of our history, it is plain that when we wrongly assimilate our remote to our present self, and clothe our childish nature with the feelings and the ideas of our adult life, we identify ourselves overmuch.  In this way, through the corruption of our memory, a kind of sham self gets mixed up with the real self, so that we cannot, strictly speaking, be sure that when we project a mnemonic image into the remote past we are not really running away from our true personality.

So far I have been touching only on slight errors in the recognition of that identical self which is represented as persisting through all the fluctuations of conscious life.  Other and grosser illusions connected with personal identity are also found to be closely related to defects or disturbances of the ordinary mnemonic process, and so can be best treated here.  In order to understand these, we must inquire a little into the nature of our idea and consciousness of a persistent self.  Here, again, I would remind the reader that I am treating the point only so far as it can be treated scientifically or empirically, that is to say, by examining what concrete facts or data of experience are taken up into the idea of self.  I do not wish to foreclose the philosophic question whether anything more than this empirical content is involved in the conception.

My idea of myself as persisting appears to be built up of certain similarities in the succession of my experiences.  Thus, my permanent self consists, on the bodily side, of a continually renewable perception of my own organism, which perception is mainly visual and tactual, and which remains pretty constant within certain limits of time.  With this objective similarity is closely conjoined a subjective similarity.  Thus, the same sensibilities continue to characterize the various parts of my organism.  Similarly, there are the higher intellectual, emotional, and moral peculiarities and dispositions.  My idea of my persistent self is essentially a collective image representing a relatively unchanging material object, endowed with unchanging sensibilities and forming a kind of support for permanent higher mental attributes.

The construction of this idea of an enduring unchanging ego is rendered very much easier by the fact that certain concrete feelings are approximately constant elements in our mental life.  Among these must be ranked first that dimly discriminated mass of organic sensation which in average states of health is fairly constant, and which stands in sharp contrast to the fluctuating external sensations.  These feelings enter into and profoundly colour each person’s mental image of himself.  In addition to this, there are the frequently recurring higher feelings, the dominant passions and ideas which approximate more or less closely to constant factors of our conscious experience.