_SELF-FEELING_
Popular and scientific observation agree that a very interesting and
important phenomenon in consciousness is the sense of self as involving
such feelings as pride, shame, self-satisfaction, and self-disgust. And
the evolutionary psychologist is bound to consider self-consciousness in
its rise and development as a life factor. What is its significance for
life? How and when did it arise as answering a demand in the struggle
for existence? Further, the psychologist is bound to clearly define and
analyse the self-sense as psychic fact, to understand just what it is,
as well as what it seems. The nature of the self-sense must be carefully
studied by introspection, and its elements and quality determined.
However, the psychist has nothing, of course, to do with the self which
is sensed, an inquiry which belongs alone to the metaphysician.
Self-consciousness has been throughout all our discussion assumed and
implied as factor in emotion life. Object is not merely perceived, for
this in itself has no life value, but is at once interpreted in
experience terms, is self-related, and emotion arises and stimulates
suitable will-response in bodily activities. Thus all response to
environment through cognition of environment means with sense of the
environment as its own. Thus, and thus only, is sense of environment
rendered efficacious, for bare objectivity, which signifies nothing, has
no value for life. Under the conditions of existence in the struggle of
life object cognition could not originate because it has no function.
The theory of natural selection then requires that object and subject
cognition be regarded as complementary psychic factors, coincident in
their origin, and developing in strict correlation.
This corollary from the theory of natural selection, implying a
self-relating act in all cognition under the condition of struggle for
existence, is seen to be a likely hypothesis so far as we can judge from
the action of low psychisms. Any one who closely observes animals must
recognise that self-interest determines their cognitive activities and
in turn is roused by it. The alert listening and looking of a squirrel
is obviously impelled by fear and awakens fear. The object perceived is
constantly interpreted for its experience value, that is, there is
constant self-reference. This is the type of all cognition under natural
selection, _i.e._, where use dominates.
Assuming then psychism as mode of adaptive reaction, we see the
necessity for the correlation of the sense of self with the sense of
things. An experiencer blind to self, who has no awareness of self, but
merely blindly strives, has little advantage, for it possesses no
self-directivity and no power of intelligent action. Its adaptation is
purely general; to be specific adaptation it must appreciate differences
in environment in their differential action upon itself, an appreciation
of the objective in subjective terms. It is probable then that the first
knowledge was the apprehension of thing as painer and then of the thing
as pleasurer. A discrimination of the two is attained, probably tactile,
as hard and soft. The subjective import of the thing is at once realized
from these signs.
It is obvious that the origin of self-consciousness must be placed very
early in psychic life. With organisms which have but a few flashes of
consciousness during their whole individual existence, whose whole
experience is a mere sum of separate pleasure-pain thrills and blind
efforts, there is neither sense of objectivity nor subjectivity. These
very lowest psychisms have experience, but no sense of experience;
pleasures and pains possess them, but they do not possess these. But if
mentality arises and progresses solely by virtue of its function in
saving and profiting the individual living organism, if the end of
psychosis is this self-conservation of the bodily whole in its vitality,
there is an imperative demand for self-cognizance in order to self-care.
Under the law of struggle and survival of the fittest, the organism
which does not look out _for itself_ must go to the wall or be in the
lowest grade. Self-conservation is closely linked with self-sense. Hence
the individual very early acquires some sense of itself in its
environment, and so acts and conducts itself. Thus under adverse forces
it learns to know itself, to realize its own place and power, and to
feel fear, anger, and so to appropriately respond to any environment.
Thus is secured manifold and special response to multiform conditions,
whereas in the organism which has only pure subjectivity of pain the
response would be uniform.
The condition of an _ego_ being sensed or known is, of course, that
there is an ego to be sensed. All experience is an individual’s
experience, is personal, but this does not constitute egoism as an
experience. The experiencer must have experience before he can know
himself as experience centre, that is, there must be experience before
there can be experience of experience. But the amount of consciousness
and integration thereof which is required for self-cognizance is
probably very small. The dynamic organic whole of psychic life, which we
denominate _ego_, has almost from the start self-consciousness, and
grows by self-integration. By the conjoint interaction of subject and
object cognition with feeling and will elements egohood or personality
is gradually developed to the largeness which we see in the human mind.
Experience which does not self-integrate is scarce worthy the name, and
it is noticeable that we usually associate self-consciousness with the
term. “Having an experience” signifies a self-related psychic fact.
Given the first germ and experience constantly returns upon itself and
self-develops. It anticipates itself, experiences the experienceable,
and so serves life. A psychic individual without sense of his own
individuality is practically undiscoverable and impossible. It is
perhaps not too much to say that psychically egohood really begins when
experience cognizes and organizes itself; the self is made by the sense
of self. At first only an occasional achievement upon a very meagre
basis of psychosis, the self-sense rose only through intense pain and
effort, but has now become so built into experience that, with human
minds at least, it seems constant and spontaneous factor. Just what this
means we have to note when we come to analyze the self-sense.
While the ego-sense is to be regarded as a reflection of experience upon
itself, this reflection is far from being abstract, or general, or
spontaneous. The self-sense is wrought out in the direct commerce with
objects demanded by the exigencies of existence, a particular and
concrete apprehension is produced. That is, mind is no purely internal
development nor yet a mechanical impression. Development is forced upon
it in a world of competition and danger, but yet this development is
always active response. The self-sense then by which the individual
becomes aware of its own activities and feelings as its own, originates,
like all other new modes, by stress and strain as a most valuable
psychosis in the struggle of existence.
The primitive self-consciousness is evidently naïve, that is, there is
no consciousness of the self-consciousness. The low psychism is
conscious of itself, knows what is to its own advantage, and is
absorbingly selfish, but it is wholly unconscious of its self regard; so
also with very young children we see an egoism which is perfectly
unconscious and naïve, often humorously so to the observant adult who
perceives the utter simplicity of its selfishness. The embarrassing
self-consciousness of the boy and girl in their teens, a conscious
self-consciousness, is not yet achieved. The immediate consciousness of
self cannot by itself embarrass, it must be complicated with reflection
and with cognizance of other _ego_'s; but later forms we do not need to
discuss here.
In the simplest form of self-consciousness what are the necessary
elements? and what is the essential nature of self-consciousness as
psychic fact?
In the first place, then, what is the nature of self-consciousness as
cognition? If cognition be awareness of object, what is self or subject
cognition? Is subject merely a kind of object? Is self-consciousness a
peculiar conscious mode, or is it merely of the same type as the general
cognition of object? Of course we wish to consider such questions here
simply in the light of psychic fact.
It is often considered that self-cognitions are really in no way unique,
that the subject sensed is merely the individual’s body or his mental
powers. And it is undoubtedly true that subject is always some object,
the subject cognition is apprehension of some object either corporeal or
mental; yet self-cognition is never merely an object seen as object. The
psychic act of self-cognition is a peculiar qualifying of the object
cognition; the individual who merely knows body or mind has not
self-sense, he must be aware of body and mind as his own. The essence of
self-sense is not in the object as so perceived, but in the
subjectifying reference. While the _ego_ then is always constituted as
object, _ego_ sense as psychic fact is more than mere object cognition.
The psychic self as object, as some mode or modes of consciousness, has
naturally been emphasized. Thus the self may be defined as that which is
subject to will. Yet the least reflection shows us that for self-sense
this must imply _my_ will, and so assume what it would explain. A
consciousness of will act as effective psychic fact is not _ego_ sense.
A cognition of effort or _nisus_ is not the sense of self save so far as
the effort is known or felt as _mine_. And so in any other objectivist
definition of self as psychic object, the self in its real nature as
psychic act vanishes. Thus the consciousness of pleasure-pain capacity,
while closely related to self-sense, does not make it, for we have to
add that the capacity must be known as one’s own. In every endeavour
then to define or analyze the self as psychic fact we must either
eliminate it or presuppose it, and this must be taken as very
significant. It means at least that this _stating_ it—being merely
objectifying act—destroys the subjectifying which is its essence. The
radical distinction and polar opposition of subjectifying and
objectifying is therein suggested, and the difficulty of all fruitful
discussion and scientific investigation, which is objectifying, is made
apparent.
The objective cognition of a self can only mean cognition of an object
capable of experience. Objects are thus discriminated into two
classes—experiencers and non-experiencers, subject-objects and bare
objects; but this is not self-sense whereby the experiencer directly
knows _his own_ experience as such, but merely sense of a self as any
individual object experiencing. This objective definition of a self is
simple enough. It merely asserts that any object which at any moment of
its persistence or existence has a consciousness or experience of any
kind is thereby a self. But this is obviously not a definition of the
self and self-sense as psychic act, nor does it explain it. The
scientific statement that individual objects exist as experiencers, and
so are personalities, or _ego_'s, does not clear up the self-sense
whereby the individual is aware of his own individuality as such.
Egohood as selfishness in this objective sense, and ego-hood as
self-experience, as a feeling and knowing myself, are quite distinct. To
the question, What makes an object—this particular object, body with
limbs and various organs capable of feeling pain-pleasure—what makes
this _myself_? the only answer is relation not, be it noted, to
experience, but to _my_ experience felt as such. And what makes an
experience mine is that I consciously experience it; not merely that I
experience—that experience occurs to me, or in me, as objective fact—but
that I consciously experience, subjectively realize the experience as
_mine_; not merely as realizing experience as experience, but as _mine
own_. This ceaseless circle into which we fall in trying to define _ego_
is hinted at in various common expressions. A child even will often
remark, “I did not do it, my hand did it”; “you did not touch _me_, you
touched my _foot_,” etc. That is, even the most cursory observation
asserts that object in itself is not subject, that the me is not mine.
While, then, we must regard self-cognition as a _genus_ by itself and as
unanalyzable simple psychic fact, arising early upon a very slight basis
of experience, and continually developing as most important psychosis
for life, we may yet distinguish what is involved with it, what modes of
consciousness it presupposes, and from which it yet is distinct.
We might speak of ego-sense as an experience knowing itself. But since
cognition implies always a knowing and the known, an experience cannot,
and does not, know itself. The consciousness knowing is never the
consciousness known; and to speak of a consciousness as aware of itself
is misleading and inaccurate. To speak of the cognizance of a pain as
pain self-cognizant is an erroneous expression, for the pain does not
know itself; but it is known by a cognition which is not it. To be aware
of pain as such is awareness of consciousness, but is, interpreted
strictly, in no wise self-consciousness. I may even speak of a
self-conscious self-consciousness. This does not really mean what it
directly implies, but can only mean a self-consciousness _plus_ a
consciousness of it as one’s own; that is, the self-consciousness is not
actually conscious of itself. Even if a consciousness could both be and
know its being as an absolute, simple act, yet this would not be
self-sense, an individual realizing its own individuality, but merely a
single psychic act existing, and at the same time conscious of its
existence. Self-consciousness is more and other than any consciousness
which is self-conscious, if that were possible.
Consciousness of consciousness is not, then, self-consciousness. It is,
indeed, conceivable that an _ego_, in objective sense, might know his
own consciousness not as _his own_—the act of self-consciousness—but
merely as consciousness, and he would thus exist as an individual, yet
without subjective individuality. Yet, as matter of fact, consciousness
of consciousness always carries self-consciousness with it. If I become
conscious of a consciousness which is my own, I know it, not merely as a
consciousness, but as my own consciousness; if I am conscious of anger,
I am conscious of being angry.
Hume, in his chapter on Personal Identity, observes, “For my part, when
I enter most intimately into what I call _myself_, I always stumble on
some particular perception or other of heat or cold, light or shade,
love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch _myself_ at any time
without a perception, and never can observe anything but the
perception.” This is a good illustration of a futile and mistaken
attempt to absorb self-consciousness in consciousness of consciousness.
Of course Hume was not the hypothetical _ego_ which we have instanced as
purely objective observer of his own consciousness; when he was
conscious of any consciousness, as a heat or light sensation, a pleasure
or a pain, he was assuredly, like other mortals, conscious of it as his
own. The sense of mine-ness as psychic fact he should not have ignored,
whatever might be his conclusions as to the _myself_ But metaphysical
psychology is always apt to swerve from fact.
The close connection of self-consciousness with consciousness of
consciousness leads often to their confusion. Thus under the head
“Illusions of Self-consciousness,” J. M. Baldwin, in his treatise on the
Senses and Intellect, says, “Of these subjective illusions we may
mention _emotional illusions_, wrong estimates of our emotional states,
as when an angry man declares that he was never more cool in his life.”
This instance is plainly an illusion of introspection, not of
self-inspection; there is a mistake in the consciousness of
consciousness. Wundt, in defining self-sense as perception of the unity
of experience, falls into the same confusion.
It points to the fundamental value and place of these cognition factors,
that when we say any one is conscious we imply them all. Thus I say of
some one rendered unconscious by an accident, “He slowly recovered
consciousness,” by which I mean, became aware of himself and his
surroundings with awareness of his own mental activities. He is
consciously conscious, objectively conscious, and self-conscious. All
this makes up for us being conscious, and is for cognitive mind such a
simple organic basal movement as circulatory-nervous-motor function is
for body.
An organism must, of course, have had some psychosis before it can
become conscious of it, and of it as its own, and this primitive
psychosis we regard as pure pleasure-pain series. But in the struggle
for existence the organism is driven out of this subjectivity to
cognize its environment as related to itself, to apprehend and
comprehend and so to feel about itself—emotion—and so led to
intelligent will activity as real self-activity. At the very first the
organism has pleasures and pains, without knowing them as determined
in itself by objects, but this primitive pre-cognitive stage is short,
and most psychisms are certainly beyond it; they sense and notice
things, bodily and beyond the body, as of experience value in pleasure
and pain terms. At some most critical moment cognition first arose as
triple movement, object—subject—consciousness knowledge. Just what may
have been its original form it is most difficult to determine, but we
may suppose it to have been a very weak activity, possibly
expressible, as, “it hurts,” object being simply pain centre. “It
hurts,” means object self-related, with consciousness of the
consciousness, and this is our language expression for what seems to
be an extremely common psychosis among many organisms. As simple pains
were probably the first conscious phenomena, consciousness of pain was
probably the first consciousness of consciousness, involving also
subject and object consciousness. Not only to have a pain, but to be
conscious of it as definitely objectively determined is decidedly
useful attainment, which is finally inground in experience, so that it
occurs spontaneously in highest psychisms. But it is only with a few
of the highest human psychisms that consciousness object and subject
are apprehended as general facts. Even by philosophers and scientists,
subject, subjectivity, and object are not easily apprehended in their
distinctness as purely general modes; it requires will strain to
properly know them.
We have throughout sought the origin and place of modes of consciousness
in function, and from this point of view we must view object-knowledge,
subject-knowledge, and consciousness-knowledge as early coincident and
correlative. Cognition springs up as a threefold mode, for in no single
factor by itself has it life value. Pain, we say, forced the organism to
work out to object as painer, cognition arising at once as triple
activity. However, this does not imply that there is a constant knowing
with, an apperception, that every consciousness is accompanied with a
consciousness of it. Pains, pleasures, perceptions, etc., constantly
engross the consciousness field without our apprehending them. Simple,
common folk and children are rarely apperceptive, but yet they are
eminently self-conscious, and consciousness conscious in all their life
of naïve selfishness. They are constantly perceiving the significance of
things for their own experience, and acting upon this felt meaning.
Although not immediately aware of what is passing in their own
consciousness, as is common to certain high types of human psychism, yet
in their self-interest they certainly know themselves as experiencers.
Thus immediate awareness of one’s own psychic attitude as
such—apperception—is a kind of consciousness of consciousness in measure
divorced from consciousness of the object, and so belonging to such a
high scope of psychism that it hardly falls within the range of our
discussion, which is confined to simple direct emotion—value of things
as implying both self and consciousness knowledge. Apperception as a
constant reflection and introspection is certainly not original. In its
original form consciousness of consciousness is merely implied element
in the study of things. The study of conscious self self-possession,
self-poise, conscious psychic self-development, is all very late.
Leaving now the general consideration and analysis of self-consciousness
in the light of the general doctrine of evolution, let us note how it
occurs in consciousness to-day. Let us come to some direct inductive
study.
The simplest method and the most direct of studying the rise and nature
of self-consciousness is in those experiences in coming to
self-consciousness from deep sleep or from coma after severe accident. I
say, “I regained consciousness,” “I came to consciousness,” meaning, not
bare consciousness as in mere sensations or perceptions, but a
self-consciousness involved therein. In becoming conscious I came to
self-consciousness; in becoming aware of the objective, I at once
realize my subjectivity, myself as experiencer. In coming out from under
the influence of chloroform, there is, I have distinctly observed in my
own case, a struggling to realize, which is both objective and
subjective cognition. It is true a person having awakened under very
strange circumstances, as in a bed in a hospital after an accident, may
declare, “I did not know myself,” but this does not mean that he had no
self-consciousness, but merely that for the moment he did not identify
this self, himself, as John Smith, of Jonesville, etc. Sometimes it
happens that self-identification is not reached at all, but the self, as
bodily whole experiencing, is speedily aware of self, a new personality
and sense of personality quickly grows up. Again, a lunatic mistaking
_himself_ for Herod or Cæsar is thus always self-conscious. He has
consciously established himself as the self playing a part in the world,
but according to the opinion of his sane fellows he is much in error as
to what that part is. Strictly speaking, there is no illusion of
self-consciousness, except under the impossible supposition that a being
not a real self or psychic individual should have self-sense; but the
very act of self-cognizance implies reality of self-hood. It is plain
that even the insane man who regards _himself_ as tree or stone, has,
however, the act of self-regard, is really self-conscious. Strictly
speaking, we cannot identify or recognise self, for sense of self is
necessary in any recognition to make it such, a self-consciousness is a
fundamental _prius_. You recognise a tree, a house, but you do not
recognise yourself except as yourself is mere object related to you, to
your experience. Self-identification means only objective act, and is
not, then, the same as self-consciousness, though based upon it.
I have endeavoured to make observations of myself in moments of awaking
from sleep or going to sleep, to find whether subjective reference and
objective apprehension are mingled co-ordinately in consciousness from
the beginning, whether the self-sense reaches through both the
perceptive life and the sensation life. Drowsing in bed I sometimes have
a feeling of bare pleasure as the first stage in a pleasant awakening.
There is here no sensing, no localizing, no awareness of body or of
anything, no self-consciousness. This mere undifferentiated pleasure,
interrupted by “cat-naps,” may often recur. Lolling half-awake every one
has frequently experienced these feelings of pure pleasure, unsensed and
unlocalized, and wholly unobjectivised, the barest and simplest
consciousness, the very first stage in awaking. In this very lowest
_status_ in which I can ever catch my consciousness I have the pleasure
from the warmth and softness of the bed without having to feel warm or
sensing the soft. It is a distinct step to even feeling warm; moreover,
in extreme drowsiness it is an effortful step, an active sensing, an
objectifying self-activity, and hence a real self-consciousness, implied
in the sensing act. To _feel_ warm, to sense in this mode, is primarily
object cognition which implies a measure of subject and consciousness
cognition in feeling the warmth as source of the pleasure. Any one who
will closely examine his mental state at the very first stage of slow
awaking from deep sleep—a state of primitive consciousness—will notice a
vanishing moment of mere pleasure or pain, and in cases of great
drowsiness, when a sensation supervenes upon this stage, it does not
merely _come_, as in our ordinary consciousness, but it is _brought_;
there is objectifying effort. So in basking in the sun like an animal,
the very first and lowest stage of consciousness I drop to is pure
pleasure without having even to feel warm; and the feeling warm is
distinctly a new and higher step in consciousness which is often
attained by some slight effort. Thus it is distinctly possible for a man
at times to be too lazy to feel warm; and this fundamental laziness must
be accounted not uncommon with lower psychisms. Similarly for cold
awakening one. There is a moment of pain from cold before one feels
cold, a general pain and uneasiness discomfort before one realizes what
is the matter, feels cold and the part cold—foot it may be—and so
reaches some self-consciousness; in language expression, I am cold or
feel cold. Here is a self-conscious personal experience, though the
first touch of mere pain was experienced by the individual unconscious
of himself.
We infer, then, that self-consciousness is first reached and maintained
in the sensing act as definite cognitive volition. To sense warmth and
cold is simply a little earlier objectification than to attain sense of
a light or a sound. To _feel_ is as active as to look or to listen. We
know that there are modes of force an appreciation of which does not now
enter into known psychosis, but which might be sensed through long and
severe effort and evolve a new sense-organ. Thus, if the conditions of
life had demanded it, there would have arisen in the struggle of
existence a magnetic sense, though now a man may place his head between
the poles of the strongest magnet and be unable to reach any sensation.
A magnetic sense once organized and inbred into experience would act
with the same apparent spontaneity, as a “_given_,” as does such a
sensation as that of heat; and a person feeling magnetic would have
self-feeling implied the same as in feeling warm. That feeling warm with
us denotes something which possesses consciousness rather than
consciousness by struggle possessing it, is simply the result of the
inheritance of the accumulated mental force by which past generations
have reached this sense, and thereby consolidated self-consciousness
with it, for self-consciousness is built up as reflex cognition from the
cognitive effort and willing of the individual. Sensation always begins
in a sensing, a volition of the individual to realize externality in its
experience value, that is, mode of affection of its own body, as in
feeling warm pleasurably or painfully. When the objective is not merely
sensed but perceived, when object and objects are definitely cognized,
self-consciousness is greatly furthered, as each object and objectifying
cognizance means self-reference or interpretation in terms of
self-experience.
That self-consciousness is early and fundamental psychosis, is apparent,
not only from the gradual losing consciousness on going to sleep or in
gaining consciousness in waking, but also from the fact of its being
universal in dream life. Those factors which remain throughout all
stages and kinds of dream life, are justly regarded as organic and
basal. The higher and later elements, those which are still nascent and
in the volitional stage, as conscience and reason, rarely or never occur
in dreams. In the slightest dreams there is personal quality; I am
consciously experiencing, I am walking, riding, looking, hearing, etc.
An awareness of self pervades all dream life, even in its lowest form.
We are constantly in a world of objects which we are conscious of in
their experience value as affecting us or to affect us. A person
relating a dream always narrates it as personal experience and so
felt—“I dreamed I was in a cave and I heard water running and I felt it
cold,” etc., etc. As far then as we can survey dream life, it is a
significant fact that self-consciousness pervades it.
As far then as we can discover in dream consciousness, or in ordinary
consciousness, self-consciousness is persistent and pervasive element.
In the whole range of consciousness, with the exception of the very
evanescent and absolutely primitive pure pleasure-pain series,
self-cognition appears. We say, indeed, that a man forgets himself in a
rage, but mean merely that the rage object as self-related quite
engrosses consciousness to the exclusion of other forms of
self-consciousness, as himself related to other selves. Blind with fury
to all other objects than the rage object, he does not notice things as
related to himself, and he will rush into a stone wall. In the utmost
concentration and intensification of emotion, self-consciousness does
not disappear, but is itself concentrated and intensified. Even in the
delirium of passion, so long as any cognition remains self-consciousness
remains. The intensification order in consciousness, that is, where
multiple consciousness loses elements through intensifying of some
others, bears evidence then to the fundamental nature of
self-consciousness. A person roused from sleep by cold, which becomes
more and more intense till he loses all consciousness through suffering,
is throughout the long series self-conscious with the exception of the
initial and the final pang of pain. From the moment when cold made him
attain consciousness till the moment when he thereby lost
consciousness—that is, practically the time he was conscious—he was
self-conscious; this is the verdict of common introspection. Any one who
looks back upon his experiences of this intensification nature, finds
himself to have been self-conscious throughout.
So far then as I have been able to examine them, the modes of coming to
consciousness in dream life and in awaking process, and also the order
of disappearing consciousness by intensification, confirm the general
result which at the opening of this chapter we deduced from a general
consideration of psychism under the conditions of existence, namely,
that self-consciousness is necessary and important factor in all
cognitive process, the self-relating act giving vital value to all
consciousness of external and internal object, whether in sensing or
perceiving.
We have already touched on the general function of self-consciousness,
the gain which accrues to the individual organism from knowing its own
experiences as such by giving self-directivity and special response. The
individual is thereby enabled to look after its own interests, to
consciously care for itself, and to make the most of itself. The core of
psychic life is _interest_, and the core of _interest_ is
self-consciousness. That the psychism has interest, that it feels for
itself, is essential to the progress of life. Indeed, the genesis and
growth of biological forms and organs lie in their attainment and
perfecting as servants to the self in the struggle of existence. We know
this to be the case for the sense-organs. The organism evidently came to
appreciate light by a definite _nisus_ with self-consciousness, just the
same in kind as that by which organ is advanced to-day when straining
the eyes to perceive a seventh Pleiad. In short, we do not see because
we have eyes, but we have eyes because we see. The seeing activity and
effort as a self-activity generates the eye and perfects it. So also it
is by locomotive effort that motor organs originate and develop. The
young child learning to walk, self-consciously and with effort moving
upon its legs, is an intimation of the way in which the limbs themselves
arose in active response to environment. The rabbits imported into
Australia have, it is reported, learned to climb trees, with a
consequent modification of foot structure. Now the real genesis of the
morphological change is obviously psychic, the climbing effort as a
valuable function to life under the conditions of existence, viz., the
scarcity of herbage.
But not only the motor and sensory organs are to be traced in origin and
growth to psychic basis in self-consciousness and struggle, but other
organs now quite disassociated from will may originally have been
developed by will. Thus the stomach may have originated in digestive
effort and the heart in circulatory effort. That self-attention to the
heart stimulates the action of the heart is well-known, and also that in
rare cases the heart’s action is directly controlled by will. This may
be survival. Function is built up also as indirect result of will, as
when motor effort in running develops heart action. Psychism may thus be
interpreted as the basis of all organic development. The body is the
offspring of will. Certainly as man surveys progressive adaptation in
himself and other evolving organisms, the psychic basis is apparent in
feeling and in effort self-conscious; and if in any wise it has
apparently become mechanical and spontaneous, as in heart-beat, as in
digestion, as in winking the eye, this is to be ascribed to impulse from
the past. Self-consciousness quickens reaction, for reaction time is
shortened when there is anticipation, and anticipation implies
self-consciousness as awareness of experienceability. Self-consciousness
also enormously strengthens reaction. Thus the more thoroughly one
realizes his own danger, the more powerful the effort to escape. This is
true under normal and simple conditions, the only form in which we are
considering self-consciousness. Self-consciousness may become abnormal
and debilitating in the hypochondriac, but this is a stage beyond our
present studies. Primarily in the struggle of life self-relating to
one’s own experience is always advantageous function. The most important
thing in life is the realization, by the aid of self-consciousness, of
the self-experience value of things; to appreciate and understand
environment, and so adapt oneself to it and adapt it to oneself, to
conserve and extend self, this is the substance of psychism, and its
whole history is thence pervaded by self-consciousness.
But we must now turn from these general considerations to specific
emotions as related to self-consciousness. In the natural course of
things, an organism can never sense or view the self with indifference.
In all early psychic stages a dispassionate view of self is uncalled for
and does not exist; and, in fact, even if the most educated and
thoughtful human adult had a self-sense which is active as evolutionary
cause, it may rightly be regarded as ever active. Life forms from the
lowest protista to the highest vertebrate are in their development due
to active response, and thus morphological development may be looked at
as a functional embodiment of psychism. Instead, then, of regarding
psychism merely as life factor, we may go farther, and define life as
psychism. This is what the doctrine of active response and development
thereby, with natural selection, leads to. The phenomena of life, so far
as we can interpret them, seem to favour the view that organism is
objectification of the will, and, except at the very first stage, will
as cognitive, and triply so in object-subject-consciousness cognition.
Such evidence as we have points rather to organic body as reflex of mind
than mind as reflex of body. That the initiatory, progressive, and
creative force in evolution is psychic, we judge from such instances as
we can observe of progressive adaptation in ourselves and in lower
animals. Where new circumstances affect a species, as the rabbit
transferred to Australia, the favouring modification of the foot to
climb trees is evidently only attained by severest struggle for
self-conservation. If a new mode of force were introduced to this
planet, which should powerfully affect life, it would reach it at first
only through pleasure-pain, and the growth to a special sense-organ for
this new force would very gradually be attained through the struggle for
existence.
The prime value of self-consciousness in evolution is in securing an
intelligent correlation with environment. All specific reaction and
adaptation arose probably through an emotion volitional self-relating of
object. It is a biologic psychic law that all emotion is bound up with
self-consciousness, and all self-consciousness with emotion, for thus
only is there efficiency as intelligent will stimulation. But while
sense of self is inherent in all emotion as such, may it not in some
cases have a peculiar place, so that we may justly term them
self-feelings or emotions of personality?
A child fears the dog and is proud of its new dress. Here are two
emotions which both imply self-consciousness, the object is in both
related to the self, but they differ in egoistic quality in that in the
fear there is sense of the thing as acting on the self, in the pride
there is sense of the self as acting on the thing. In the pride it is
the object as identified with the self that is the source of emotion.
The pride proceeds from within outward, while fear, _vice versâ_. In
fear it is the experience value of the dog, that it will hurt, that
gives the emotion quality; but in the pride the essence of the emotion
lies, not in the influence of the dress on the self, but that the self
is connected with the dress by way of ownership. “See my pretty dress”;
“Oh mama! the cross dog”; the emotions thus expressed appear to belong
to different orders; the fear being of the thing in its effect on the
self, the pride being of the self in the thing. Pride is a glorified
self-consciousness, self-consciousness is its substance and immediate
spirit, whereas in fear self-consciousness is but an instrument in
interpretation of experience value. We observe an interesting example of
emotion of personality in a young girl who fears a cow and is yet
ashamed of her fear. Here, while self-consciousness is certainly
involved in the fear, yet it is peculiarly involved in the emotion at
her emotion as such; the shame is at or of herself, the fear is for
herself. This peculiar personal feature of pride is signified by the
common usage of language; the child is proud of the thing, does not
pride the thing, but prides himself on the thing, whereas in fear he
fears the thing for himself. I say, indeed, the child is afraid of the
dog and proud of his dress, but the force of the preposition is quite
general.
It may be said that pride is not peculiarly an emotion of personality
simply as being directed toward self; one can hate himself, fear
himself, be angry at himself, etc. But the drunkard fearing himself
means merely that he fears the results of his own tendencies, _delirium
tremens_, for instance, a perfectly objective fear. And it is evident
that one cannot, holding to the term, self, in the same meaning, fear at
once himself for himself. The self which is endangered is not the self
which endangers. In all such cases as so-called fearing self the action
is from without inward, which is the reverse of the mode in
personality—emotion where oneself is seen, not as affected by the thing,
but as himself in the thing.
The typical and earliest of the emotions of personality is undoubtedly
pride. Like all emotions pride includes cognition of object; pride is
always proud of something but in the peculiar way before emphasized, in
the light which our own personality casts upon it. Pride generally and
certainly originally implies sense of something done or possessed by
self and that in a manner superior to competitors. It is a self
assertion over rivals, an impressing spectators, a being proud of
something to some one. If the world contained but one solitary conscious
individual, he could never attain to pride, though he might be
self-satisfied. Sense of comparative self-magnification is essential to
pride. Pride as social in its nature suffers great diminishing when the
individual is long kept in solitude, and in some cases men may
ultimately lose all standard of comparison and so pride entirely
vanishes. If a man were from his earliest remembrance an inhabitant of a
desert isle pride would have no opportunity to develop. His achievements
might satisfy himself, but they could not make him proud, for he would
know nothing of others and their works. Again, this need of sociality is
seen in this, that we are not proud of our planet as such. We
distinguish it, indeed, as our own, but we have no sense of pride in its
finest features as such. I do not feel proud of Amazonian forest or
Himalayan mountain merely as earth characters. However, if in the future
we secure interplanetary communication, and planets rival each other as
cities and countries do now, there will be a stimulus to pride on an
astronomical scale. If we could say to the inhabitants of some neighbour
sphere that our planet made better time round the sun than theirs, this
would be the basis of an intense pride.
The extent of pride is thus equal to the extent of the self-sense, but
in its wide ranges pride is relatively weak. I am proud of my country,
but, other things being equal, more proud of my state and still more
proud of my city. I am proud of the achievements of the Anglo-American
race, and I always survey a locomotive with pride, but it is when
ownership and achievement comes closer to the _ego_, as in one’s
relatives and family, that pride notably intensifies, and it reaches its
_maximum_ in view of one’s own attainments. That which we do without any
assistance and which seems to us far beyond the ordinary gives the best
and highest incitement to pride.
Pride, in the later stages at least, is more and more discriminating,
and is connected finally only with those objects which are the actual
will products of the individual, and so identified with the veritable
self. Thus is erected by society a pride test, and men say, “He has a
right to be proud,” or, “He ought not to be proud.” Yet standards will
differ, and what one will be proud of another will be ashamed of, and
_vice versâ_. The general standard is largely regulated by the
comparative amount of will force and so of strength required in the
particular act; thus, while I am not proud of crushing an ant, I might
be at felling an ox.
The general expression of pride is holding up one’s head and expanding
oneself generally, though this self-enlargement is not, as in anger, to
inspire fear in beholders, but rather admiration. Proud sense of
superiority naturally asserts itself primarily in physical
impressiveness, and, as such, pride plays an especially large part in
sexual selection. The lower expression of pride is swagger and strut,
the higher in a dignity and stateliness of demeanour.
The function of pride, the use which originally determined its
development, and which is still apparent, is a pleasure-sanction to
competitive successful effort. The proud consciousness of triumph is one
of the greatest pleasures of existence, and if there were no such
emotion following the winning effort, life would lose much of its
incentive. Pride prevents parasitism. Without pride to stimulate and
reward, striving mind would have lost one of the most potent factors of
progress. Even in human education it becomes of value to appeal to a
just and proper pride. In the lower life it is all important. It gives
tone to life, gives power and confidence, assertiveness and
aggressiveness, and conduces in a large measure to permanent and
progressive self-aggrandisement. And not only for effect upon self but
upon others, pride is an important psychic factor. Thus pride in always
showing a bold, commanding front to rivals, makes a direct impression
upon antagonists. Pride always puts the best foot first, hides weakness
and exaggerates strength, so that the proud one always shows for all and
even more than he is, and thus gains much in the struggle of existence
where even mere appearance of power is apt to discourage opponents. The
one who is strong and proud of it is doubly strong. Pride is the reflex
of gain and victory, as shame is of loss and defeat. It is thus the root
of ambition, the desire of rank and place for superiority’s sake which
has been, and now is, especially in advanced human psychism, a most
powerful agent in the evolution of life and mind.
But while it is undoubtedly true that pride is in its origin solely an
advantageous psychosis, and indeed, could have been developed in no
other way, yet there is a disadvantageous side. Only up to a certain
point is it true that the prouder one is, the better off he is. When
pride, over-stimulated, betrays into over-confidence and heedlessness,
then, indeed, “pride goeth before a fall.” But at the first, however, we
must suppose that the organism was proud of only that of which it was to
its advantage to be proud; but by perversion and hypertrophy, indeed, in
pride as in the case of other emotions, caused largely by rivals, it
became a source of great disadvantage and positively destructive of high
self-advancement. Conceit, an over-weening abnormal pride which is
totally irrelevant to the real standing of the individual, cannot but be
highly injurious. However, harmful pride must be accounted rather late.
In early psychisms attainment over and beyond others, when perceived
naturally and normally, gave rise to pride as a wholly useful emotion
reaction, and those who had the capacity of being proud had a distinct
advantage over those who had no sense of their own consequence or no
pride about it. Even in human society we must remark that in general
those who are incapable of becoming proud on proper occasion, are less
and less liable to reach the occasion.
Pride, as emotion of sense of superiority, manifests itself in many
forms, of which we need not now expect to make a detailed or complete
investigation, since the object of our present studies is merely to
emphasize the main forms of the early emotions from the point of view of
natural selection. Simple pride, which is unconscious of itself, but
acts directly and without reflection, as we see in a child proud of a
new dress, is a phase which does not often appear in the experience of
the educated human adult, where pride becomes highly complicated with
emotional and intellectual movements of many kinds, and where it is
extended to a wide diversity of objects with the extension of
self-interest. Thus men are proud of rank, blood, money, muscular
strength, possessions, intellectual attainments, moral character, and,
in fact, whatever the idea of _mine_ can be applied to. However, the
different kinds of pride are not to be distinguished by the object
merely, as pride of rank, blood, etc., for difference in object does not
by itself constitute distinct quality in psychic act. Pride is the same,
whether it is of a horse, a bank account, or a wife. Still the object
frequently calls up subsidiary emotions which may complicate pride, and
the perceived nature of the object certainly influences our feeling
toward it.
When an object is to be competed for, but we consider it beneath us to
enter the lists, or we think our rivals unworthy of our attention, we
have the peculiar phase of feeling termed arrogance. Arrogance brooks no
rivalry and stands apart on a peak of self-contained superiority. Walter
Savage Landor, the proudest of men, displays this feeling in perfection
when he says in one of his cameos in verse:
“I strove with none,
For none were worth my strife.”
This is a perfect expression of complete arrogance. We may say that he
was too proud to be proud. No one was worthy of his mettle, and so he
held himself aloof with the feeling of immeasurable superiority.
Strictly speaking then, arrogance is a variety of very intense pride
where the sense of superiority is perfectly exclusive and absolute, and
disdains comparison. It is entirely inconsiderate of others’ rivalry and
above caring for the approval or disapproval or admiration of others.
Thus this phase, unlike pride in general, seeks concealment rather than
display; its excellence is so far beyond the common as to be
unappreciable by contemporaries, and appreciated by self alone.
Conceit is a term objectively applied, but hardly indicates a kind of
pride, a real subjective distinction. He who thinks more highly of
himself than he ought to think, esteems himself beyond his due, and so
is considered by the community over proud, is termed conceited. The
pride which is entirely just, as viewed from the objective standpoint,
is quite the same subjectively as the most preposterous conceit.
Similarly also dignity is no real feeling. “That man is dignified”; this
is an objective characterization of his manner of conduct, but this does
not imply that he feels dignified. Pride may give a dignified demeanour,
but a feeling dignified can only refer to the reactive effect upon
consciousness, of this mode of behaviour. “I feel proud,” may likewise
sometimes be used, not for designating the subjective feeling or being
proud, but as equal to, “I felt that I was proud,” that is, “I was proud
and I knew it,” “I had the sense of being proud.” So also in general we
may remark that while feeling may denote a simple state of being, yet
such phrases as “I felt proud,” “felt angry,” etc., are ambiguous, and
may mean either the bare feeling of pride, anger, etc., as experienced,
or the feeling of being proud, angry, etc., or both, that is,
consciousness of the particular consciousness may or may not complicate
self-consciousness. The word, feel, is often used in this merely
reflexive way to denote a sense of state as, “I was proud and I felt so
at the time.” Thus common phrase verifies the analysis that
self-consciousness and consciousness of consciousness are bound up with
emotion, the full analysis of the phrase showing that the feeling proud
was an object consciousness _plus_ a subject consciousness.
As previously intimated, we have to sharply distinguish between pride
and such emotions as self-satisfaction and self-complacency. These
latter emotions of personality deal solely with the self in its own
sight, while pride is always not over self to self, but over self to
others. The self-satisfied often are proud, but this is not necessarily
implied. The comparative element enters in self-satisfaction, as in all
true pride, but the comparison is primarily with oneself, not with
others. If we succeed in our own eyes, we may think little about others.
A pure self-satisfaction, like a purely altruistic pride, is a rare and
late phenomenon. Pride about others, pride to oneself, are both very apt
to be tinged with the original pride over others. One says of a friend,
“I feel proud of him”; but while this has a certain reality and psychic
value of altruistic mode, yet the innate and fundamental selfishness of
pride tends to make a place in what appears to be the most disinterested
form. Personal interest and aggrandisement is so inbred a motive from
the earliest stages of evolution that it is never superseded.
A feeling of embarrassment is an emotion of personality which is closely
connected with pride. Those who are most susceptible to pride are most
apt to feel embarrassed. The one who has no tendency toward pride, who
does not in the least care how he may appear before others or in
relation to others, and so does not value his place among his fellows,
cannot be embarrassed. He may be disturbed by the difficulties of some
task, but only in the same way in which he would be agitated by any
difficult work undertaken by and for himself alone. The emotion of
embarrassment, like pride, conceives the self in its social relations.
When one says that he felt greatly embarrassed in being called on
unexpectedly to speak at a dinner, we perceive that he means emotion,
not merely in view of the inherent difficulty of the task, but in view
of what he himself may or may not do under the inspection of the
critical. In this emotion there is a wonderful quickening of the
self-sense, a painfully intense self-consciousness being suddenly
generated as the peculiar relation of self to others is impressed upon
him. This self-sense is powerfully reinforced by the self-sense of the
bodily expression of self-consciousness. The whole bodily self seems
conspicuously magnified, and we become painfully aware of hands, feet,
and other members. This bodily self-sensitiveness, as often contributing
strongly to this emotion-total, is very marked in cases of blushing. A
girl, feeling embarrassed, blushes, and immediately becoming conscious
of the blushing as itself an embarrassing circumstance, blushes again
still more violently, and becoming conscious of this, becomes still more
confused, and so on, a constant cumulation of psychic effect from
reaction of expression. Sense of the expression of embarrassment is
itself embarrassing, hence every embarrassment may become in itself a
new source of embarrassment. However, that this peculiar
self-consciousness cannot be forced in itself or in its expression, we
see in the fact that the efforts of the maiden who exclaims in mock
modesty, “I _know_ I am blushing,” are entirely futile. This assumption
of embarrassment may become embarrassing, and so a genuine expression be
stimulated, which, however, is of quite another order from the one
desired.
How such an emotion as that of embarrassment, which is disadvantageous
from the first, could have originated under natural selection, can never
be solved by the evolutionist who views all variation as originally
springing from personal advantage. Here is a psychosis, always the
reverse of serviceable, an emotion anticipatory of disgraceful defeat,
and so is really premonitory, but yet one which ever unnerves, rather
than nerves to successful action. He who never feels embarrassed, under
any circumstances always has the best chance. Hence this psychosis must
be strictly a negative evolution, an unfavourable variation determined
by a persistent exciting by antagonists as serviceable to them. An
adversary will always put his opponent in an embarrassing situation, and
endeavour that he shall both be embarrassed and feel embarrassment. This
emotion has thus been stimulated and fostered during ages of psychic
evolution, and in advanced human evolution the stimulating it is one of
the subtlest methods of offence.
A feeling of embarrassment is incipient shame, or perhaps the way for
shame. But the feeling of embarrassment is generally anticipatory as to
the potential, while shame is as to the actual; it is a feeling of
present public degradation and loss. Both equally imply a capacity for
pride; one who cannot be proud cannot be ashamed. But shame, unlike the
feeling of embarrassment, acts as serviceable variation to the
individual, and is one of the weightiest negative guards to advantageous
actions. It cannot promote very high and noble action, but it keeps
above a certain low and base level. The member of society who has lost
all pride and all sense of shame has ceased to feel the most powerful
and useful of social incentives.[E]
-----
Footnote E:
As to the origin of bodily shame, we may suppose that this arose with
reference to _excreta_ as something rejected from the body, and
therefore base and unworthy. With the refined even spitting and
perspiring are shameful. It may be that sexual shame can be traced to
the same root, but social convention and morality also have very large
influence here.
-----
There is a certain curious psychosis which may be called shame for want
of a better term. I allude to the feeling which prompts one to shun
oneself. One may not only be ashamed to look others in the eye, but even
himself. He will not look at himself in a mirror because he feels a
great loss of self-respect. This is not the opposite of vanity, a shame
at viewing oneself because of unseemliness of feature, which is liable
to general observation, but it is rather the reverse, the polar opposite
of pure self-feeling, of self-respect and self-satisfaction. A feeling
of shame with regard to oneself alone is still, of course, comparative;
though it does not touch upon others, it implies a self-erected
standard. This emotion, like the others just mentioned, is obviously
very late.
However, perhaps the latest in the series, and the psychic culmination
of all is humility. Humility, like meekness, marks a new order of
evolution. In the highest human development pride is eliminated and
supplanted by humility. A true self-estimate of personal achievement
upon a very wide and impartial impersonal basis, either that of a
scientific view of man’s place in the universe, or as influenced by high
religious and moral ideals, leads to a feeling of humility. Egoism and
self-assertiveness give place to altruistic modesty and refined reserve.
The humble man always gives place rather than takes place. He does not
lift himself above his fellows, but takes the lowest seat, and is
servant of all. The humble man does not strive with others, not because
too proud to do so, as Landor, but because he feels called to the
highest and best work for its own sake. He says with Laotze, “Do, not
strive.” Unthinking of getting ahead or falling behind others, he aims
consistently and constantly at an ideal of perfect fruitage, so high an
ideal that he always feels his own unworthiness in his own sight and in
that of others, though aware of his desert by the ordinary standards of
his community, country, or generation. Worldly successes produce no
elation in the lowly of heart; they view themselves, not with
self-depreciation, but with the justness of the largest view, as Newton,
who, when complimented upon his attainments, replied that he had but
picked up a few pebbles by the ocean of truth. Spiritual and ethical
principles sway these, and not personal ambition. And it must be noted
that humility is not simply lack of pride under circumstances which
naturally allow of it, an insensitiveness to pride, a wholly negative
state, which is nothing in itself, but it is a positive feeling and
emotion in view of oneself in relation to others. Thus the humble man is
he of high pride capacity, and who consciously refrains from pride when
usual standards would allow it. “That is something to be proud of,” “He
has a right to be proud,” and similar expressions mark the lower
standards of which he never avails himself. The best and noblest
specimens of mankind renounce the “world,” “the lust of the eye and
pride of life,” and live by their self-erected ideals. And if we ask how
the spirit of humility and disinterestedness can arise and progress in a
natural evolution, we must answer that it holds its place and wins its
way by reason of its greater inherent value and fruitfulness. He who has
himself in view has lost sight of his work. By this psychic mode alone
is the largest, most perfect, most permanent work accomplished, and
ultimately, often posthumously, it is appreciated at its real worth.
Those originating and master minds in human history who have opened new
avenues of spiritual progress, have usually been of this modest,
unassuming, humble type. Thus in a wholly natural manner the higher law
of an ideal life prevails over the lower law of life which works only by
competition in the struggle for existence.