Whence and whither Author:Paul Carus Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHENCE? The Ego. SO far our investigation has been of a general nature, treating of consciousness, of life, of form, and of the forms of man's sen- tiency in... more » their significance. We are now prepared to enter into details and begin an analysis of the particulars of our own self. It is our particular self, our personality, that we care for most. Says Goethe: "Prince, and folks, and those who conquer, Mankind in totality, Freely own that all they hanker For is ' personality.' " Every one of us is quite definite and different from others, and the peculiarities which are particularly our own, are naturally very important to us, and we are interested to know how we have become such as we are. What am I? How did I originate, and whence did I come? What are the causes that brought me into being and determined the formation of my personality Do I remain the same, and if not, what constitutes my identity throughout so many changes' What do I mean when I say, "I "? Apparently the whole personality of myself,— my consciousness, my volitions, my thoughts, my hopes, and also my bodily system with all its limbs,—in brief, my individuality which every one is inclined to believe is quite distinct, absolutely separate, and original. In philosophical language this feeling of one's own personality is commonly called the ego and sometimes, although improperly, the Me When a man says "I," he utters a word— a simple little word, but of exceeding importance. It is not the first word the child learns to use, but the first use of the word " I" ma3' be regarded as the dawn of the child's developing personality. The grammatical objections to the term Me are, as all questions of purely grammatical correctness, irrelevant. The grammar of a language changes, and the accusative...« less