2. We have seen, so far, that our phenomenal view of

the soul does not degrade it to an adjective depending

on the body. Can we reply to objections based on other

grounds? The psychical series, we may be told, demands

as its condition a something transcendent, a soul or Ego

which stands above, and gives unity to, the series. But

such a soul, I reply, merely adds further difficulties

to those we had before. No doubt the series, being

phenomenal, is the appearance of Reality, but it hardly

follows from this that its reality is an Ego or soul. We

have seen (Chapter x.) that such a being, because

finite, is infected with its own relations to other

finites. And it is so far from giving unity to the

series of events, that their plurality refuses to come

together with its singleness. Hence the oneness remains

standing outside the many, as a further finite unit. You

cannot show how the series becomes a system in the soul;

and, if you could, you cannot free that soul from its

perplexed position as one finite related to other

finites. In short, metaphysically your soul or Ego is a

mass of confusion, and we have now long ago disposed of

it. And if it is offered us merely as a working

conception, which does not claim truth, then this

conception, as we have seen, will not work in

metaphysics. Its alleged function must be confined to

psychology, an empirical science, and the further

consideration of it here would be, therefore,

irrelevant.

3. But our account of the soul, as a series of

events, may be attacked perhaps from the ground

of psychology itself. There are psychical facts, it may

be urged, which are more than events, and these facts,

it may be argued, refute our definition. I must briefly

deal with this objection, and my reply may be summed up

thus. There are psychical facts, which are more than

events; but, if they are not also events, they are not

facts at all. I will take these two propositions in

their order.

(a) We have seen that my psychical states, and my

private experience, can be at the same time what they

are, and yet something much more. Every distinction that is made in the fact of

presentation, every content, or "what," that is loosened

from its "that," is at once more than a mere event. Nay

an event itself, as one member in a temporal series, is

only itself by transcending its own present

existence. And this transcendence becomes more obvious,

when an identical quality persists unaltered through a

succession of changes. There is, to my mind, no question

as to our being concerned here with more than mere

events. And, far from contesting this, I have

endeavoured to insist on the conclusion that everything

in time has a quality which passes beyond itself.

(b) But then, if so, have we allowed the force of the

objection? Have we admitted that there are facts which

are not events in time? This would be a grave

misunderstanding, and against it we must urge our second

proposition. A fact. or event, is always more than

itself; but, if less than itself, it is no longer

properly a fact. It has now been taken as a content

working loose from the "this," and has, so far, become a

mere aspect and abstraction. And yet this abstraction,

on the other hand, must have its existence. It must

appear, somehow, as, or in a particular event, with a

given place and duration in the temporal series. There

are, in brief, aspects which, taken apart, are not

events; and yet these aspects must appear in psychical

existence.

The objection has failed to perceive this double

nature of things, and it has hence fallen blindly into a