t question which some foolish people are
speculating about to-day. Am I merely the TRAIN OF THOUGHTS AND
FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS? Am "I" but like an Eolian harp, played on by
the wind of sensations from without?

Surely not. This mysterious "I" is constantly and persistently
claiming to be a real conscious person behind all these--greater than
all these--possessing all these. Listen to the voice down deep in your
consciousness--COGITO, ERGO SUM. "I" think--therefore "I" exist. I am
not the thoughts and feelings and emotions--I am greater than them all.
I am the possessor of them all. They are mine. They are not Me. They
are only passing phases of my being. They are always changing.
Everything around is changing. I remain the same being always.
Nothing else in the universe remains the same being--except God. God
and I. God and these selves that are in every one of us.

I cannot escape that conviction that "I" am the permanent being behind
all the changes. No human vision can see me. No surgeon's knife can
detect me. But I am there, behind everything.

The particles of my body, of brain and nerves and heart are constantly
being changed--every few years they are completely renewed. I have had
a dozen new bodies, a dozen new sets of brains and heart since I was
born--I am always wearing them out. I change them when they are worn
out and throw them aside like old clothes. My thoughts and feelings
are ever changing, like the ripples on the sea.

But I am absolutely certain that "I" am still there--that I am the
same--just as God is the same. The same "I" that played as a little
child--the same "I" that lived and desired and thought and felt and
worked and sinned years and years ago.

Not a particle remains of the brain, or nerves, or tongue, or eyes, or
hands, or feet, with which I did a good or evil deed twenty years
since--but it is impossible for me to doubt that it was "I" who did it,
that I to-day deserve the praise or blame which is due to it.

Every man on earth, when he thinks about it, has this conviction of
himself as an "I"--as a person separate from all other persons, as a
self separate from all other selves, as remaining always the same
being, whatever changes may take place around him. That is what
constitutes man--a self conscious of itself. As far as we can
discover, the lower animals have no such idea. Children, at first,
have not. Did you ever notice how a little child never says