ABSTRACT
The preceding conception of the self as a plastically definite—and to that degree persistent—system appears to yield the solution of a number of long-standing difficulties. For while it is plainly impossible to deny the extremely complex nature of selfhood, it is on the other hand frequently argued that this complexity characterizes only the content of personality, so that personality in itself must still be sought in some force or agency, some unity or synthesis, which holds this content together, and is, therefore, essentially different from it. What this force or synthesis actually may be, again, is often regarded as altogether beyond our powers of discovery and description; its content, on the other hand, forms the proper subject-matter of psychological investigation. Even Hoffding, despite his purely scientific standpoint, holds that “the synthesis, the inner unity in us, always hides itself, however deeply we try to penetrate into consciousness; it is the constant presupposition”. 1 As I shall endeavour to show a little later, there is a sense in which this is quite true; but if this view of selfhood is carried too far, it obviously becomes difficult to distinguish it from the older concept of the self as being both simple and transcendent—as an entity, in other words, whose nature is either inexplicable or incomprehensible. But once again it must be emphasized that the true uniqueness of selfhood lies not in its simply being a system, but rather in that specific content which constitutes the system. For, as I have already argued, every real without exception is systematic; it follows therefore that reals can differ from one another only in the type of material that actually enters into any given system— either physical or vital or psychical, as the case may be. The problem therefore of the nature of that unifying power which holds the system together—the synthesizing agency—the “inner unity” of Hoff ding—is essentially a universal problem; for it concerns every kind of system alike and equally, and is not therefore a difficulty peculiar to personality alone, except insofar as its nature is extraordinarily complex on the one hand, and closely concerns mankind on the other.
