Is it possible for the unforewarned reason to conclude that our soul is a substance from the fact that our consciousness of our identity--and this within very narrow and variable limits--persists through all the changes of our body? We might as well say of a ship that put out to sea and lost first one piece of timber, which was replaced by another of the same shape and dimensions, then lost another, and so on with all her timbers, and finally returned to port the same ship, with the same build, the same sea-going qualities, recognizable by everybody as the same--we might as well say of such a ship that it had a substantial soul. Is it possible for the unforewarned reason to infer the simplicity of the soul from the fact that we have to judge and unify our thoughts? Thought is not one but complex, and for the reason the soul is nothing but the succession of co-ordinated states of consciousness. In books of psychology written from the spiritualist point of view, it is customary to begin the discussion of the existence of the soul as a simple substance, separable from the body, after this style: There is in me a principle which thinks, wills, and feels.... Now this implies a begging of the question. For it is far from being an immediate truth that there is in me such a principle; the immediate truth is that I think, will, and feel. And I--the I that thinks, wills, and feels--am immediately my living body with the states of consciousness which it sustains. It is my living body that thinks, wills, and feels. How? How you please.