seem clear that I could neither acquire it, nor retain it long, except for the presence of other like selves which form the complement to it. But though history teaches how closely similar is the part played by war and other relations between different societies in developing the sense of a common national heritage and purpose, yet a society, once started on its course of development, does appear to be able to a large extent to flourish without the constant stimulus afforded by rivalry or co-operation with other societies. One man on a desert land, if left long enough to himself, would probably become insane or brutish; there seems no sufficient reason to hold that a single civilised community, devoid of relations with others, could not, if its internal organisation were sufficiently rich, flourish in a purely “natural” environment. On the strength of this higher self-sufficiency, itself a consequence of superior internal wealth and harmony, a true society may reasonably be held to be a finite individual of a higher type than a single human self.

The general result of this discussion, then, seems to be, that neither in the self nor in society—at any rate in the only forms of it we know to exist—do we find the complete harmony of structure and independence of external conditions which are characteristic of ultimate reality. Both the self and society must therefore be pronounced to be finite appearance, but of the two, society exhibits the fuller and higher individuality, and is therefore the more truly real. We found it quite impossible to regard the universe as a single self; but, with certain important qualifications, we said that it might be thought of as a society without very serious error. It will, of course, follow from what has been said, that we cannot frame any finally adequate conception of the way in which all the finite individual experiences form the unity of the infinite experiences. That they must form such a perfect unity we have seen in our Second Book; that the unity of a society is, perhaps, the nearest analogy by which we can represent it, has been shown in the present paragraph. That we have no higher categories which can adequately indicate the precise way in which all existence ultimately forms an even more perfect unity, is an inevitable consequence of the fact of our own finitude. We cannot frame the categories, because we, as finite beings, have not the corresponding experience. To this extent, at least, it seems to me that any sound philosophy must end with a modest confession of ignorance.

“There is in God, men say, A deep but dazzling darkness,”

is a truth which the metaphysician’s natural desire to know as much as possible of the final truth, should not lead him to forget.

§ 5. This is probably the place to make some reference to the question whether the self is a permanent or only a temporary form in which Reality appears. In popular thought this question commonly appears as that of the immortality (sometimes, too, of the pre-existence) of the soul. The real issue is, however, a wider one, and the problem of immortality only one of its subsidiary aspects. I propose to say something briefly on the general question, and also on the special one, though in this latter case rather with a view to indicating the line along which discussion ought to proceed, than with the aim of suggesting a result.

It would not, I think, be possible to deny the temporary character of the self after the investigations of the earlier part of this chapter. A self, we said, is one and the same only in virtue of teleological continuity of interest and purpose. But exactly how much variation is enough to destroy this continuity, and how much again may exist without abolishing it, we found it impossible to determine by any general principle. Yet the facts of individual development seemed to make it clear that new selves—i.e. new unique forms of interest in the world—come into being in the time-process, and that old ones disappear.

And again, both from mental Pathology and from normal Psychology, we found it easy to cite examples of the formation and disappearance, within the life-history of a single man, of selves which it seemed impossible to regard as connected by any felt continuity of interest with the rest of life. In the case of multiple personality, and alternating personality, we seemed to find evidence that a plurality of such selves might alternate regularly, or even co-exist in connection with the same body. The less striking, but more familiar, cases of the passing selves of our dreams, and of temporary periods in waking life where our interest and characters are modified, but not in a permanent way by exceptional excitements, belong in principle to the same category. In short, unless you are to be content with a beggarly modicum of continuity of purpose too meagre to be more than an empty name, you seem forced to conclude that the origination and again the disappearance of selves in the course of psychical events is a fact of constant occurrence. No doubt, the higher the internal organisation of our interests and purposes, the more fixed and the less liable to serious modification in the flux of circumstance our self becomes; but a self absolutely fixed and unalterable was, as we saw, an unrealised and, on the strength of our metaphysical certainty that only the absolute whole is entirely self-determined, we may add, an unrealisable ideal. We seem driven, then, to conclude that the permanent identity of the self is a matter of degree, and that we are not entitled to assert that the self corresponding to a single organism need be either single or persistent. It is possible for me, even in the period between birth and death, to lose my old self and acquire a new one, and even to have more selves than one, and those of different degrees of individual structure, at the same time. Nor can we assign any certain criterion by which to decide in all cases whether the self has been one and identical through a series of psychical events. Beyond the general assertion that the more completely occupied our various interests and purposes are, the more permanent is our selfhood, we are unable to go.

These considerations have an important bearing on the vexed question of a future life. If they are justified, we clearly cannot have any positive demonstration from the nature of the self of its indestructibility, and it would therefore be in vain to demand that philosophy shall prove the permanence of all selves. On the other hand, if the permanence of a self is ultimately a function of its inner unity of aim and purpose, there is no a priori ground for holding that the physical event of death must necessarily destroy this unity, and so that the self must be perishable at death. For Metaphysics, the problem thus seems to resolve itself into a balancing of probabilities, and, as an illustration of the kind of consideration which has to be taken into account, it may be worth while to inquire what probable arguments may fairly be allowed to count on either side.

On the negative side, if we dismiss, as we fairly may, the unproved assertions of dogmatic Materialism, we have to take account of the possibility that a body may, for all we know, be a necessary condition for the existence of an individual experience continuous in interest and purpose with that of our present life, and also of the alleged absence of any positive empirical evidence for existence after death. These considerations, however, scarcely seem decisive. As to the first, I do not see how it can be shown that a body is indispensable, at least in the sense of the term “body” required by the argument. It is no doubt true that in the experience of any individual there must be the two aspects of fresh teleological initiative and of already systematised habitual and quasi-mechanical repetition of useful reactions already established, and further, that intercourse between different individuals is only possible through the medium of such a system of established habits. As we have already seen, what we call our body is simply a name for such a set of habitual reactions through which intercommunication between members of human societies is rendered possible. Hence, if we generalise the term “body” to stand for any system of habitual reactions discharging this function of serving as a medium of communication between individuals forming a society, we may fairly say that a body is indispensable to the existence of a self. But it seems impossible to show that the possibility of such a medium of communication is removed by the dissolution of the particular system of reactions which constitutes our present medium of intercourse. The dissolution of the present body might mean no more than the individual acquisition of changed types of habitual reaction, types which no longer serve the purpose of communication with the members of our society, but yet may be an initial condition of communication with other groups of intelligent beings.

As to the absence of empirical evidence, it is, of course, notorious that some persons at least claim to possess such evidence of the continued existence of the departed. Until the alleged facts have been made the subject of serious and unbiassed collection and examination, it is, I think, premature to pronounce an opinion as to their evidential value. I will therefore make only one observation with respect to some of the alleged evidence from “necromancy.” It is manifest that the only kind of continuance which could fairly be called a survival of the self, and certainly the only kind in which we need feel any interest, would be the persistence after death of our characteristic interests and purposes. Unless the “soul” continued to live for aims and interests teleologically continuous with those of its earthly life, there would be no genuine extension of our selfhood beyond the grave. Hence any kind of evidence for continued existence which is not at the same time evidence for continuity of interests and purposes, is really worthless when offered as testimony to “immortality.” The reader will be able to apply this reflection for himself if he knows anything of the “phenomena” of the vulgar Spiritualism.

When we turn to the positive side of the question, it seems necessary to remark that though the negative considerations we have just referred to are not of themselves enough to disprove “immortality,” provided there is any strong ground for taking it as a fact, they would be quite sufficient to decide against it, unless there is positive reason for accepting it. That we have no direct evidence of such a state of things, and cannot see precisely how in detail it could come about, would not be good logical ground for denying its existence if it were demanded by sound philosophical principles. On the other hand, if there were no reasons for believing in it, and good, though not conclusive, probable reasons against it, we should be bound to come provisionally to a negative conclusion.

Have we then any positive grounds at all to set against the negative considerations just discussed? Pending the result of inquiries which have recently been set on foot, it is hard to speak with absolute confidence; still, the study of literature does, I think, warrant us in provisionally saying that there seems to be a strong and widely diffused feeling, at least in the Western world, that life without any hope of continuance after death would be an unsatisfactory thing. This feeling expresses itself in many forms, but I think they can all be traced to one root. Normally, as we know, the extinction of a particular teleological interest is effected by its realisation; our purposes die out, and our self so far suffers change, when their result has been achieved. (And incidentally this may help us to see once more that dissatisfaction and imperfection are of the essence of the finite self. The finite self lives on the division of idea from reality, of intent from execution. If the two could become identical, the self would have lost the atmosphere from which it draws its life-breath.) Hence, if death, in our experience, always took the form of the dissolution of a self which had already seen its purposes fulfilled and its aims achieved, there would probably be no incentive to desire or believe in future continuance. But it is a familiar fact that death is constantly coming as a violent and irrational interrupter of unrealised plans and inchoate work. The self seems to disappear not because it has played its part and finished its work, but as the victim of external accident. I think that analysis would show, under the various special forms which the desire for immortality takes, such as the yearning to renew interrupted friendships or the longing to continue unfinished work, as their common principle, the feeling of resentment against this apparent defeat of intelligent purpose by brute external accident.

Now, what is the logical value of this feeling as a basis for argument? We may fairly say, on the one hand, that it rests on a sound principle. For it embodies the conviction, of which all Philosophy is the elaboration, that the real world is a harmonious system in which irrational accident plays no part, and that, if we could only see the whole truth, we should realise that there is no final and irremediable defeat for any of our aspirations, but all are somehow made good. On the other side, we must remember that the argument from the desire for continuance to its reality also goes on to assert not only that our aspirations are somehow fulfilled and our unfinished work somehow perfected, but that this fulfilment takes place in the particular way which we, with our present lights, would wish. And in maintaining this, the argument goes beyond the conclusion which philosophical first principles warrant.

For it might be that, if our insight into the scheme of the world were less defective, we should cease to desire this special form of fulfilment, just as in growing into manhood we cease to desire the kind of life which appeared to us as children the ideal of happiness. The man’s life-work may be the realisation of the child’s dreams, but it does not realise them in the form imagined by childhood. And conceivably it might be so with our desire for a future life. Further, of course, the logical value of the argument from feeling must to some extent depend upon the universality and persistence of the feeling itself. We must not mistake for a fundamental aspiration of humanity what may be largely the effect of special traditions and training. Hence we cannot truly estimate the worth of the inference from feeling until we know both how far the feeling itself is really permanent in our own society, and how far, again, it exists in societies with different beliefs and traditions. In itself the sentiment, e.g., of Christian civilisation, cannot be taken as evidence of the universal feeling of mankind, in the face of the apparently opposite feelings, e.g., of Brahmins and Buddhists.

I should conclude, then, that the question of a future life must remain an open one for Metaphysics. We seem unable to give any valid metaphysical arguments for a future life, but then, on the other hand, the negative presumptions seem to be equally devoid of cogency. Philosophy, in this matter, to use the fine phrase of Dr. McTaggart, “gives us hope,” and I cannot, for my own part, see that it can do more. Possibly, as Browning suggests in La Saisiaz, it is not desirable, in the interests of practical life, that it should do more. And here I must leave the question with the reader, only throwing out one tentative suggestion for his approval or rejection as he pleases. Since we have seen that the permanence of the self depends upon its degree of internal harmony of structure, it is at least conceivable that its continuance as a self, beyond the limits of earthly life, may depend on the same condition. Conceivably the self may survive death, as it survives lesser changes in the course of physical events, if its unity and harmony of purpose are strong enough, and not otherwise. If so, a future existence would not be a heritage into which we are safe to step when the time comes, but a conquest to be won by the strenuous devotion of life to the acquisition of a rich, and at the same time orderly and harmonious, moral selfhood. And thus the belief in a future life, in so far as it acts in any given case as a spur to such strenuous living, might be itself a factor in bringing about its own fulfilment. It is impossible to affirm with certainty that this is so, but, again, we cannot deny that it may be the case. And here, as I say, I must be content to leave the problem.

Consult further:—B. Bosanquet, Psychology of the Moral Self, lect. 5; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chaps. 9 (The Meanings of Self), 10 (The Reality of Self), 26 (The Absolute and its Appearances,—especially the end of the chapter, pp. 499-511 of 1st ed.), 27 (Ultimate Doubts); L. T. Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, part 3, chap. 5; S. Hodgson, Metaphysic of Experience, bk. iv. chap. 4; Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i part 4, §§ 5, 6; W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. chap. 10; H. Lotze, Metaphysic, bk. iii chaps. 1 (especially § 245), 5; Microcosmus, bk. iii. c. 5; J. M. E. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, chap. 2 (for a detailed hostile examination of Dr. McTaggart’s argument, which I would not be understood to endorse except on special points, see G. E. Moore in Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, N.S. vol. ii. pp. 188-211); J. Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, lects. 6, 7.

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Footnote 184:

“Bodily identity” itself, of course, might give rise to difficult problems if we had space to go into them. Here I can merely suggest certain points for the reader’s reflection. (1) All identity appears in the end to be teleological and therefore psychical. I believe this to be the same human body which I have seen before, because I believe that the interests expressed in its actions will be continuous, experience having taught me that a certain amount of physical resemblance is a rough-and-ready criterion of psychical continuity. (2) As to the ethical problem of responsibility referred to in the text, it is obviously entirely one of less and more. Our moral verdicts upon our own acts and those of others are in practice habitually influenced by the conviction that there are degrees of moral responsibility within what the immediate necessities of administration compel us to treat as absolute. We do not, e.g., think a man free from all moral blame for what he does when drunk, or undeserving of all credit for what he performs when “taken out of himself,” i.e. out of the rut of his habitual interests by excitement, but we certainly do, when not under the influence of a theory, regard him as deserving of less blame or credit, as the case may be, for his behaviour than if he had performed the acts when he was “more himself.” On all these topics see Mr. Bradley’s article in Mind for July 1902.

Footnote 185:

So “self-consciousness,” in the bad sense, always arises from a sense of an incongruity between the self and some contrasted object or environment.

Footnote 186:

Though, of course, it does appear in the process of framing and initiating the scheme of concerted action; the other self is here contrasted with my own, precisely because the removal of the collision between my purpose and my environment is felt as coming from without.

Footnote 187:

It might be said that it is not these features of the environment themselves, but my “ideas” of them, which thus belong to the self. This sounds plausible at first, but only because we are habitually accustomed to the “introjectionist” substitution of psychological symbols for the actualities of life. On the question of fact, see Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chap. 8, p. 88 ff. (1st ed.).

Footnote 188:

A colleague of my own tells me that in his case movements of the eyes appear to be inseparable from the consciousness of self, and are incapable of being extruded into the not-self in the sense above described. I do not doubt that there are, in each of us, bodily feelings of this kind which refuse to be relegated to the not-self and that it would be well worth while to institute systematic inquiries over as wide an area as possible about their precise character in individual cases. It appears to me, however, as I have stated above, that in ordinary perception these bodily feelings often are apprehended simply as qualifying the perceived content without any opposition of self and not-self. At any rate, the problem is one of those fundamental questions in the theory of cognition which are too readily passed over in current Psychology.

Footnote 189:

Of course, you can frame the concept of a “self” from which even these bodily feelings have been extruded, and which is thus a mere “cognitive subject” without concrete psychical quality. But as such a mere logical subject is certainly not the self of which we are aware in any concrete experience, and still more emphatically not the self in which the historical and ethical sciences are interested, I have not thought it necessary to deal with it in the text.

Footnote 190:

That we cannot imagine it does not appear to be any ground for denying its actuality. It is never a valid argument against a conclusion required to bring our knowledge into harmony with itself, that we do not happen to possess the means of envisaging it in sensuous imagery.

Footnote 191:

I venture to think that some of the rather gratuitous hypotheses as to the rational selfhood of animal species quà species put forward by Professor Royce in the second volume of The World and the Individual, are illustrations of this tendency to unnecessary over-interpretation.

Footnote 192:

Is it necessary to refer in particular to the suggestion that for the Absolute the contrast-effect in question may be between itself and its component manifestations or appearances? This would only be possible if the finite appearances were contained in the whole in some way which allowed them to remain at discord with one another, i.e. in some way incompatible with the systematic character which is the fundamental quality of the Absolute. I am glad to find myself in accord, on the general principle at least, with Dr. McTaggart. See the Third Essay in his recent Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.

Footnote 193:

It would be fruitless to object that “societies” can, in fact, have a legal corporate personality, and so can—to revert to the illustration used above—be sued and taxed. What can be thus dealt with is always a mere association of definite individual human beings, who may or may not form a genuine spiritual unity. E.g., you might proceed against the Commissioners of Income Tax, but this does not prove that the Commissioners of Income Tax are a genuine society. On the other hand, the Liberal-Unionist Party probably possesses enough community of purpose to enable it to be regarded as a true society, but has no legal personality, and consequently no legal rights or obligations, as a party. Similarly, the corporation known as the Simeon Trustees has a legal personality with corresponding rights and duties, and it also stands in close relation with the evangelical party in the Established Church. And this party is no doubt a true ethical society. But the corporation is not the evangelical party, and the latter, in the sense in which it is a true society, is not a legal person.

I may just observe that the question whether the Absolute is a self or a person must not be confounded with the question of the “personality of God.” We must not assume off-hand that “God” and the Absolute are identical. Only special examination of the phenomena of the religious life can decide for us whether “God” is necessarily the whole of Reality. If He is not, it would clearly be possible to unite a belief in “God’s” personality with a denial of the personality of the Absolute, as is done, e.g., by Mr. Rashdall in his essay in Personal Idealism. For some further remarks on the problem, see below, Chapter V.

Footnote 194:

I suppose that any doctrine which denies the ultimate reality of the finite self must expect to be confronted by the appeal to the alleged revelation of immediate experience. Cogito, ergo sum, is often taken as an immediately certain truth in the sense that the existence of myself is something of which I am directly aware in every moment of consciousness. This is, however, an entire perversion of the facts. Undoubtedly the fact of there being experience is one which can be verified by the very experiment of trying to deny it. Denial itself is a felt experience. But it is (a) probably not true that we cannot have experience at all without an accompanying perception of self, and (b) certainly not true that the mere feeling of self as in contrast with a not-self, when we do get it, is what is meant by the self of Ethics and History. The self of these sciences always embraces more than can be given in any single moment of experience, it is an ideal construction by which we connect moments of experience according to a general scheme. The value of that scheme for any science can only be tested by the success with which it does its work, and its truth is certainly not established by the mere consideration that the facts it aims at connecting are actual. Metaphysics would be the easiest of sciences if you could thus take it for granted that any construction which is based upon some aspect of experienced fact must be valid.

Footnote 195:

This is why Plato seems justified in laying stress upon the dreams of the wise man as evidence of his superiority (Republic, bk. ix. p. 571). His ideal wise man is one whose inner life is so completely unified that there is genuine continuity of purpose between his waking and sleeping state. Plato might perhaps have replied to Locke’s query, that Socrates waking and Socrates asleep are the same person, and their identity is testimony to the exceptional wisdom and virtue of Socrates.

If it be thought that at least the simultaneous co-existence within one of two selves is inconceivable, I would ask the reader to bear in mind that the self always includes more than is at any moment given as actual matter of psychical fact. At any moment the self must be taken to consist for the most part of unrealised tendencies, and in so far as such ultimately incompatible tendencies are part of my whole nature, at the same time it seems reasonable to say that I have simultaneously more than one self. Ultimately, no doubt, this line of thought would lead to the conclusion that “my whole nature” itself is only relatively a whole.

Footnote 196:

Compare the valuable essay by Mr. Bradley on the “Evidence of Spiritualism” in Fortnightly Review for December 1885.

Footnote 197:

Death, however, though the most striking, is not the only illustration of this apparently irrational interference of accident with intelligent purpose. Mental and bodily disablement, or even adverse external fortune, may have the same effect upon the self. This must be taken into account in any attempt to deal with the general problem.

Footnote 198:

Dr. McTaggart’s phrase is more exactly adequate to describe my view than his own, according to which “immortality” is capable of philosophical proof. (See the second chapter of his Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.) I have already explained why I cannot accept this position. I believe Dr. McTaggart’s satisfaction with it must be partly due to failure to raise the question what it is that he declares to be a “fundamental differentiation” of the Absolute.

Footnote 199:

I ought perhaps to say a word—more I do not think necessary—upon the doctrine that immortality is a fundamental “moral postulate.” If this statement means no more than that it would be inconsistent with the rationality of the universe that our work as moral agents should be simply wasted, and that therefore it must somehow have its accomplishment whether we see it in our human society or not, I should certainly agree with the general proposition. But I cannot see that we know enough of the structure of the universe to assert that this accomplishment is only possible in the special form of immortality. To revert to the illustration of the text, (1) our judgment that the world must be a worthless place without immortality might be on a level with the child’s notion that “grown-up” life, to be worth having, must be a life of continual play and no work. (2) If it is meant, however, that it is not “worth while” to be virtuous unless you can look forward to remuneration—what Hegel, according to Heine, called a Trinkgeld—hereafter for not having lived like a beast, the proposition appears to me a piece of immoral nonsense which it would be waste of time to discuss.

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