for its negative or its privation—this is what afterwards turns into that strange scandalous hybrid, potential existence. And δ, as a content that is rejected by existence, is on the highway to become an explicit idea. And with these too scanty explanations I must return from the excursion we have made into psychology.
(7) There is still another meaning of self which we can hardly pass by, though we need say very little about it at present.[1] I refer to that use in which self is the same as the “mere self” or the “simply subjective.” This meaning is not difficult to fix in general. Everything which is part of the individual’s psychical contents, and which is not relevant to a certain function, is mere self to that function. Thus, in thinking, everything in my mind—all sensations, feelings, ideas which do not subserve the thought in question—is unessential; and, because it is self, it is therefore mere self. So, again, in morality or in aesthetic perception, what stands outside these processes (if they are what they should be) is simply “subjective,” because it is not concerned in the “object” of the process. Mere self is whatever part of the psychical individual is, for the purpose in hand, negative. It, at least, is irrelevant, and it may be even worse.
This in general is clearly the meaning, and it surely will give us no help in our present difficulties. The point which should be noticed is that it has no fixed application. For that which is “objective” and essential to one kind of purpose, may be irrelevant and “subjective” to every other kind of purpose. And this distinction holds even among cases of the same kind. That feature, for example, which is essential to one moral act may be without significance for another, and may therefore be merely
- ↑ See Chapter xix.
