Perhaps even so fundamental a question as to whether or no perception itself implies an actual and spontaneous act of consciousness cannot be solved without a consideration of characterological differences.
The purpose of this work is to apply characterology to the solution of a few of these doubtful matters, with special reference to the distinctions between the sexes. The different conceptions of the I-problem, however, depend not so much on differences of sex as on differences in giftedness. The dispute between Hume and Kant receives its characterolo- gical explanation much in the same way as if I were to distinguish two men in so far as the one held in the highest esteem the works of Makart and Gounod, the other those of Rembrandt and Beethoven. I would simply distinguish the two by their giftedness. So also the judgments about the "I" must be very different in the cases of differently gifted men. There have been no truly great men who were not persuaded of the existence of the "I"; a man who denies it cannot be a great man.
In the course of the following pages this proposition will be taken as absolutely binding, and will be used really as a means of valuing genius.
There has been no famous man who, at least some time in the course of his life, and generally earlier in proportion to his greatness, has not had a moment in which he was absolutely convinced of the possession of an ego in the highest sense.
Let us compare the following utterances of three very great geniuses.
Jean Paul relates in his autobiographical sketch, "Truths from my own Life":
"I can never forget a circumstance which, so far, has been related by no one—the birth of my own self-consciousness, the time and place of which I can tell. One morning I was standing, as a very young child, at the front door, and looking towards the wood-shed I suddenly saw, all at once my inner likeness. 'I' am 'I' flashed like lightning from the skies across me, and since then has remained. I saw
