cannot contain a sequence of contradictory variations. Let us then modify our answer, and say, Not the mass of any one moment, but the constant average mass, is the meaning of self. Take, as before, a section completely through the man, and expose his total psychical contents; only now take this section at different times, and remove what seems exceptional. The residue will be the normal and ordinary matter, which fills his experience; and this is the self of the individual. This self will contain, as before, the perceived environment—in short, the not-self so far as that is for the self—but it will contain now only the usual or average not-self. And it must embrace the habits of the individual and the laws of his character—whatever we mean by these. His self will be the usual manner in which he behaves, and the usual matter to which he behaves, that is, so far as he behaves to it.
We are tending here towards the distinction of the essential self from its accidents, but we have not yet reached that point. We have, however, left the self as the whole individual of one moment, or of succeeding moments, and are trying to find it as the individual’s normal constituents. What is that which makes the man his usual self? We have answered, It is his habitual disposition and contents, and it is not his changes from day to day and from hour to hour. These contents are not merely the man’s internal feelings, or merely that which he reflects on as his self. They consist quite as essentially in the outward environment, so far as relation to that makes the man what he is. For, if we try to take the man apart from certain places and persons, we have altered his life so much that he is not his usual self. Again, some of this habitual not-self, to use that expression, enters into the man’s life in its individual form. His wife possibly, or his child, or, again, some part or feature of his
