Self-identity

“ My personal identity, therefore, implies the continued existence of that indivisible thing which I call myself. Whatever this self may be, it is something which thinks, and deliberates, and resolves, and acts, and suffers. I am not thought, I am not action, I am not feeling; I am something that thinks, and acts, and suffers. ”

“ Once feel this truth, and you begin to lose the sense of your identity, to know that your destiny, your self, is an organic part of all men. It is they that speak. It is themselves that have been found and expressed. ”

“ Self-identity is not an immediate datum of consciousness: it is a matter of inference. I think of myself as the permanent substance of which particular actions, feelings, etc., are predicable. But the real self is not a bare unity: the real human individual is his ancestry and his age epitomized. ”

“ As we have seen, besides, Identity is undoubtedly a negative,—not however an abstract empty Nought, but the negation of Being and its characteristics. Being so, Identity is at the same time self-relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation; in other words, it draws a distinction between it and itself. ”

“ Identity being a practical postulate, modelled on the immediacy of felt self-identity, the postulation of absolute conceptual identity developed very slowly, and there never was any practical danger lest the meaning of the postulate should be pressed into a form calculated to defeat its original purpose. The inherence of attributes in a substance, the relation of a thing to its qualities, are not as such practical problems, and the difficulties which the intellectual play of reflective idlers has discovered in them did not exist in practice. ”

“ I have succeeded beyond a doubt; none can exist in your minds of my identity-my self, for you have never breathed my name to this mortal. Again will I come to you and tell you of our lovely world which we enjoy, each according to individual development. ”

“ Am I equally interested in the fate of all? Or if I must fix upon some one of them in particular as my representative and other self, how am I to be determined in my choice? Here, then, I saw an end put to my speculations about absolute self-interest and personal identity. I saw plainly that the consciousness of my own feelings, which is made the foundation of my continued interest in them, could not extend to what had never been, and might never be; that my identity with myself must be confined to the connection between my past and present being ”

“ But that is impossible; for in truth my personal identity is founded only on my personal consciousness, and that does not extend beyond the present moment.—It must be maintained, on the other side of the question, that my past, my present, and my future self are inseparably linked together, equally identified by an intimate communion of transferable thoughts and feelings in one metaphysical principle of self-interest, before they can be equally myself, the same identical thing, to any purpose of sentiment or for any motive of action. ”

“ They have no continued but a successive existence, but that self or I to which they belong is permanent, and has the same relation to all succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings which I call mine. The identity of a person is perfect—it admits of no degrees—and is not divisible into parts. ”

“ When we come to the question of the sameness of the Self or Ego we are, if possible, on more debatable ground than heretofore. The whole subject of our knowledge of the Self lies as yet, in the opinion of many, very much in the dark. ”

“ As crisis after crisis is passed and the77 individual meets each of them with reasonable resourcefulness and receives the encouragement and recognition of others, he begins to believe in himself, to have a consistent expectation of what he will do in the face of various circumstances and relationships. In this way he begins to acquire a style of living which is his own and which contributes to his sense of identity and to others’ identification of him.
In the achievement of a sense of self-identity, the child needs models with which to identify himself. ”

“ How am I to know that I am not imposed upon by a false claim of identity?—But that is ridiculous, because you will have no other self than that which arises from this very consciousness. Why then, this self may be multiplied in as many different beings as the Deity may think proper to endue with the same consciousness, which if it can be renewed at will in any one instance, may clearly be so in an hundred others. ”

“ Personal identity is mainly a matter of degree. The question has a meaning, if confined to certain aspects of the self, though even here it can be made definite in each case only by the arbitrary selection of points of view. And in each case there will be a limit fixed in the end by no clear principle. But in what the general sameness of one self consists is a problem insoluble because it is meaningless. This question, I repeat it, is sheer nonsense until we have got some clear idea as to what the self is to stand for. ”

“ And when the self changes in time, are we able to justify the inconsistency which most palpably appears, or, rather, stares us in the face? You may say that we are each assured of our personal identity in a way in which we are not assured of the sameness of things. ”

“ And one should really think it self-evident, that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes. ”

“ Our consciousness of personal identity assures us of our essential simplicity: the owner of the various constituents of the self, as we have seen them, the hypothetical Arch-Ego whom we provisionally conceived as possible, is a real entity of whose existence self-consciousness makes us directly aware. ”

“ The second sense of the word self would make it a complex of "real" qualities beyond, and represented by, the self as it appears in consciousness. Now, I do not think that the fact that one would attribute to the self, so considered, one class of qualities, and to the not-self another class, would, when the two "real" objects are considered in themselves, prevent one's ascribing to the former all the kinds of sameness which one may ascribe to the latter, or would justify the assumption of a new kind of sameness proper only to the former. ”

“ For apparently, though he may not admit that personal identity has degrees, he at least cannot deny that in one life we are able to have more than one self. And, further, he may be compelled to embrace self-sameness with a past which exists, for him only sometimes, and for others not at all. And under these conditions it is not easy to see what becomes of the self. ”

“ All that remains is, to show how the continued 151identity of the individual with himself has given rise to the notion of self-interest, which after what has been premised will not be a very difficult task. What I shall attempt to show will be, that individuality expresses not either absolute unity or real identity, but properly such a particular relation between a number of things as produces an immediate or continued connexion between them, and a correspondent marked separation between them and other things. ”

“ We cannot think of our own personal identity without at the same time imagining a greater self from which we derive. This idea may be crude and barbarous, great minds have done much to make it otherwise ”

“ It will be observed that we have passed in review the self and the not-self as immediately known, the self and the not-self as bundles of "real" qualities out of consciousness, and the self and the not-self as noumenon or substance. I know of no other field in which the search may be prosecuted, unless such be invented gratuitously by increasing the "layers" of being in a way no one seems inclined to increase them. ”

“ But self-knowledge means to the mind-readers much more than this,— nothing less, indeed, than a shifting of the sense of identity. When a man sees himself in a mirror, he is compelled to distinguish between the bodily self he sees and his real self, which is within and unseen. ”

“ Individuality, personality, and the sense of self, are only three aspects of the same thing. They are so many various views of the soul, according as we regard it from an intrinsic, an altruistic, or an egoistic standpoint.... By individuality we mean that bundle of ideas, thoughts, and day-dreams which constitute our separate identity, and by virtue of which we feel each one of us at home within himself.... Consciousness is the necessary attribute of mental action. ”

“ All positive forms, all forms of immediateness or being, all forms of identity, are self-relations, consisting of a negative 5or relative, relating to itself. But the most wonderful side of this, is the fact that since this relation is that of the negative, it negates itself in its very relation, and hence its identity is a producing of non-identity. Identity and distinction are produced by the self-same process, and thus self-determination is the origin of all identity and distinction likewise. ”

“ Such an expression could, of course, be used only in speaking of the objective part of this self, the part which those who distinguish between ego and non-ego call the not-self. It is needless to say that no one ever thinks of talking in this way. ”

“ You know that that principle in you does not constitute your individuality. It constitutes your personality; but that in you which is undergoing change, and develops from a lower to a higher degree of knowledge, constitutes your individuality. This unchanging, ever-present, conscious identity is the very divine life within you, from which you derive all life. This outside identity, which thinks and wills, is no part of my immortal nature, separate from this divine principle within me. ”

“ What then gives so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possessed of an invariable and uninterrupted existence through the whole course of our lives? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish between personal identity as it regards our thought and imagination, and as it regards our passions, or the concern we take in ourselves. ”

“ You would hardly recognize yourself could you see your own identity and individuality as it was ten years ago; you believe differently, you are another individual. What is that cry from the old home so far away? ”

“ Personal identity, therefore, is full disproof of the theory. For personal identity rests in a single abiding consciousness, in which all separate mental acts are known as its own acts, the materials for memory and comparison. The truth is, that all moral distinctions arise out of the conviction that each individual, in the center of his personality, is a soul, itself determining its rational choices and responsible for the conduct of life. ”

“ Above all, the individual, who, in such undertakings, expects to succeed, must possess the power of stepping, as it were, out of herself,—of contemplating her own individuality from an external point, (that is to say, as it is beheld by others;) for our own identity, when viewed in this manner, serves like an obedient implement—a passive means of obtaining whatever object we have proposed to ourselves, as the highest and most desirable in life. ”

“ Why should you defer to their views, Lillian? Haven't you yet had enough of ordering your life by the standards of others? Be yourself—if you have any identity left at this late day. Rely on your own judgment, consult your own intuitions, rest on your own sense of right and justice and conscience, and you cannot err! ”

“ We conclude, therefore, that it is within the common scope and meaning of the words “personal identity,” not only that one creature can become many as the moth becomes manifold in her eggs, but that each individual may be manifold in the sense of being compounded of a vast number of subordinate individualities which have their separate lives within him, with their hopes, and fears, and intrigues, being born and dying within us, many generations, of them during our single lifetime. ”

“ We are therefore brought to the conclusion that this universally diffused essence, which we might think of as a sort of spiritual protoplasm, must possess all the qualities of personality without that conscious recognition of self which constitutes separate individuality: and since the word "personality" has became so associated in our ordinary talk with the idea of "individuality" it will perhaps be better to coin a new word, and speak of the personalness of the Universal Mind as indicating its personal quality, apart from individuality. ”

“ In one word, to fix the human personality, to give to each human being an identity, an individuality that can be depended upon with certainty, lasting, unchangeable, always recognisable and easily adduced, this appears to be in the largest sense the aim of the new method. ”

“ Nothing by which the world knows me, or by which it knows you, enters in to form our inmost identity. We have an identity which lies deeper than everything external; and it is this identity, which admits of no change, which says that we are the same, and will forever remain the same identical beings to all eternity. No change of position, no change of character, no destruction of reputation, no conversion of happiness into suffering, presents the least difficulty in the way of identification. ”

“ Turning now from the question of content to that of origin, we must consider first the genesis of the good self, not in the world in general, but in the will of the individual: and the question here is, how is it possible for the self to identify itself with what seems to be altogether outside it? How is it that I can feel pleasure in the successes of persons and causes which do not affect my private personality? how can I desire their furtherance, not as means but as an end? How can the content of my will be not myself, as this or that exclusive individual? ”