inanimate environment, could not, if destroyed, be so made good by anything else that the man’s self would fail to be seriously modified. Hence we may call these the constituents which are individually necessary; requisite for the man, that is, not in their vague, broad character, but in their specialty as this or that particular thing. But other tracts of his normal self are filled by constituents necessary, we may say, no more than generically. His usual life gets its character, that is, from a large number of details which are variable within limits. His habits and his environment have main outlines which may still remain the same, though within these the special features have been greatly modified. This portion of the man’s life is necessary to make him his average self, but, if the generic type is preserved, the special details are accidental.
This is, perhaps, a fair account of the man’s usual self, but it is obviously no solution of theoretical difficulties. A man’s true self, we should be told, cannot depend on his relations to that which fluctuates. And fluctuation is not the word; for in the lifetime of a man there are irreparable changes. Is he literally not the same man if loss, or death, or love, or banishment has turned the current of his life? And yet, when we look at the facts, and survey the man’s self from the cradle to the coffin, we may be able to find no one average. The usual self of one period is not the usual self of another, and it is impossible to unite in one mass these conflicting psychical contents. Either then we accept the man’s mere history as his self, and, if so, why call it one? Or we confine ourselves to periods, and there is no longer any single self. Or, finally, we must distinguish the self from the usual constituents of the man’s psychical being. We must try to reach the self which is individual by finding the self which is essential.
