The Ego

It was customary in earlier psychology, as it still is in all apologetic

psychology, to regard the soul as a unified, immaterial, indivisible and

therefore indestructible substance, as a monad, which, as a unity

without parts, superior to its own capacities and the changes of its

states, is at all times one and the same subject. Many attempts have been

made since the time of Plotinus to accumulate proofs of this substantial
< r /> unity. We may leave this question untouched here, and need not even

inquire whether these definitions are not themselves things of the

external world employed as images and analogies and pushed too far. But

there are three factors which may be established in regard to the

psychical in spite of all naturalistic opposition; and those who have

attempted to find proofs for the traditional idea we have noted, have

usually really had these three in mind, and quite rightly so: they are,

self-consciousness, the unity of consciousness, and the consciousness of

the ego.