METAPHYSICS, PSYCHOLOGY. 525 tion contains still a further self, which once more signifies the self-knower and so on to infinity. The ego represents the representation {Vorstellen) of its representation {Vorstel/en), etc. The representation {Vorstellung) of the ego, there- fore, can never be actually brought to completion. (The assumption of the freedom of the will leads to an analogous regressus in infinitum, in which the question, "Willstthou thy volition ? " " Willst thou the willing of this volition " ? is repeated to infinity.) The only escape from this tissue of absurdities is to think the ego otherwise than is done by popular consciousness. The knowing and the known ego are by no means the same, but the observ- ing subject in self-consciousness is one group of representa- tions, the observed subject another. Thus, for example, newly formed representations are apperceived by the exist- ing older ones, but the highest apperceiver is not, in turn, itself apperceived. The ego is not a unit being, which represents itself in the literal meaning of the phrase, but that which is represented is a plurality. The ego is the junction of numberless series of representations, and is con- stantly changing its place ; it dwells now in this representa- tion, now in that. But as we distinguish the point of meeting from the series which meet there, and imagine that it is possible simultaneously to abstract from all the represented series (whereas in fact we can only abstract from each one separately), there arises the appearance of a permanent ego as the unit subject of all our representa- tions. In reality the ego is not the source of our represen- tations, but the final result of their combination. The representation, not the ego, is the fundamental concept of psychology, the ego constituting rather its most difficult problem.^ It is a " result of other representations, which, however, in order to yield this result, must be together in a single substance, and must interpenetrate one another" {Text-book of Introduction, p. 243). In this way Herbart defends the substantiality of the soul against Kant and Fries. The soul's immortality (as also its pre-existence)
- On the Herbartian psychology, cf. Ribot, German Psychology of To-day,
English Translation by Baldwin, 1886, pp. 24-67 ; and G. F. Stout, Mindy vols, xiii.-xiv. — Tr.
