The more we study the above definitions, the more baffling they become.  Try as I may, I have not been able to fit them, not only to the facts of my own experience, which may not be strange, but I cannot reconcile them even to each other.  There seem to me inherent ambiguities and self-contradictions lurking beneath their scientific splendor.  Individuality is stated to be “that bundle of ideas, thoughts, and day-dreams which constitute our separate identity.”  This seems plain and straightforward, but is it really so?  Consciousness is stated to be not only “the necessary attribute of mental action” (to which exception might be taken on the ground of abundant proof of unconscious mental action), but it is also considered to be the very cause of mind itself.  Not only by consciousness do we know mind, but the consciousness itself constitutes the mind; “without it there would be no mind to know.”  “Not to be conscious of one’s self is not to be.”  Do we then cease to be, when we sleep? or when absorbed in thought or action?  And do we become new-created when we awake?  What is the bond of connection that binds into one the successive consciousnesses of the successive days?  Does not that “bundle of ideas” become broken into as many wholly independent fragments as there are intervals between our sleepings?  Or rather is not each fragment a whole in itself, and is not the idea of self-continuity from day to day and from week to week a self-delusion?  How can it be otherwise if consciousness constitutes existence?  For after the consciousness has ceased and “the bundle of ideas,” which constitutes the individuality of that day, has therefore gone absolutely out of existence, it is impossible that the old bundle shall be resurrected by a new consciousness.  Only a new bundle can be the product of a new consciousness.  Evidently there is trouble somewhere.  But let us pass on.

“The ‘I’ has for its very law of existence self-consciousness.”  Is not “self-consciousness” here identified with “consciousness” in the preceding sentence?  The very existence of the mind, the “I,” is ascribed to each in turn.  Is there, then, no difference between consciousness and self-consciousness?  Finally, personality is stated to be “the effect it [the “I”] produces on the self-consciousness of others.”  I confess I gain no clear idea from this statement.  But whatever else it may mean, this is clear, that personality is not a quality or characteristic of the “I,” but only some effect which the “I” produces on the consciousness of another.  Is it a quality, then, of the other person?  And does impersonality mean the lack of such an effect?  But does not this introduce us to new confusion?  When a human being is wholly absorbed in an altruistic act, for instance, wholly forgetful of self, he is, according to a preceding paragraph, quite impersonal; yet, according to the definition before us, he cannot be impersonal, for he is producing most lively effects on the consciousness of the poor human being he is befriending; in his altruistic deed he is strongly personal, yet not he, for personality does not belong to the person acting, but somehow to the person affected.  How strange that the personality of a person is not his own characteristic but another’s!