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All the various shades and developments of sensation were doubtless distinguished and named for some very useful purpose; but the inconvenience was great when the terms became too numerous. “We may safely enjoy the wealth of language accumulated by a long line of thinkers, if only we take care not to accept a coin for more or less than it is really worth. We must weigh our words as the ancients often weighed their coins, and not be deceived by their current value.”[31] When we have bravely resolved to throw away superfluous words, we need not imagine that we are the poorer, since we have only lost what we, in reality, never possessed. So powerful, however, is the action of words on thoughts, that as soon as we throw away a word, we feel ourselves to have been robbed of the thing itself; the sun rises just the same, though we say now that it does not rise. Those things which we call mind, intellect, reason, memory, in fact the soul, have no existence as such—that is apart from ourselves. This assertion may sound very terrible to those philosophers who imagine that the dignity of man consists in the possession of these and other powers; at last there arises a complete mythology, a philosophic polytheism, when these are spoken of as distinct possessions, independent powers, with limits not very sharply defined; and however orthodox that polytheism has become, it is never too late to protest against it. In making use of these terms it should be understood that they represent certain modes of action and phases of the Ego.

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