other result, which we have to recognize as intervening
between this ultimate logical unity and the real personal self.

The abstraction evoked by the isolated play of self-consciousness is
obviously nearer reality and less of an abstraction than the merely
logical one above-named, because self-consciousness has more of
the personal self in it than reason or logic can have. But though
nearer reality and less of an abstraction than the other, this
revelation of the inevitable play of self-consciousness, working by
itself, is also unreal in relation to the revelation of the concrete
personal individual soul. This revelation of self-consciousness,
working in isolation, has as its result the conception of one universal
"I am I" or cosmic self, which is nothing more or less than the
whole universe, contemplating itself as its own object. To this
conception are we driven, when in isolation from the soul's other
attributes our self-consciousness gives itself up to its own activity.
The "I am I" which we then seek to articulate is an "I am I" reached
by the negation or suppression of that primordial act of faith which
is the work of the imagination. This act of faith, thus negated and
suppressed in order that this unreal cosmic self may embrace the
universe, is the act of faith by which we become aware of the
existence of innumerable other "selves," besides our own self,
filling the vast spaces of nature.

The difference between the sensation we have of our own body and
the sensation we have of the rest of the universe ceases to exist
when self-consciousness thus expands; and the conceptions we
arrive at can only be described as the idea that the whole universe
with all the bodies which it contains--including our own body--is
nothing but one vast manifestation of one vast mind which is our
own "I am I."

It must not be supposed that this abstraction evoked by the solitary
activity of self-consciousness is any more a "whole," of which the
real self is a "part," than the logical "a priori unity" is a whole, of
which the real self is a part. Both are abstractions. Both are unreal.
Both are shadowy projections from the true reality, which is the
personal self existing side by side with "the immortal companions."
Nor must it be supposed that these primordial aspects of life are of
equal importance and that we have an equal right to make of any
one of them the starting point of our enquiry. The starting point of
our enquiry, and