Self is imputed in actions and states that are explicable in terms of utility or expression; making this assertion is already to admit multiple perspectives capable of supporting a notion of self-reference. Watching a sea-urchin, lacking a (central) brain, feeding we immediately ascribe intentionality to its actions in a way that we do not to an automatic control system, (unless, perhaps, the latter persistently malfunctions in a murpheyesque way, in which case it may seem to be possessed by invisible and intentional entities.) Self thus precedes mind although the essence of self can only be understood as cognate to mind. If mind is one of the ways in which self is expressed this is in no way accidental; self once entered into Time - and time may be no more than a certain possibility of self, one of its modes - becomes a telos in which mind, for all its semantic imperialism, is a necessary stage, originating in one phase and dissolving on completing its mission at another. This view of self is contaminated by the tendency to regard mind as a cognitive engine, admitting only the true and the beautiful and leaving aside the more troublesome good. Irreducible forms of self as actor, deeper than the language used to express them, are implicated by the contexts that belong to the experiences of sin, guilt, expiation, repentance, conversion, fidelity and such. Here the operative triple is the intention, the doing and the deed done; the responsible doer being indefinitely distributed between the three, and the topology of motives a dizzying telescopic affair in which the inner is concealed within the outer, in which every illumination is accompanied by a shadowing, while at the same time an ideal of perfect transparency or candidness is avowed.