Vicious dilemma. Because in our life there is more than

events, it has rashly argued that this "more" must be

psychical fact. But, if it is psychical fact, and not

able to be experienced, I do not know what it could

mean, or in what wonderful way we could be supposed to

get at it. And, on the other side, to be experienced

without happening in the psychical series, or to occur

there without taking place as an event among events,

seem phrases without meaning. What we experience is a

content, which is one with, and which occurs as, a

particular mental state. The same content, again, as

ideal, is used away from its state, and only appears

there. By itself it is not a fact; and, if it were one,

it would, so far, cease to be ideal, and would

therefore become a mere event among events.

If you take the identity of a series, whether

physical or psychical, this identity, considered as

such, is not an event which happens. But, on the other hand, can we

call it a fact of experience? To speak strictly, we

cannot, since all identity is ideal. It, as such, is not

directly experienced, even as occurring in the facts,

and, still less, as something which happens alongside of

or between them. It is an adjective which, as separate,

could not exist, and its essence, we may say, consists

in distinction. But, on the other side, this

distinction, and, again the construction of a series, is

an event. And it must happen in a soul; for where else could it exist? As a mental

state, more than its mere content, it also must have a

place, and duration, in the psychical series. And,

otherwise, it could not be a part of experience. But the

identity itself is but an aspect of the events, or

event, and is certainly ideal.

"No," I shall be told, "the identity and continuity

of the soul must be more than this. It cannot fall in

what is given, for all the given is discrete. And it

cannot consist in ideal content, for, in that case, it

would not be real. It must therefore come somehow along

with phenomena, in such a way that it does not happen as

an event within the psychical series." But, as soon as

we consider this claim, its inconsistency is obvious. If

anything is experienced, now or always, along with what

is given, then this (whatever it is) is surely a

psychical event, with a place, or places, in the series.

But, if, on the other hand, it has not, in any sense,

position or duration in my history, you will hardly

persuade me that it makes part of my experience

at all. I do not see, in short, how anything can come

there, unless it is prepared, from some side, to enter

and to take its place there. And, if it is not to be an

element in experience, it will be nothing. And I doubt

if any one would urge a claim so suicidal and so absurd,

unless for the sake of, and in order to defend, a

preconceived doctrine. Because phenomena in time are not

real, there must be something more than temporal. But

because we wrongly assume that nothing is real, unless

it exists as a thing, therefore the element, which

transcends time, must be somehow and somewhere beside

it. This element is a world, or a soul, or an Ego, which

never descends into our series. It never comes down

there itself, though we are forced, I presume, to say

that it works, and that it makes itself felt. But this

irrational influence and position results merely from

our false assumption. We are attempting to pass beyond

the series, while we, in effect, deny that anything is

real, unless it is a member there. For our other world,

and our soul, and our Ego, which exist beside temporal

events, have been taken themselves as but finite things.

They merely reduplicate phenomena, they do but double

the world of appearance. They leave on our hands

unsolved the problem that vexed us before, and they load

us beside with an additional puzzle. We have now, not

only another existence no better than the first, but we

have to explain also how one of these stands to, or

works on, the other. And the result is open self-

contradiction or thoughtless obscurity. But the remedy