One may, I think, without fear of being upset by any future Galtonian circulars, believe that all men must single out from the rest of what they call themselves some central principle of which each would recognize the foregoing to be a fair general description,--accurate enough, at any rate, to denote what is meant, and keep it unconfused with other things. The moment, however, they came to closer quarters with it, trying to define more accurately its precise nature, we should find opinions beginning to diverge. Some would say that it is a simple active substance, the soul, of which they are thus conscious; others, that it is nothing but a fiction, the imaginary being denoted by the pronoun I; and between these extremes of opinion all sorts of intermediaries would be found. Later we must ourselves discuss them all, and sufficient to that day will be the evil thereof. _Now_, let us try to settle for ourselves as definitely as we can, just how this central nucleus of the Self may _feel_, no matter whether it be a spiritual substance or only a delusive word. For this central part of the Self is _felt_. It may be all that Transcendentalists say it is, and all that Empiricists say it is into the bargain, but it is at any rate no _mere ens rationis_, cognized only in an intellectual way, and no _mere_ summation of memories or _mere_ sound of a word in our ears. It is something with which we also have direct sensible acquaintance, and which is as fully present at any moment of consciousness in which it _is_ present, as in a whole lifetime of such moments. When, just now, it was called an abstraction, that did not mean that, like some general notion, it could not be presented in a particular experience. It only meant that in the stream of consciousness it never was found all alone. But when it is found, it is _felt_; just as the body is felt, the feeling of which is also an abstraction, because never is the body felt all alone, but always together with other things. _Now can we tell more precisely in what the feeling of this central active self consists,_--not necessarily as yet what the active self _is_, as a being or principle, but what we _feel_ when we become aware of its existence? I think I can in my own case; and as what I say will be likely to meet with opposition if generalized (as indeed it may be in part inapplicable to other individuals), I had better continue in the first person, leaving my description, to be accepted by those to whose introspection it may commend itself as true, and confessing my inability to meet the demands of others, if others there be.