ly by omitting
the very large fraction passed in sleep, in at least an approximately
unconscious state, clearly contains an ingredient of illusion.[132]

It is to be added that the numerous falsifications of our past history,
which our retrospective imagination is capable of perpetrating, make our
representation of ourselves at different moments and in different stages
of our past history to a considerable extent illusory. Thus, though to
mistake a past dream-experience for a waking one may not be to lose or
confuse the sense of identity, since our dreams are, after all, a part
of our experience, yet to imagine that we have ourselves seen what we
have only heard from another or read is clearly to confuse the
boundaries of our identity. And with respect to longer sections of our
history, it is plain that when we wrongly assimilate our remote to our
present self, and clothe our childish nature with the feelings and the
ideas of our adult life, we identify ourselves overmuch. In this way,
through the corruption of our memory, a kind of sham self gets mixed up
with the real self, so that we cannot, strictly speaking, be sure that
when we project a mnemonic image into the remote past we are not really
running away from our true personality.

So far I have been touching only on slight errors in the recognition of
that identical self which is represented as persisting through all the
fluctuations of conscious life. Other and grosser illusions connected
with personal identity are also found to be closely related to defects
or disturbances of the ordinary mnemonic process, and so can be best
treated here. In order to understand these, we must inquire a little
into the nature of our idea and consciousness of a persistent self.
Here, again, I would remind the reader that I am treating the point only
so far as it can be treated scientifically or empirically, that is to
say, by examining what concrete facts or data of experience are taken up
into the idea of self. I do not wish to foreclose the philosophic
question whether anything more than this empirical content is involved
in the conception.

My idea of myself as persisting appears to be built up of certain
similarities in the succession of my experiences. Thus, my permanent
self consists, on the bodily side, of a continually renewable perception
of my own organism, which perception is mainly visual and tactual, and
which remains pretty constant within certain limits of time. W