Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/119

108 CRITICAL NOTICES : greatly altered surroundings on the consciousness of self. M. Ribot calls attention to the curious circumstance that, whereas loss of skin-sensibility disturbs the feeling of personality, the loss of one of the higher senses leaves it unimpaired. He explains this by saying that sense-perceptions and ideas based on these determine our notion of objective things, but do not condition our consciousness of self. But it may perhaps be contended that great and sudden alterations of the environment produce a palpable dislocation of the normal self-consciousness. A man who has moved but very little from his home is apt to say that he does not " feel himself " when suddenly introduced into new surroundings. This line of remark naturally leads on to the reflection that the most rudimentary type of self-consciousness is an intellectual product, which is developed pari pa.^a with, and in close relation to, the representation of an external world. M. Eibot appears to regard the intellectual idea of self as a convenient framework or " schema " which the real self is always ready to adopt if con- sciousness happens to be present, but which is in no way necessary to its existence. I confess that I am unable to follow his meaning here. I cannot understand how a mere sum of nervous processes, continuous in space and time, or an accom- panying series of bodily feelings continuous in time, can transform itself even into the most elementary form of an ego. This idea of self is surely in every case the work of the comparing and con- structing mind. And, on the other hand, may it not be said that the failure of the disordered mind to unify its past and present in a single self may be referred quite as much to an intellectual as to an emotional cause, viz., the inability to allow for a certain amount of change of experience ? No doubt, M. Eibot is right in viewing the organic feelings as a main ingredient in the materials which the mind necessarily uses in building up the idea of self ; but they do not, so far as I can see, constitute that idea. Even in the abnormal conditions described by the author we still see the intelligence, enfeebled though it is, striving to piece together a new self. On the other hand, there appear to present themselves in the case of the lower animals all the conditions enumerated by M. Ribot without any idea of self resulting, just because the specific intellectual impulse is wanting. To say all this is simply to point out the limits of physiological explanation in psychology, not to disparage such explanation. M. Ribot is not a mere physiologist, but a well-read psychologist as well. And I have little doubt that he would be ready to allow that there remains a distinctly psychological problem of personality after physiology and pathology have said their last word. But in the present volume he seems to lose sight of this truth. The frequent polemic with the metaphysicians, e.g., pp. 86 ff., and most of all, perhaps, the remarks on Mill's confession of the insolubility of the problem, p. 169., seem to imply that M; Ribot goes with