"For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell"
About this Quote
Royce isn’t confessing a cute bout of uncertainty; he’s staging a philosophical stress test. The line turns “individuality” from something we casually treat as obvious (a personality, a biography, a vibe) into a problem that resists inspection the moment you demand “concrete human terms.” That phrasing matters: concrete, human, present. He’s not denying the existence of selfhood so much as showing how quickly our usual proofs dissolve when the mind tries to look at itself without smuggling in assumptions.
The subtext is a rebuke to the late-19th-century confidence that psychology or introspection could inventory the self like a cabinet of traits. Royce, an American idealist writing in the shadow of William James and the rising prestige of empirical science, is wary of the idea that individuality is a measurable inner object. If you look for it as a thing, you get fog. The “present human form of consciousness” is the trap: our current standpoint is too cramped to certify what we most want to certify. He’s hinting that the self might be fundamentally relational or teleological - defined by loyalties, commitments, and participation in a larger moral or communal order, not by a private snapshot taken from inside the skull.
Why it works rhetorically is its disciplined humility. Royce uses first-person candor to pry open a bigger claim: maybe the self isn’t the kind of entity that can be cashed out in the vocabulary of immediacy. The sentence performs the very limit it describes, making the reader feel how “I” becomes slippery once you demand a final accounting.
The subtext is a rebuke to the late-19th-century confidence that psychology or introspection could inventory the self like a cabinet of traits. Royce, an American idealist writing in the shadow of William James and the rising prestige of empirical science, is wary of the idea that individuality is a measurable inner object. If you look for it as a thing, you get fog. The “present human form of consciousness” is the trap: our current standpoint is too cramped to certify what we most want to certify. He’s hinting that the self might be fundamentally relational or teleological - defined by loyalties, commitments, and participation in a larger moral or communal order, not by a private snapshot taken from inside the skull.
Why it works rhetorically is its disciplined humility. Royce uses first-person candor to pry open a bigger claim: maybe the self isn’t the kind of entity that can be cashed out in the vocabulary of immediacy. The sentence performs the very limit it describes, making the reader feel how “I” becomes slippery once you demand a final accounting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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