up the past as the history of one self—really this is all which we have to build upon. Now this, of course, shows that self-sameness exists as a fact, and that hence somehow an identical self must be real. But then the question is how? The question is whether we can state the existence and the continuity of a real self in a way which is intelligible, and which is not ruined by the difficulties of previous discussions. Because, otherwise, we may have found an interesting fact, but most assuredly we have not found a tenable view about reality. That tenable view, if we got sight of it, might show us that our fact had been vitally misapprehended. At all events, so long as we can offer only a bundle of inconsistencies, it is absurd to try to believe that these are the true reality. And, if any one likes to fall back upon a miraculous faculty which he discovers in memory, the case is not altered. For the issue is as to the truth either of the message conveyed, or of our conclusion from that message. And, for myself, I stand on this. Present your doctrine (whatever it is) in a form which will bear criticism, and which will enable me to understand this confused mass of facts which I encounter on all sides. Do this, and I will follow you, and I will worship the source of such a true revelation. But I will not accept nonsense for reality, though it be vouched for by miracle, or proceed from the mouth of a psychological monster.
And I am compelled to adopt the same attitude towards another supposed fact. I refer to the unity in such a function as, for instance, Comparison. This has been assumed to be timeless, and to serve as a foundation for metaphysical views about the self. But I am forced to reject alike both basis and result, if that result be offered as a positive view. It is in the first place (as we have seen in Chapter v.) psychologically untenable to take any mental fact as free from duration. And, apart from that, what
