myself. In brief, there is nothing in a man which is not thus “objective” or “subjective,” as the end which we are considering is from time to time changed. The self here stands for that which, for a present purpose, is the chance self. And it is obvious, if we compare this meaning with those which have preceded, that it does not coincide with them. It is at once too wide and too narrow. It is too wide, because nothing falls essentially outside it; and yet it is too narrow, because anything, so soon as you have taken that in reference to any kind of system, is at once excluded from the mere self. It is not the simply felt; for it is essentially qualified by negation. It is that which, as against anything transcending mere feeling, remains outside as a residue. We might, if we pleased, call it what, by contrast, is only the felt. But then we must include under feeling every psychical fact, if considered merely as such and as existing immediately. There is, however, here no need to dwell any further on this point.
I will briefly resume the results of this chapter We had found that our ideas as to the nature of things—as to substance and adjective, relation and quality, space and time, motion and activity—were in their essence indefensible. But we had heard somewhere a rumour that the self was to bring order into chaos. And we were curious first to know what this term might stand for. The present chapter has supplied us with an answer too plentiful. Self has turned out to mean so many things, to mean them so ambiguously, and to be so wavering in its applications, that we do not feel encouraged. We found, first, that a man’s self might be his total present contents, discoverable on making an imaginary cross section. Or it might be the average contents we should presume ourselves likely to find, together with something else which we call dis-
