disown his entire career and say that it was some other person who
went to school and yet another who worked in the laboratory as full
fledged scientist a dozen years back? Obviously not. Again, the
replacement of the old by the new cells, which results in the
complete transformation of the body, is a slow, gradual and orderly
process, so much so that we speak of the change as taking place in
the same body. Does it not show that there is something which
remains constant in the changing body? How are we to account for
it? Is it because the dying cells have, somehow, transmitted the
physical identity of the body to the new cells? This is certainly not
possible. What then is the secret of the identity of the self? The
answer, which at the least is not improbable, is that behind the
physical self there is a self which is far more real, though far more
subtle, which we know as the ego, the “I” or the personality. It is the
“I,” or ego, which is at the root of my individuality and in which all
change seems to be grounded, for it continues to endure in spite of
the changes continually taking place in my mind as well as in my
body. Berdyaev has rightly observed that: “Personality is
changelessness in change.”(2) All my acts, thoughts, feelings,
cognitions and volitions are owned by the ego which enables me to
retain my identity in the midst of changes which are transforming
my body into something different. Hegel observes: “I have many
ideas, a wealth of thoughts in me, and yet I remain, in spite of this
variety, one.”(3) In his thought-provoking work On Selfhood and
Godhood, Professor A.C. Campbell has devoted a whole chapter to a
discussion of the question whether a physical body is essential to
the self, and has replied in the negative. “Young children,” says he,
“experience organic sensations long before they are aware that they
have a body.”(4) He goes on to say, “There seems to be some
evidence of pathological conditions in which there is total
suspension or organic sensation and in which the patient is self-
conscious.” Dr. F.R. Tennant tells us that “when through disease,
coenaesthesis is in abeyance, a patient will regard his body as a
strange and inimical thing, not belonging to him.”(5) It is obvious,
therefore, that the human self is neither identical with the body nor
subject to physical laws. The self is independent of the body and
remains unchanged throughout the life of the individual. It is the
“I,” the ego or my real self, therefore, which makes me take on
The Self of Man and Its Destiny 72