the sense in which I use it when speaking of myself, cannot be defined
except by reference to my own sameness with myself. It is a simple idea
incapable of analysis, and is indeed, as was pointed out in my last
Lecture, the root of the character of permanence which we assign to
things external. To say that this conception has been evolved from the
characteristics that Mr. Spencer has enumerated is like saying that a
cat has been evolved without any intermediate stages from a fish, or a
smell from a colour.

But, if we now go a step further, and ask in what form this personal
identity presents itself in the world of phenomena, the answer is clear:
our personality while bound up with all our other faculties, so that we
can speak of our understanding, our affections, our powers of perception
and sensation, as parts of ourselves, yet is centred in one faculty
which we call the will. 'If there be aught spiritual in man,' says
Coleridge, 'the will must be such. If there be a will, there must be a
spirituality in man.' The will is the man. It is the will that makes us
responsible beings. It is for the action of our will, or the consent of
our will, that we come to be called in question. It is by the will that
we assert ourselves amidst the existences around us; and as the will is
the man in relation to phenomena, so on the other side the will is the
one and only force among the forces of this world which takes cognizance
of principles and is capable of acting in pursuit of an aim not to be
found among phenomena at all. The will is not the whole spiritual
faculty. Besides the power of willing we have the power of recognising
spiritual truth. And this power or faculty we commonly call the
conscience. But the conscience is not a force. It has no power of acting
except through the will. It receives and transmits the voice from the
spiritual world, and the will is responsible so far as the conscience
enlightens it. It is the will whereby the man takes his place in the