V. The Existence of the Self.— In the course of his analysis of our knowledge of the external world, Bertrand Russell makes the assertion that the (bare) self, if it exists at all, is an inference.[1] This sentence defines very precisely the general attitude of the new realists. It is somewhat as follows: In any case, the reasons we may have for stating that the self exists can only be arrived at by inference, but even then, it is doubtful whether the inference can be made.
As already pointed out, it appears that any such doubt of the existence of self is really meaningless. In the first place, from what may be called the concrete point of view, we certainly cannot know the self from the very nature of the case; but we have instead the central and unique fact of the 'realization' of our own existence. Evidently no general term can adequately express the full nature of a fact so essentially particular; but this is no reason for ignoring the fact—perhaps rather the reverse. As will shortly be seen, we have in addition abundant data from which we can infer the existence of self, but the concrete realization of its existence is of infinitely greater importance.
From the more abstract point of view, psychology traces the gradual growth of the concept of self, from the primitive idea of the body-self, through ever more refined and spiritual stages. Eventually we seem to be coming in sight of the bare active subject of experience, as distinguished from the empirical self in all its phases. By proceeding in this way, however, we can never quite reach the subject of experience (though we may come very near it), for we are here dealing with self as conceived, i.e., as an object of knowledge; whereas the concrete self is the knower. Knowing is a relation between two entities, so that evidently the subject cannot know itself. It simply realizes its own existence, though the formulation in conceptual symbols of the fact of this realization, is itself a piece of knowledge. As Kant pointed out, it follows from the foregoing that the only course open to epistemology is to postulate the existence of the pure Ego, or subject of experience, as a regulative idea.
Although we cannot, by continually modifying, and, as it were,
- ↑ Knowledge of External World, Lect. III. p. 74.
