ith this
objective similarity is closely conjoined a subjective similarity. Thus,
the same sensibilities continue to characterize the various parts of my
organism. Similarly, there are the higher intellectual, emotional, and
moral peculiarities and dispositions. My idea of my persistent self is
essentially a collective image representing a relatively unchanging
material object, endowed with unchanging sensibilities and forming a
kind of support for permanent higher mental attributes.

The construction of this idea of an enduring unchanging ego is rendered
very much easier by the fact that certain concrete feelings are
approximately constant elements in our mental life. Among these must be
ranked first that dimly discriminated mass of organic sensation which in
average states of health is fairly constant, and which stands in sharp
contrast to the fluctuating external sensations. These feelings enter
into and profoundly colour each person's mental image of himself. In
addition to this, there are the frequently recurring higher feelings,
the dominant passions and ideas which approximate more or less closely
to constant factors of our conscious experience.

This total image of the ego becomes defined and rendered precise by a
number of distinctions, as that between my own body or that particular
material object with which are intimately united all my feelings, and
other material objects in general; then between my organism and other
human organisms, with which I learn to connect certain feelings
answering to my own, but only faintly represented instead of actually
realized feelings. To these prime distinctions are added others, hardly
less fundamental, as those between my individual bodily appearance and
that of other living bodies, between my personal and characteristic
modes of feeling and thinking and those of others, and so on.

Our sense of personal identity may be said to be rooted in that special
side of the mnemonic process which consists in the linking of all
sequent events together by means of a thread of common consciousness. It
is closely connected with that smooth, gliding movement of imagination
which appears to involve some more or less distinct consciousness of the
uniting thread of similarity. And so long as this movement is possible,
so long, that is to say, as retrospective imagination detects the common
element, which we may specifically call the recurring consciousness of
self, so long is there the un