interval must, at all events, not be too long; but, so far as I see, in both cases we should be asserting without a ground. On the other hand, the amount of qualitative sameness, wanted for psychical identity, seems fixed on no principle (Chapter ix.). And the sole conclusion we can draw is this, that breaks in the temporal series are no argument against our regarding it as a single soul.
“What then in the interim,” I may be asked, “do you say that the soul is?” For myself, I reply, I should not say it is at all, when it does not appear. All that in strictness I could assert would be that actually the soul is not, though it has been, and again may be. And I have urged above, that we can find no valid objection to intervals of non-existence. But speaking not strictly, but with a view to practical convenience, we might affirm that in these intervals the soul still persists. We might say it is the conditions, into which it has disappeared, and which probably will reproduce it. And, since the body is a principal part of these conditions, we may find it convenient to identify the “potential” soul with the body. This may be convenient, but we must remember that really it is incorrect. For, firstly, conditions are one thing, and actual fact another thing. And, in the second place, the body (upon any hypothesis) is not all the conditions required for the soul. It is impossible wholly to exclude the action of the environment. And there is again, thirdly, a consideration on which I must lay emphasis. If the soul is resolved and disappears into that which may restore it, does not the same thing hold precisely with regard to the body? Is it not conceivable that, in that interval when the soul is “conditional,” the body also should itself be dissolved into conditions which afterwards re-create it? But, if so, these ulterior conditions which now, I presume we are to say, the soul is, are assuredly in strictness not the body at all. As a matter of
