his body is a thing belonging to me."

As you watch the changing expression in the face of your friend, as you
see his eyes flashing in anger, or softening in affectionate sympathy,
do you not feel that all you see is but the outward casing, that the
real self of your friend is a something dwelling within?

I hope I am not puzzling you. What I want to do is to introduce you to
your own self, to make you really acquainted with that mysterious being
in his first stage of existence here and then to follow him out into
the great adventure of the Hereafter.

Section 2

Let us go on. What is this I, this self? IS IT MY BRAIN?
Physiologists tell us wonderful things of that brain; how its size and
shape, and the amount of gray matter modify my character; how it
excites itself when I am thinking; how it has different departments for
different functions; how it rules and directs everything I do. And men
impressed by these wonders have sometimes asserted that there is
nothing more to be found. It is the brain which originates all,
thought is only certain activities of the brain--memory is only
impressions on the substance of the brain--when the brain decays there
is no self remaining. What I call "I" is merely a function of my brain.

But immediately the question arises, Which brain? The particles of my
brain are always changing. I have had a dozen different brains in my
lifetime, with not a particle remaining the same. Which of these
brains is it that "I" am only a function of? And how does it happen
that I remember what I thought and did and said with the old vanished
brains of twenty and thirty years ago? Memory insists that I am still
the same "I" in spite of all those changes of brain. If memory be but
a series of impressions registered on the brain these could no more
survive the dissolution of the brain than impressions on wax could
survive the melting of the wax. Surely my memory, my irresistible
conviction of personal identity with my past makes it abundantly clear
that "I" am a mysterious unchanging spiritual being behind this ever
changing brain.

And that is what the best modern science asserts--that the brain is but
my instrument. If we compare it to a violin then "I" am the unseen
violin player behind it. The musician cannot produce violin music
without a violin, but also the violin cannot produce a musical note,
much less take part in a complex symphony without the musician behind
it. If the