Doesn't everyone have at least one relative who recollects the family history with reasonable accuracy?
He looks back and just vividly recollects - sometimes with humor - his role in the revolution.
One may admit that, strictly speaking, the latter at the age of about thirty-five or forty could still be called and that Paul might conceivably have termed him still his But the counsels addressed to him seem rather out of place when one recollects the position which he occupied.
What we call Self is, above all, such a central mass, and Herbart seeks to show with great ingenuity and detail how this position is occupied at first chiefly by the body, then by the seat of ideas and desires, and finally by that first-personal Self which recollects the past and resolves concerning the future.