understanding these pronouns, and in his thirty-fifth month had not yet
straightened them out, sometimes calling his father “me.” I imagine that
this was partly because he was placid and uncontentious in his earliest
years, manifesting little social self-feeling, but chiefly occupied with
impersonal experiment and reflection; and partly because he saw little
of other children by antithesis to whom his self could be awakened. M.,
on the other hand, coming later, had R.’s opposition on which to whet
her naturally keen appropriativeness. And her society had a marked
effect in developing self-feeling in R., who found self-assertion
necessary to preserve his playthings, or anything else capable of
appropriation. He learned the use of “my,” however, when he was about
three years old, before M. was born. He doubtless acquired it in his
dealings with his parents. Thus he would perhaps notice his mother
claiming the scissors as _mine_ and seizing upon them, and would be
moved sympathetically to claim something in the same way—connecting the
word with the act and the feeling rather than the object. But as I had
not the problem clearly in mind at that time I made no satisfactory
observations.
I imagine, then, that as a rule the child associates “I” and “me” at
first only with those ideas regarding which his appropriative feeling is
aroused and defined by opposition. He appropriates his nose, eye, or
foot in very much the same way as a plaything—by antithesis to other
noses, eyes, and feet, which he cannot control. It is not uncommon to
tease little children by proposing to take away one of these organs, and
they behave precisely as if the “mine” threatened were a separable
object—which it might be for all they know. And, as I have suggested,
even in adult life, “I,” “me,” and “mine” are applied with a strong
sense of their meaning only to things distinguished as peculiar to us by
some sort of opposition or contrast. They always imply social life and
relation to other persons. That which is most distinctively mine is very
private, it is true, but it is that part of the private which I am
cherishing in antithesis to the rest of the world, not the separate but
the special. The aggressive self is essentially a militant phase of the
mind, having for its apparent function the energizing of peculiar
activities, and although the militancy may not go on in an obvious,
external manner, it always exists as a mental attitude.
In some of the best-known discussions of the development of the sense of
self in children the chief emphasis has been placed upon the speculative
or quasi-metaphysical ideas concerning “I” which children sometimes
formulate as a result either of questions from their elders, or of the
independent development of a speculative instinct. The most obvious
result of these inquiries is to show that a child, when he reflects upon
the self in this manner, usually locates “I” in the body. Interesting
and important as this juvenile metaphysics is, as one phase of mental
development, it should certainly not be taken as an adequate expression
of the childish sense of self, and probably President G. Stanley Hall,
who has collected valuable material of this kind, does not so take
it.[43] This analysis of the “I,” asking one’s self just where it is
located, whether particular limbs are embraced in it, and the like, is
somewhat remote from the ordinary, naïve use of the word, with children
as with grown people. In my own children I only once observed anything
of this sort, and that was in the case of R., when he was struggling to
achieve the correct use of his pronouns; and a futile, and as I now
think mistaken, attempt was made to help him by pointing out the
association of the word with his body. On the other hand, every child
who has learned to talk uses “I,” “me,” “mine,” and the like hundreds of
times a day, with great emphasis, in the simple, naïve way that the race
has used them for thousands of years. In this usage they refer to claims
upon playthings, to assertions of one’s peculiar will or purpose, as
“_I_ don’t want to do it that way,” “_I_ am going to draw a kitty,” and
so on, rarely to any part of the body. And when a part of the body is
meant it is usually by way of claiming approval for it, as “Don’t I look
nice?” so that the object of chief interest is after all another
person’s attitude. The speculative “I,” though a true “I,” is not the
“I” of common speech and workaday usefulness, but almost as remote from
ordinary thought as the ego of metaphysicians, of which, indeed, it is
an immature example.
That children, when in this philosophizing state of mind, usually refer
“I” to the physical body, is easily explained by the fact that their
materialism, natural to all crude speculation, needs to locate the self
somewhere, and the body, the one tangible thing over which they have
continuous power, seems the most available home for it.
The process by which self-feeling of the looking-glass sort develops in
children may be followed without much difficulty. Studying the movements
of others as closely as they do they soon see a connection between their
own acts and changes in those movements; that is, they perceive their
own influence or power over persons. The child appropriates the visible
actions of his parent or nurse, over which he finds he has some control,
in quite the same way as he appropriates one of his own members or a
plaything, and he will try to do things with this new possession, just
as he will with his hand or his rattle. A girl six months old will
attempt in the most evident and deliberate manner to attract attention
to herself, to set going by her actions some of those movements of other
persons that she has appropriated. She has tasted the joy of being a
cause, of exerting social power, and wishes more of it. She will tug at
her mother’s skirts, wriggle, gurgle, stretch out her arms, etc., all
the time watching for the hoped-for effect. These performances often
give the child, even at this age, an appearance of what is called
affectation, that is she seems to be unduly preoccupied with what other
people think of her. Affectation, at any age, exists when the passion to
influence others seems to overbalance the established character and give
it an obvious twist or pose. It is instructive to find that even Darwin
was, in his childhood, capable of departing from truth for the sake of
making an impression. “For instance,” he says in his autobiography, “I
once gathered much valuable fruit from my father’s trees and hid it in
the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news that
I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit.”[44]
The young performer soon learns to be different things to different
people, showing that he begins to apprehend personality and to foresee
its operation. If the mother or nurse is more tender than just she will
almost certainly be “worked” by systematic weeping. It is a matter of
common observation that children often behave worse with their mother
than with other and less sympathetic people. Of the new persons that a
child sees it is evident that some make a strong impression and awaken a
desire to interest and please them, while others are indifferent or
repugnant. Sometimes the reason can be perceived or guessed, sometimes
not; but the fact of selective interest, admiration, prestige, is
obvious before the end of the second year. By that time a child already
cares much for the reflection of himself upon one personality and little
for that upon another. Moreover, he soon claims intimate and tractable
persons as _mine_, classes them among his other possessions, and
maintains his ownership against all comers. M., at three years of age,
vigorously resented R.’s claim upon their mother. The latter was “_my_
mamma,” whenever the point was raised.
Strong joy and grief depend upon the treatment this rudimentary social
self receives. In the case of M. I noticed as early as the fourth month
a “hurt” way of crying which seemed to indicate a sense of personal
slight. It was quite different from the cry of pain or that of anger,
but seemed about the same as the cry of fright. The slightest tone of
reproof would produce it. On the other hand, if people took notice and
laughed and encouraged, she was hilarious. At about fifteen months old
she had become “a perfect little actress,” seeming to live largely in
imaginations of her effect upon other people. She constantly and
obviously laid traps for attention, and looked abashed or wept at any
signs of disapproval or indifference. At times it would seem as if she
could not get over these repulses, but would cry long in a grieved way,
refusing to be comforted. If she hit upon any little trick that made
people laugh she would be sure to repeat it, laughing loudly and
affectedly in imitation. She had quite a repertory of these small
performances, which she would display to a sympathetic audience, or even
try upon strangers. I have seen her at sixteen months, when R. refused
to give her the scissors, sit down and make believe cry, putting up her
under lip and snuffling, meanwhile looking up now and then to see what
effect she was producing.[45]
In such phenomena we have plainly enough, it seems to me, the germ of
personal ambition of every sort. Imagination co-operating with
instinctive self-feeling has already created a social “I,” and this has
become a principal object of interest and endeavor.
Progress from this point is chiefly in the way of a greater
definiteness, fulness, and inwardness in the imagination of the other’s
state of mind. A little child thinks of and tries to elicit certain
visible or audible phenomena, and does not go back of them; but what a
grown-up person desires to produce in others is an internal, invisible
condition which his own richer experience enables him to imagine, and of
which expression is only the sign. Even adults, however, make no
separation between what other people think and the visible expression of
that thought. They imagine the whole thing at once, and their idea
differs from that of a child chiefly in the comparative richness and
complexity of the elements that accompany and interpret the visible or
audible sign. There is also a progress from the naïve to the subtle in
socially self-assertive action. A child obviously and simply, at first,
does things for effect. Later there is an endeavor to suppress the
appearance of doing so; affection, indifference, contempt, etc., are
simulated to hide the real wish to affect the self-image. It is
perceived that an obvious seeking after good opinion is weak and
disagreeable.
I doubt whether there are any regular stages in the development of
social self-feeling and expression common to the majority of children.
The sentiments of self develop by imperceptible gradations out of the
crude appropriative instinct of new-born babes, and their manifestations
vary indefinitely in different cases. Many children show
“self-consciousness” conspicuously from the first half year; others have
little appearance of it at any age. Still others pass through periods of
affectation whose length and time of occurrence would probably be found
to be exceedingly various. In childhood, as at all times of life,
absorption in some idea other than that of the social self tends to
drive “self-consciousness” out.
Nearly everyone, however, whose turn of mind is at all imaginative goes
through a season of passionate self-feeling during adolescence, when,
according to current belief, the social impulses are stimulated in
connection with the rapid development of the functions of sex. This is a
time of hero-worship, of high resolve, of impassioned reverie, of vague
but fierce ambition, of strenuous imitation that seems affected, of
_gêne_ in the presence of the other sex or of superior persons, and so
on.
Many autobiographies describe the social self-feeling of youth which, in
the case of strenuous, susceptible natures, prevented by weak health or
uncongenial surroundings from gaining the sort of success proper to that
age, often attains extreme intensity. This is quite generally the case
with the youth of men of genius, whose exceptional endowment and
tendencies usually isolate them more or less from the ordinary life
about them. In the autobiography of John Addington Symonds we have an
account of the feelings of an ambitious boy suffering from ill-health,
plainness of feature—peculiarly mortifying to his strong æsthetic
instincts—and mental backwardness. “I almost resented the attentions
paid me as my father’s son, ... I regarded them as acts of charitable
condescension. Thus I passed into an attitude of haughty shyness which
had nothing respectable in it except a sort of self-reliant,
world-defiant pride, a resolution to effectuate myself, and to win what
I wanted by my exertions.... I vowed to raise myself somehow or other to
eminence of some sort.... I felt no desire for wealth, no mere wish to
cut a figure in society. But I thirsted with intolerable thirst for
eminence, for recognition as a personality.[46]... The main thing which
sustained me was a sense of self—imperious, antagonistic,
unmalleable.[47]... My external self in these many ways was being
perpetually snubbed, and crushed, and mortified. Yet the inner self
hardened after a dumb, blind fashion. I kept repeating, ‘Wait, wait. I
will, I shall, I must.’”[48] At Oxford he overhears a conversation in
which his abilities are depreciated and it is predicted that he will not
get his “first.” “The sting of it remained in me; and though I cared
little enough for first classes, I then and there resolved that I would
win the best first of my year. This kind of grit in me has to be
notified. Nothing aroused it so much as a seeming slight, exciting my
rebellious manhood.”[49] Again he exclaims, “I look round me and find
nothing in which I excel.”[50]... “I fret because I do not realize
ambition, because I have no active work, and cannot win a position of
importance like other men.”[51]
This sort of thing is familiar in literature, and very likely in our own
experience. It seems worth while to recall it and to point out that this
primal need of self-effectuation, to adopt Mr. Symonds’s phrase, is the
essence of ambition, and always has for its object the production of
some effect upon the minds of other people. We feel in the quotations
above the indomitable surging up of the individualizing, militant force
of which self-feeling seems to be the organ.
Sex-difference in the development of the social self is apparent from
the first. Girls have, as a rule, a more impressible social sensibility;
they care more obviously for the social image, study it, reflect upon it
more, and so have even during the first year an appearance of subtlety,
_finesse_, often of affectation, in which boys are comparatively
lacking. Boys are more taken up with muscular activity for its own sake
and with construction, their imaginations are occupied somewhat less
with persons and more with things. In a girl _das ewig Weibliche_, not
easy to describe but quite unmistakable, appears as soon as she begins
to take notice of people, and one phase of it is certainly an ego less
simple and stable, a stronger impulse to go over to the other person’s
point of view and to stake joy and grief on the image in his mind. There
can be no doubt that women are as a rule more dependent upon immediate
personal support and corroboration than are men. The thought of the
woman needs to fix itself upon some person in whose mind she can find a
stable and compelling image of herself by which to live. If such an
image is found, either in a visible or an ideal person, the power of
devotion to it becomes a source of strength. But it is a sort of
strength dependent upon this personal complement, without which the
womanly character is somewhat apt to become a derelict and drifting
vessel. Men being built more for aggression, have, relatively, a greater
power of standing alone. But no one can really stand alone, and the
appearance of it is due simply to a greater momentum and continuity of
character which stores up the past and resists immediate influences.
Directly or indirectly the imagination of how we appear to others is a
controlling force in all normal minds.
The vague but potent phases of the self associated with the instinct of
sex may be regarded, like other phases, as expressive of a need to exert
power and as having reference to personal function. The youth, I take
it, is bashful precisely because he is conscious of the vague stirring
of an aggressive instinct which he does not know how either to
effectuate or to ignore. And it is perhaps much the same with the other
sex: the bashful are always aggressive at heart; they are conscious of
an interest in the other person, of a need to be something to him. And
the more developed sexual passion, in both sexes, is very largely an
emotion of power, domination, or appropriation. There is no state of
feeling that says “mine, mine,” more fiercely. The need to be
appropriated or dominated which, in women at least, is equally powerful,
is of the same nature at bottom, having for its object the attracting to
itself of a masterful passion. “The desire of the man is for the woman,
but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.”[52]
Although boys have generally a less impressionable social self than
girls, there is great difference among them in this regard. Some of them
have a marked tendency to _finesse_ and posing, while others have almost
none. The latter have a less vivid personal imagination; they are
unaffected chiefly, perhaps, because they have no vivid idea of how they
seem to others, and so are not moved to seem rather than to be; they are
unresentful of slights because they do not feel them, not ashamed or
jealous or vain or proud or remorseful, because all these imply
imagination of another’s mind. I have known children who showed no
tendency whatever to lie; in fact, could not understand the nature or
object of lying or of any sort of concealment, as in such games as
hide-and-coop. This excessively simple way of looking at things may come
from unusual absorption in the observation and analysis of the
impersonal, as appeared to be the case with R., whose interest in other
facts and their relations so much preponderated over his interest in
personal attitudes that there was no temptation to sacrifice the former
to the latter. A child of this sort gives the impression of being
non-moral; he neither sins nor repents, and has not the knowledge of
good and evil. We eat of the tree of this knowledge when we begin to
imagine the minds of others, and so become aware of that conflict of
personal impulses which conscience aims to allay.
Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not
necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To
be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power,
usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight
into other minds that underlies tact and _savoir faire_, morality, and
beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding
and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity
that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.
There is, however, another kind of simplicity, belonging to a character
that is subtle and sensitive, but has sufficient force and mental
clearness to keep in strict order the many impulses to which it is open,
and so preserve its directness and unity. One may be simple like Simple
Simon, or in the sense that Emerson meant when he said, “To be simple is
to be great.” Affectation, vanity and the like, indicate the lack of
proper assimilation of the influences arising from our sense of what
others think of us. Instead of these influences working upon the
individual gradually and without disturbing his equilibrium, they
overbear him so that he appears to be not himself, posing, out of
function, and hence silly, weak, contemptible. The affected smile, the
“foolish face of praise” is a type of all affectation, an external,
put-on thing, a weak and fatuous petition for approval. Whenever one is
growing rapidly, learning eagerly, preoccupied with strange ideals, he
is in danger of this loss of equilibrium; and so we notice it in
sensitive children, especially girls, in young people between fourteen
and twenty, and at all ages in persons of unstable individuality.
This disturbance of our equilibrium by the outgoing of the imagination
toward another person’s point of view means that we are undergoing his
influence. In the presence of one whom we feel to be of importance there
is a tendency to enter into and adopt, by sympathy, his judgment of
ourself, to put a new value on ideas and purposes, to recast life in his
image. With a very sensitive person this tendency is often evident to
others in ordinary conversation and in trivial matters. By force of an
impulse springing directly from the delicacy of his perceptions he is
continually imagining how he appears to his interlocutor, and accepting
the image, for the moment, as himself. If the other appears to think him
well-informed on some recondite matter, he is likely to assume a learned
expression; if thought judicious he looks as if he were, if accused of
dishonesty he appears guilty, and so on. In short, a sensitive man, in
the presence of an impressive personality, tends to become, for the
time, his interpretation of what the other thinks he is. It is only the
heavy-minded who will not feel this to be true, in some degree, of
themselves. Of course it is usually a temporary and somewhat superficial
phenomenon; but it is typical of all ascendency, and helps us to
understand how persons have power over us through some hold upon our
imaginations, and how our personality grows and takes form by divining
the appearance of our present self to other minds.
So long as a character is open and capable of growth it retains a
corresponding impressibility, which is not weakness unless it swamps the
assimilating and organizing faculty. I know men whose careers are a
proof of stable and aggressive character who have an almost feminine
sensitiveness regarding their seeming to others. Indeed, if one sees a
man whose attitude toward others is always assertive, never receptive,
he may be confident that man will never go far, because he will never
learn much. In character, as in every phase of life, health requires a
just union of stability with plasticity.
There is a vague excitement of the social self more general than any
particular emotion or sentiment. Thus the mere presence of people, a
“sense of other persons,” as Professor Baldwin says, and an awareness of
their observation, often causes a vague discomfort, doubt, and tension.
One feels that there is a social image of himself lurking about, and not
knowing what it is he is obscurely alarmed. Many people, perhaps most,
feel more or less agitation and embarrassment under the observation of
strangers, and for some even sitting in the same room with unfamiliar or
uncongenial people is harassing and exhausting. It is well known, for
instance, that a visit from a stranger would often cost Darwin his
night’s sleep, and many similar examples could be collected from the
records of men of letters. At this point, however, it is evident that we
approach the borders of mental pathology.
Possibly some will think that I exaggerate the importance of social
self-feeling by taking persons and periods of life that are abnormally
sensitive. But I believe that with all normal and human people it
remains, in one form or another, the mainspring of endeavor and a chief
interest of the imagination throughout life. As is the case with other
feelings, we do not think much of it so long as it is moderately and
regularly gratified. Many people of balanced mind and congenial activity
scarcely know that they care what others think of them, and will deny,
perhaps with indignation, that such care is an important factor in what
they are and do. But this is illusion. If failure or disgrace arrives,
if one suddenly finds that the faces of men show coldness or contempt
instead of the kindliness and deference that he is used to, he will
perceive from the shock, the fear, the sense of being outcast and
helpless, that he was living in the minds of others without knowing it,
just as we daily walk the solid ground without thinking how it bears us
up. This fact is so familiar in literature, especially in modern novels,
that it ought to be obvious enough. The works of George Eliot are
particularly strong in the exposition of it. In most of her novels there
is some character like Mr. Bulstrode in “Middlemarch” or Mr. Jermyn in
“Felix Holt,” whose respectable and long-established social image of
himself is shattered by the coming to light of hidden truth.
It is true, however, that the attempt to describe the social self and to
analyze the mental processes that enter into it almost unavoidably makes
it appear more reflective and “self-conscious” than it usually is. Thus
while some readers will be able to discover in themselves a quite
definite and deliberate contemplation of the reflected self, others will
perhaps find nothing but a sympathetic impulse, so simple that it can
hardly be made the object of distinct thought. Many people whose
behavior shows that their idea of themselves is largely caught from the
persons they are with, are yet quite innocent of any intentional posing;
it is a matter of subconscious impulse or mere suggestion. The self of
very sensitive but non-reflective minds is of this character.
CHAPTER VI
THE SOCIAL SELF—2. VARIOUS PHASES OF “I”
EGOTISM AND SELFISHNESS—THE USE OF “I” IN LITERATURE AND
CONVERSATION—INTENSE SELF-FEELING NECESSARY TO PRODUCTIVITY—OTHER
PHASES OF THE SOCIAL SELF—PRIDE _versus_ VANITY—SELF-RESPECT,
HONOR, SELF-REVERENCE—HUMILITY—MALADIES OF THE SOCIAL
SELF—WITHDRAWAL—SELF-TRANSFORMATION—PHASES OF THE SELF CAUSED BY
INCONGRUITY BETWEEN THE PERSON AND HIS SURROUNDINGS.
If self and the self-seeking that springs from it are healthy and
respectable traits of human nature, then what are those things which we
call egotism and selfishness,[53] and which are so commonly regarded as
objectionable? The answer to this appears to be that it is not
self-assertion as such that we stigmatize by these names, but the
assertion of a kind or phase of self that is obnoxious to us. So long as
we agree with a man’s thoughts and aims we do not think of him as
selfish or egotistical, however urgently he may assert them; but so soon
as we cease to agree, while he continues persistent and perhaps
intrusive, we are likely to say hard things about him. It is at bottom a
matter of moral judgment, not to be comprised in any simple definition,
but to be determined by conscience after the whole situation is taken
into account. In this regard it is essentially one with the more general
question of misconduct or personal badness. There is no distinct line
between the behavior which we mildly censure as selfish and that which
we call wicked or criminal; it is only a matter of degree.
It is quite apparent that mere self-assertion is not looked upon as
selfishness. There is nothing more respected—and even liked—than a
persistent and successful pursuit of one’s peculiar aims, so long as
this is done within the accepted limits of fairness and consideration
for others. Thus one who has acquired ten millions must have expressed
his appropriative instinct with much energy and constancy, but
reasonable people do not conclude that he is selfish unless it appears
that he has ignored social sentiments by which he should have been
guided. If he has been dishonest, mean, hard, or the like, they will
condemn him.
The men we admire most, including those we look upon as peculiarly good,
are invariably men of notable self-assertion. Thus Martin Luther, to
take a conspicuous instance, was a man of the most intense self-feeling,
resentful of opposition, dogmatic, with “an absolute confidence in the
infallibility, practically speaking, of his own judgment.” This is a
trait belonging to nearly all great leaders, and a main cause of their
success. That which distinguishes Luther from the vulgarly ambitious and
aggressive people we know is not the quality of his self-feeling, but
the fact that it was identified in his imagination and endeavors with
sentiments and purposes that we look upon as noble, progressive, or
right. No one could be more ambitious than he was, or more determined to
secure the social aggrandizement of his self; but in his case the self
for which he was ambitious and resentful consisted largely of certain
convictions regarding justification by faith, the sacrilege of the sale
of indulgences, and, more generally, of an enfranchising spirit and mode
of thought fit to awaken and lead the aspiration of the time.
It is evident enough that in this respect Luther is typical of
aggressive reformers in our own and every other time. Does not every
efficient clergyman, philanthropist, or teacher become such by
identifying some worthy object with a vigorous self-feeling? Is it ever
really possible to separate the feeling for the cause from the feeling
that it is _my_ cause? I doubt whether it is. Some of the greatest and
purest founders and propagators of religion have been among the greatest
egotists in the sense that they openly identified the idea of good with
the idea of self, and spoke of the two interchangeably. And I cannot
think of any strong man I have known, however good, who does not seem to
me to have had intense self-feeling about his cherished affair; though
if his affair was a large and helpful one no one would call him selfish.
Since the judgment that a man is or is not selfish is a question of
sympathies, it naturally follows that people easily disagree regarding
it, their views depending much upon their temperaments and habits of
thought. There are probably few energetic persons who do not make an
impression of egotism upon some of their acquaintances; and, on the
other hand, how many there are whose selfishness seems obvious to most
people, but is not apparent to their wives, sisters and mothers. In so
far as our self is identified with that of another it is, of course,
unlikely that the aims of the latter should be obnoxious to us.
If we should question many persons as to why they thought this or that
man selfish, a common answer would probably be, “He does not consider
other people.” What this means is that he is inappreciative of the
social situation as we see it; that the situation does not awaken in him
the same personal sentiments that it does in us, and so his action
wounds those sentiments. Thus the commonest and most obvious form of
selfishness is perhaps the failure to subordinate sensual impulses to
social feeling, and this, of course, results from the apathy of the
imaginative impulses that ought to effect this subordination. It would
usually be impossible for a man to help himself to the best pieces on
the platter if he conceived the disgust and resentment which he excites.
And though this is a very gross and palpable sort of selfishness, it is
analogous in nature to the finer kinds. A fine-grained, subtle Egoist,
such as is portrayed in George Meredith’s novel of that name, or such as
Isabel’s husband in Henry James’s “Portrait of a Lady,” has delicate
perceptions in certain directions, but along with these there is some
essential narrowness or vulgarity of imagination which prevents him from
grasping what we feel to be the true social situation, and having the
sentiments that should respond to it. The æsthetic refinement of Osmond
which so impresses Isabel before her marriage turns out to be compatible
with a general smallness of mind. He is “not a good fellow,” as Ralph
remarks, and incapable of comprehending her or her friends.
A lack of tact in face-to-face intercourse very commonly gives an
impression of egotism, even when it is a superficial trait not really
expressive of an unsympathetic character. Thus there are persons who in
the simplest conversation do not seem to forget themselves, and enter
frankly and disinterestedly into the subject, but are felt to be always
preoccupied with the thought of the impression they are making,
imagining praise or depreciation, and usually posing a little to avoid
the one or gain the other. Such people are uneasy, and make others so;
no relaxation is possible in their company, because they never come
altogether out into open and common ground, but are always keeping back
something. It is not so much that they have self-feeling as that it is
clandestine and furtive, giving one a sense of insecurity. Sometimes
they are aware of this lack of frankness, and try to offset it by
reckless confessions, but this only shows their self-consciousness in
another and hardly more agreeable aspect. Perhaps the only cure for this
sort of egotism is to cherish very high and difficult ambitions, and so
drain off the superabundance of self-feeling from these petty channels.
People who are doing really important things usually appear simple and
unaffected in conversation, largely because their selves are healthfully
employed elsewhere.
One who has tact always sees far enough into the state of mind of the
person with whom he is conversing to adapt himself to it and to seem, at
least, sympathetic; he is sure to feel the situation. But if you tread
upon the other person’s toes, talk about yourself when he is not
interested in that subject, and, in general, show yourself out of touch
with his mind, he very naturally finds you disagreeable. And behavior
analogous to this in the more enduring relations of life gives rise to a
similar judgment.
So far as there is any agreement in judgments regarding selfishness it
arises from common standards of right, fairness, and courtesy which all
thoughtful minds work out from their experience, and which represent
what the general good requires. The selfish man is one in whose self, or
in whose style of asserting it, is something that falls below these
standards. He is a transgressor of fair play and the rules of the game,
an outlaw with whom no one ought to sympathize, but against whom all
should unite for the general good.
It is the unhealthy or egotistical self that is usually meant by the
word self when used in moral discussions; it is this that people need to
get away from, both for their own good and that of the community. When
we speak of getting out of one’s “self” we commonly mean _any line of
thought with which one tends to be unduly preoccupied_; so that to
escape from it is indeed a kind of salvation.
There is perhaps no sort of self more subject to dangerous egotism than
that which deludes itself with the notion that it is not a self at all,
but something else. It is well to beware of persons who believe that the
cause, the mission, the philanthropy, the hero, or whatever it may be
that they strive for, is outside of themselves, so that they feel a
certain irresponsibility, and are likely to do things which they would
recognize as wrong if done in behalf of an acknowledged self. Just as
the Spanish armies in the Netherlands held that their indulgence in
murder, torture, and brutal lust was sanctified by the supposed holy
character of their mission, so in our own time the name of religion,
science, patriotism, or charity sometimes enables people to indulge
comfortably in browbeating, intrusion, slander, dishonesty, and the
like. _Every cherished idea is a self_: and though it appear to the
individual, or to a class, or to a whole nation, worthy to swallow up
all other selves, it is subject to the same need of discipline under
rules of justice and decency as any other. It is healthy for everyone to
understand that he is, and will remain, a self-seeker, and that if he
gets out of one self he is sure to form another which may stand in equal
need of control.
Selfishness as a mental trait is always some sort of narrowness,
littleness or defect; an inadequacy of imagination. The perfectly
balanced and vigorous mind can hardly be selfish, because it cannot be
oblivious to any important social situation, either in immediate
intercourse or in more permanent relations; it must always tend to be
sympathetic, fair, and just, because it possesses that breadth and unity
of view of which these qualities are the natural expression. To lack
them is to be not altogether social and human, and may be regarded as
the beginning of degeneracy. Egotism is then not something additional to
ordinary human nature, as the common way of speaking suggests, but
rather a lack. The egotist is not more than a man, but less than a man;
and as regards personal power he is as a rule the weaker for his
egotism. The very fact that he has a bad name shows that the world is
against him, and that he is contending against odds. The success of
selfishness attracts attention and exaggeration because it is hateful to
us; but the really strong generally work within the prevalent standards
of justice and courtesy, and so escape condemnation.
There is infinite variety in egotism; but an important division may be
based on the greater or less stability of the egotists’ characters.
According to this we may divide them into those of the unstable type and
those of the rigid type. Extreme instability is always selfish; the very
weak cannot be otherwise, because they lack both the deep sympathy that
enables people to penetrate the lives of others, and the consistency and
self-control necessary to make sympathy effective if they had it. Their
superficial and fleeting impulses are as likely to work harm as good and
cannot be trusted to bring forth any sound fruit. If they are amiable at
times they are sure to be harsh, cold, or violent at other times; there
is no justice, no solid good or worth in them. The sort of people I have
in mind are, for instance, such as in times of affliction go about
weeping and wringing their hands to the neglect of their duty to aid and
comfort the survivors, possibly taking credit for the tenderness of
their hearts.
The other sort of egotism, not sharply distinguished from this in all
cases, belongs to people who have stability of mind and conduct, but
still without breadth and richness of sympathy, so that their aims and
sentiments are inadequate to the life around them—narrow, hard, mean,
self-satisfied, or sensual. This I would call the rigid type of egotism
because the essence of it is an arrest of sympathetic development and an
ossification as it were of what should be a plastic and growing part of
thought. Something of this sort is perhaps what is most commonly meant
by the word, and everyone can think of harsh, gross, grasping, cunning,
or self-complacent traits to which he would apply it. The self, to be
healthy or to be tolerable to other selves, must be ever moving on,
breaking loose from lower habits, walking hand-in-hand with sympathy and
aspiration. If it stops too long anywhere it becomes stagnant and
diseased, odious to other minds and harmful to the mind it inhabits. The
men that satisfy the imagination are chastened men; large, human,
inclusive, feeling the breadth of the world. It is impossible to think
of Shakespeare as arrogant, vain, or sensual; and if some, like Dante,
had an exigent ego, they succeeded in transforming it into higher and
higher forms.
Selfishness of the stable or rigid sort is as a rule more bitterly
resented than the more fickle variety, chiefly, no doubt, because,
having more continuity and purpose, it is more formidable.
One who accepts the idea of self, and of personality in general, already
set forth, will agree that what is ordinarily called egotism cannot
properly be regarded as the opposite of “altruism,” or of any word
implying the self-and-other classification of impulses. No clear or
useful idea of selfishness can be reached on the basis of this
classification, which, as previously stated, seems to me fictitious. It
misrepresents the mental situation, and so tends to confuse thought. The
mind has not, in fact, two sets of motives to choose from, the
self-motives and the other-motives, the latter of which stand for the
higher course, but has the far more difficult task of achieving a higher
life by gradually discriminating and organizing a great variety of
motives not easily divisible into moral groups. The proper antithesis of
selfishness is right, justice, breadth, magnanimity, or something of
that sort; something opposite to the narrowness of feeling and action in
which selfishness essentially consists. It is a matter of more or less
symmetry and stature, like the contrast between a gnarled and stunted
tree and one of ample growth.
The ideas denoted by such phrases as _my_ friend, _my_ country, _my_
duty, and so on, are just the ones that stand for broad or “unselfish”
impulses, and yet they are self-ideas as shown by the first-personal
pronoun. In the expression “_my duty_” we have in six letters a
refutation of that way of thinking which makes right the opposite of
self. That it stands for the right all will admit; and yet no one can
pronounce it meaningly without perceiving that it is charged with
intense self-feeling.
It is always vain to try to separate the outer aspect of a motive, the
other people, the cause or the like, which we think of as external, from
the private or self aspect, which we think of as internal. The apparent
separation is purely illusive. It is surely a very simple truth that
what makes us act in an unselfish or devoted manner is always some sort
of sentiment in our own minds, and if we cherish this sentiment
intimately it is a part of ourselves. We develop the inner life by
outwardly directed thought and action, relating mostly to other persons,
to causes, and the like. Is there no difference, then, it may be asked,
between doing a kind act to please someone else and doing it to please
one’s self? I should say regarding this that while it is obvious, if one
thinks of it, that pleasing another can exist for me only as a pleasant
feeling in my own mind, which is the motive of my action, there is a
difference in the meaning of these expressions as commonly used.
Pleasing one’s self ordinarily means that we act from some comparatively
narrow sentiment not involving penetrating sympathy. Thus, if one gives
Christmas presents to make a good impression or from a sense of
propriety, he might be said to do it to please himself, while if he
really imagined the pleasure the gift would bring to the recipient he
would do it to please the latter. But it is clear enough that his own
pleasure might be quite as great in the second case. Again, sometimes we
do things “to please others” which we declare are painful to ourselves.
But this, of course, means merely that there are conflicting impulses in
our own minds, some of which are sacrificed to others. The satisfaction,
or whatever you choose to call it, that one gets when he prefers his
duty to some other course is just as much his own as any pleasure he
renounces. No self-sacrifice is admirable that is not the choice of a
higher or larger aspect of the self over a lower or partial aspect. If a
man’s act is really self-sacrifice, that is, not properly _his own_, he
would better not do it.
Some opponent of Darwin attempted to convict him of egotism by counting
the number of times that the pronoun “I” appears upon the first few
pages of the “Origin of Species.” He was able to find a great many, and
to cause Darwin, who was as modest a man as ever lived, to feel abashed
at the showing; but it is doubtful if he convinced any reader of the
book of the truth of the assertion. In fact, although the dictionary
defines egotism as “the habit or practice of thinking and talking much
of one’s self,” the use of the first-personal pronoun is hardly the
essence of the matter. This use is always in some degree a
self-assertion, but it has a disagreeable or egotistical effect only in
so far as the self asserted is repellent to us. Even Montaigne, who says
“I” on every other line, and whose avowed purpose is to display himself
at large and in all possible detail, does not, it seems to me, really
make an impression of egotism upon the congenial reader, because he
contrives to make his self so interesting in every aspect that the more
we are reminded of it the better we are pleased; and there is good sense
in his doctrine that “not to speak roundly of a man’s self implies some
lack of courage; a firm and lofty judgment, and that judges soundly and
surely, makes use of his own example upon all occasions, as well as
those of others.” A person will not displease sensible people by saying
“I” so long as the self thus asserted stands for something, is a
pertinent, significant “I,” and not merely a random self-intrusion. We
are not displeased to see an athlete roll up his sleeves and show his
muscles, although if a man of only ordinary development did so it would
seem an impertinence; nor do we think less of Rembrandt for painting his
own portrait every few months. The “I” should be functional, and so long
as a man is functioning acceptably there can be no objection to his
using it.
Indeed, it is a common remark that the most delightful companions, or
authors of books, are often the most egotistical in the sense that they
are always talking about themselves. The reason for this is that if the
“I” is interesting and agreeable we adopt it for the time being and make
it our own. Then, being on the inside as it were, it is our own self
that is so expansive and happy. We adopt Montaigne, or Lamb, or
Thackeray, or Stevenson, or Whitman, or Thoreau, and think of their
words as our words. Thus even extravagant self-assertion, if the reader
can only be led to enter into it, may be congenial. There may be quite
as much egotism in the suppression of “I” as in the use of it, and a
forced and obvious avoidance of this pronoun often gives a disagreeable
feeling of the writer’s self-consciousness. In short, egotism is a
matter of character, not of forms of language, and if we are egotists
the fact will out in spite of any conventional rules of decorum that we
may follow.
It is possible to maintain that “I” is a more modest pronoun than “one,”
by which some writers seem to wish to displace it. If a man says “I
think,” he speaks only for himself, while if he says “one thinks,” he
insinuates that the opinion advanced is a general or normal view. To say
“one does not like this picture,” is a more deadly attack upon it than
to say “I do not like it.”
It would seem also that more freedom of self-expression is appropriate
to a book than to ordinary intercourse, because people are not obliged
to read books, and the author has a right to assume that his readers
are, in a general way, sympathetic with that phase of his personality
that he is trying to express. If we do not sympathize why do we continue
to read? We may, however, find fault with him if he departs from that
which it is the proper function of the book to assert, and intrudes a
weak and irrelevant “I” in which he has no reason to suppose us
interested. I presume we can all think of books that might apparently be
improved by going through them and striking out passages in which the
author has incontinently expressed an aspect of himself that has no
proper place in the work.
In every higher kind of production a person needs to understand and
believe in himself—the more thoroughly the better. It is precisely that
in him which he feels to be worthy and at the same time peculiar—the
characteristic—that it is his duty to produce, communicate, and realize;
and he cannot possess this, cannot differentiate it, cleanse it from
impurities, consolidate and organize it, except through prolonged and
interested self-contemplation. Only this can enable him to free himself
from the imitative on the one hand and the whimsical on the other, and
to stand forth without shame or arrogance for what he truly is.
Consequently every productive mind must have intense self-feeling; it
must delight to contemplate the characteristic, to gloat over it if you
please, and in this way learn to define, arrange, and express it. If one
will take up a work of literary art like, say, the “Sentimental
Journey,” he will see that a main source of the charm of it is in the
writer’s assured and contented familiarity with himself. A man who
writes like that has delighted to brood over his thoughts, jealously
excluding everything not wholly congenial to him, and gradually working
out an adequate expression. And the superiority, or at least the
difference, in tone and manner of the earlier English literature as
compared with that of the nineteenth century is apparently connected
with a more assured and reposeful self-possession on the part of the
older writers, made possible, no doubt, by a less urgent general life.
The same fact of self-intensity goes with notable production in all
sorts of literature, in every art, in statesmanship, philanthropy,
religion; in all kinds of career.
Who does not feel at times what Goethe calls the joy of dwelling in
one’s self, of surrounding himself with the fruits of his own mind, with
things he has made, perhaps, books he has chosen, his familiar clothes
and possessions of all sorts, with his wife, children, and old friends,
and with his own thoughts, which some, like Robert Louis Stevenson,
confess to a love of re-reading in books, letters, or diaries? At times
even conscientious people, perhaps, look kindly at their own faults,
deficiencies, and mannerisms, precisely as they would on those of a
familiar friend. Without self-love in some such sense as this any solid
and genial growth of character and accomplishment is hardly possible.
“Whatever any man has to effect must emanate from him like a second
self; and how could this be possible were not his first self entirely
pervaded by it?” Nor is it opposed to the love of others. “Indeed,” says
Mr. Stevenson, “he who loves himself, not in idle vanity, but with a
plenitude of knowledge, is the best equipped of all to love his
neighbors.”
Self-love, Shakespeare says, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting;
and many serious varieties of the latter might be specified. There is,
for instance, a culpable sort of self-dreading cowardice, not at all
uncommon with sensitive people, which shrinks from developing and
asserting a just “I” because of the stress of self-feeling—of vanity,
uncertainty, and mortification—which is foreseen and shunned. If one is
liable to these sentiments the proper course is to bear with them as
with other disturbing conditions, rather than to allow them to stand in
the way of what, after all, one is born to do. “Know your own bone,”
says Thoreau, “gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”[54]
“If I am not I, who will be?”
A tendency to secretiveness very often goes with this self-cherishing.
Goethe was as amorous and jealous about his unpublished works, in some
cases, as the master of a seraglio; fostering them for years, and
sometimes not telling his closest friends of their existence. His
Eugenie, “meine Liebling Eugenie,” as he calls it, was vulgarized and
ruined for him by his fatal mistake in publishing the first part before
the whole was complete. It would not be difficult to show that the same
cherishing of favorite and peculiar ideas is found also in painters,
sculptors, and effective persons of every sort. As was suggested in an
earlier chapter, this secretiveness has a social reference, and few
works of art could be carried through if the artist was convinced they
would have no value in the eyes of anyone else. He hides his work that
he may purify and perfect it, thus making it at once more wholly and
delightfully his own and also more valuable to the world in the end. As
soon as the painter exhibits his picture he loses it, in a sense; his
system of ideas about it becomes more or less confused and disorganized
by the inrush of impressions arising from a sense of what other people
think of it; it is no longer the perfect and intimate thing which his
thought cherished, but has become somewhat crude, vulgar, and
disgusting, so that if he is sensitive he may wish never to look upon it
again. This, I take it, is why Goethe could not finish Eugenie, and why
Guignet, a French painter, of whom Hamerton speaks, used to alter or
throw away a painting that anyone by chance saw upon the easel. Likewise
it was in order more perfectly to know and express himself—in his book
called “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”—that Thoreau retired
to Walden Pond, and it was doubtless with the same view that Descartes
quitted Paris and dwelt for eight years in Holland, concealing even his
place of residence. The Self, like a child, is not likely to hold its
own in the world unless it has had a mature prenatal development.
It may be said, perhaps, that these views contradict a well-known fact,
namely, that we do our best work when we are not self-conscious, not
thinking about effect, but filled with disinterested and impersonal
passion. Such truth as there is in this idea is, however, in no way
inconsistent with what has just been said. It is true that a certain
abandonment and self-forgetting is often characteristic of high thought
and noble action. But there would be no production, no high thought or
noble action, if we relied entirely upon these impassioned moments
without preparing ourselves to have them. It is only as we have
self-consciousness that we can be aware of those special tendencies
which we assert in production, or can learn how to express them, or even
have the desire to do so. The moment of insight would be impossible
without the persistent self-conscious endeavor that preceded it, nor has
enthusiastic action any value without a similar discipline.
It is true, also, that in sensitive persons self-feeling often reaches a
pitch of irritability that impedes production, or vulgarizes it through
too great deference to opinion. But this is a matter of the control and
discipline of particular aspects of the self rather than of its general
tendency. When undisciplined this sort of feeling may be futile or
harmful, just as fear, whose function is to cause us to avoid danger,
may defeat its own aim through excessive and untimely operation, and
anger may so excite us that we lose the power of inflicting injury.
If the people of our time and country are peculiarly selfish, as is
sometimes alleged, it is certainly not because a too rigid or clearly
differentiated type of self-consciousness is general among us. On the
contrary, our most characteristic fault is perhaps a certain
superficiality and vagueness of character and aims; and this seems to
spring from a lack of collectedness and self-definition, which in turn
is connected with the too eager mode of life common among us. I doubt,
however, whether egotism, which is essentially a falling short of moral
standards, can be said to be more prevalent in one age than another.
In Mr. Roget’s “Thesaurus” may be found about six pages devoted to words
denoting “Extrinsic personal affections, or personal affections derived
from the opinions or feelings of others,” an expression which seems to
mean nearly the same as is here meant by social self-feeling of the
reflected or looking-glass sort. Although the compiler fishes with a
wide net and brings in much that seems hardly to belong here, the number
of words in common use indicating different varieties of this sort of
feeling is surprising and suggestive. One cannot but think, What insight
and what happy boldness of invention went to the devising of all these
terms! What a psychologist is language, that thus labels and treasures
up so many subtle aspects of the human mind!
We may profitably distinguish, as others have done, two general
attitudes—the aggressive or self-assertive and the shrinking or humble.
The first indicates that one thinks favorably of himself and tries to
impose that favorable thought on others; the second, that he accepts and
yields to a depreciating reflection of himself, and feels accordingly
diminished and abased. Pride would, of course, be an example of the
first way of feeling and acting, humility of the second.
But there are many phases of the aggressive self, and these, again,
might be classified something as follows: first, in response to imagined
approval we have pride, vanity, or self-respect; second, in response to
imagined censure we have various sorts of resentment; and the humble
self might be treated in a similar manner.
Pride and vanity are names which are commonly applied only to forms of
self-approval that strike us as disagreeable or egotistical; but they
may be used in a somewhat larger sense to indicate simply a more or less
stable attitude of the social self toward the world in which it is
reflected; the distinction being of the same sort as that between
unstable and rigid egotism already suggested.
These differences in stability, which are of great importance in the
study of social personality, are perhaps connected with the contrast
between the more receptive and the more constructive types of mind.
Although in the best minds reception and construction are harmoniously
united, and although it may be shown that they are in a measure mutually
dependent, so that neither can be perfect without the other, yet as a
rule they are not symmetrically developed, and this lack of symmetry
corresponds to divergences of personal character. Minds of one sort are,
so to speak, endogenous or ingrowing in their natural bent, while those
of another are exogenous or outgrowing; that is to say, those of the
former kind have a relatively strong turn for working up old material,
as compared with that for taking in new; cogitation is more pleasant to
them than observation; they prefer the sweeping and garnishing of their
house to the confusion of entertaining visitors; while of the other sort
the opposite of this may be said. Now, the tendency of the endogenous or
inward activities is to secure unity and stability of thought and
character at the possible expense of openness and adaptability; because
the energy goes chiefly into systematization, and in attaining this the
mind is pretty sure to limit its new impressions to those that do not
disturb too much that unity and system it loves so well. These traits
are, of course, manifested in the person’s relation to others. The
friends he has “and their acceptance tried” he grapples to his soul with
hooks of steel, but is likely to be unsympathetic and hard toward
influences of a novel character. On the other hand, the exogenous or
outgrowing mind, more active near the periphery than toward the centre,
is open to all sorts of impressions, eagerly taking in new material,
which is likely never to get much arrangement; caring less for the order
of the house than that it should be full of guests, quickly responsive
to personal influences, but lacking that depth and tenacity of sympathy
that the other sort of mind shows with people congenial with itself.
Pride,[55] then, is the form social self-approval takes in the more
rigid or self-sufficient sort of minds; the person who feels it is
assured that he stands well with others whose opinion he cares for, and
does not imagine any humiliating image of himself, but carries his
mental and social stability to such a degree that it is likely to narrow
his soul by warding off the enlivening pricks of doubt and shame. By no
means independent of the world, it is, after all, distinctly a social
sentiment, and gets its standards ultimately from social custom and
opinion. But the proud man is not _immediately_ dependent upon what
others think; he has worked over his reflected self in his mind until it
is a steadfast portion of his thought, an idea and conviction apart, in
some measure, from its external origin. Hence this sentiment requires
time for its development and flourishes in mature age rather than in the
open and growing period of youth. A man who is proud of his rank, his
social position, his professional eminence, his benevolence, or his
integrity, is in the habit of contemplating daily an agreeable and
little changing image of himself as he believes he appears in the eyes
of the world. This image is probably distorted, since pride deceives by
a narrowing of the imagination, but it is stable, and because it is so,
because he feels sure of it, he is not disturbed by any passing breath
of blame. If he is aware of such a thing at all he dismisses it as a
vagary of no importance, feeling the best judgment of the world to be
securely in his favor. If he should ever lose this conviction, if some
catastrophe should shatter the image, he would be a broken man, and, if
far gone in years, would perhaps not raise his head again.
In a sense pride is strength; that is, it implies a stable and
consistent character which can be counted on; it will do its work
without watching, and be honorable in its dealings, according to its
cherished standards; it has always a vigorous, though narrow,
conscience. On the other hand, it stunts a man’s growth by closing his
mind to progressive influences, and so in the long run may be a source
of weakness. Burke said, I believe, that no man ever had a point of
pride that was not injurious to him; and perhaps this was what he meant.
Pride also causes, as a rule, a deeper animosity on the part of others
than vanity; it may be hated but hardly despised; yet many would rather
live with it than with vanity, because, after all, one knows where to
find it, and so can adapt himself to it. The other is so whimsical that
it is impossible to foresee what turn it will take next.
Language seldom distinguishes clearly between a way of feeling and its
visible expression; and so the word vanity, which means primarily
emptiness, indicates either a weak or hollow appearance of worth put on
in the endeavor to impress others, or the state of feeling that goes
with it. It is the form social self-approval naturally takes in a
somewhat unstable mind, not sure of its image. The vain man, in his more
confident moments, sees a delightful reflection of himself, but knowing
that it is transient, he is afraid it will change. He has not fixed it,
as the proud man has, by incorporation with a stable habit of thought,
but, being immediately dependent for it upon others, is at their mercy
and very vulnerable, living in the frailest of glass houses which may be
shattered at any moment; and, in fact, this catastrophe happens so often
that he gets somewhat used to it and soon recovers from it. While the
image which the proud person contemplates is fairly consistent, and,
though distorted, has a solid basis in his character, so that he will
not accept praise for qualities he does not believe himself to possess;
vanity has no stable idea of itself and will swallow any shining bait.
The person will gloat now on one pleasing reflection of himself, now on
another, trying to mimic each in its turn, and becoming, so far as he
can, what any flatterer says he is, or what any approving person seems
to think he is. It is characteristic of him to be so taken up with his
own image in the other’s mind that he is hypnotized by it, as it were,
and sees it magnified, distorted, and out of its true relation to the
other contents of that mind. He does not see, as so often happens, that
he is being managed and made a fool of; he “gives himself away”—fatuity
being of the essence of vanity. On the other hand, and for the same
reason, a vain person is frequently tortured by groundless imaginings
that someone has misunderstood him, slighted him, insulted him, or
otherwise mistreated his social effigy.
Of course the immediate result of vanity is weakness, as that of pride
is strength; but on a wider view there is something to be said for it.
Goethe exclaims in Wilhelm Meister, “Would to heaven all men were vain!
that is were vain with clear perception, with moderation, and in a
proper sense: we should then, in the cultivated world, have happy times
of it. Women, it is told us, are vain from the very cradle; yet does it
not become them? do they not please us the more? How can a youth form
himself if he is not vain? An empty, hollow nature will, by this means,
at least contrive to give itself an outward show, and a proper man will
soon train himself from the outside inwards.”[56] That is to say,
vanity, in moderation, may indicate an openness, a sensibility, a
teachability, that is a good augury of growth. In youth, at least, it is
much preferable to pride.
It is the obnoxious, or in some way conspicuous, manifestations of
self-feeling that are likely to receive special names. Accordingly,
there are many words and phrases for different aspects of pride and
vanity, while a moderate and balanced self-respect does not attract
nomenclature. One who has this is more open and flexible in feeling and
behavior than one who is proud; the image is not stereotyped, he is
subject to humility; while at the same time he does not show the
fluttering anxiety about his appearance that goes with vanity, but has
stable ways of thinking about the image, as about other matters, and
cannot be upset by passing phases of praise or blame. In fact, the
healthy life of the self requires the same co-operation of continuity
with change that marks normal development everywhere; there must be
variability, openness, freedom, on a basis of organization: too rigid
organization meaning fixity and death, and the lack of it weakness or
anarchy. The self-respecting man values others’ judgments and occupies
his mind with them a great deal, but he keeps his head, he discriminates
and selects, considers all suggestions with a view to his character, and
will not submit to influences not in the line of his development.
Because he conceives his self as a stable and continuing whole he always
feels the need to _be_, and cannot be guilty of that separation between
being and seeming that constitutes affectation. For instance, a
self-respecting scholar, deferent to the standards set by the opinions
of others, might wish to have read all the books on a certain subject,
and feel somewhat ashamed not to have done so, but he could not affect
to have read them when he had not. The pain of breaking the unity of his
thought, of disfiguring his picture of himself as a sincere and
consistent man, would overbalance any gratification he might have in the
imagined approval of his thoroughness. If he were vain he would possibly
affect to have read the books; while if arrogant he might feel no
compunctions for avowed ignorance of them.
Common-sense approves a just mingling of deference and self-poise in the
attitude of one man toward others: while the unyielding are certainly
repellent, the too deferent are nearly as much so; they are tiresome and
even disgusting, because they seem flimsy and unreal, and do not give
that sense of contact with something substantial and interesting that we
look for.
“——you have missed
The manhood that should yours resist,
Its complement.”
We like the manner of a person who appears interested in what we say and
do, and not indifferent to our opinion, but has at the same time an
evident reserve of stability and independence. It is much the same with
a writer; we require of him a bold and determined statement of his own
special view—that is what he is here for—and yet, with this, an air of
hospitality, and an appreciation that he is after all only a small part
of a large world.
With some, then, the self-image is an imitative sketch in the supposed
style of the last person they have talked to; with others, it is a
rigid, traditional thing, a lifeless repetition that has lost all
relation to the forces that originally moulded it, like the Byzantine
madonnas before the time of Cimabue; with others again it is a true work
of art in which individual tendencies and the influence of masters
mingle in a harmonious whole; but all of us have it, unless we are so
deficient in imagination as to be less than human. When we speak of a
person as independent of opinion, or self-sufficient, we can only mean
that, being of a constructive and stable character, he does not have to
recur every day to the visible presence of his approvers, but can supply
their places by imagination, can hold on to some influences and reject
others, choose his leaders, individualize his conformity; and so work
out a characteristic and fairly consistent career. The self must be
built up by the aid of social suggestions, just as all higher thought
is.
Honor is a finer kind of self-respect. It is used to mean either
something one feels regarding himself, or something that other people
think and feel regarding him, and so illustrates by the accepted use of
language the fact that the private and social aspects of self are
inseparable. One’s honor, as he feels it, and his honor in the sense of
honorable repute, as he conceives it to exist in the minds of others
whose opinion he cares for, are two aspects of the same thing. No one
can permanently maintain a standard of honor in his own mind if he does
not conceive of some other mind or minds as sharing and corroborating
this standard. If his immediate environment is degrading he may have
resort to books or memory in order that his imagination may construct a
better environment of nobler people to sustain his standard; but if he
cannot do this it is sure to fall. Sentiments of higher good or right,
like other sentiments, find source and renewal in intercourse. On the
other hand, we cannot separate the idea of honor from that of a sincere
and stable private character. We cannot form a habit of thought about
what is admirable, though it be derived from others, without creating a
mental standard. A healthy mind cannot strive for outward honor without,
in some measure, developing an inward conscience—training himself from
the outside in, as Goethe says.
It is the result of physiological theories of ethics—certainly not
intended by the authors of those theories—to make the impulses of an
ideal self, like the sentiment of honor, seem far-fetched, extravagant
and irrational. They have to be justified by an elaborate course of
reasoning which does not seem very convincing after all. No such
impression, however, could result from the direct observation of social
life. In point of fact, a man’s honor, as he conceives it, is his self
in its most immediate and potent reality, swaying his conduct without
waiting upon any inquiry into its physiological antecedents. The
preference of honor to life is not at all a romantic exception in human
behavior, but something quite characteristic of man on a really human
level. A despicable or degenerate person may save his body alive at the
expense of honor, and so may almost anyone in moments of panic or other
kind of demoralization, but the typical man, in his place among his
fellows and with his social sentiments about him, will not do so. We
read in history of many peoples conquered because they lacked discipline
and strategy, or because their weapons were inferior, but we seldom read
of any who were really cowardly in the sense that they would not face
death in battle. And the readiness to face death commonly means that the
sentiment of honor dominates the impulses of terror and pain. All over
the ancient world the Roman legions encountered men who shunned death no
more than themselves, but were not so skilful in inflicting it; and in
Mexico and Peru the natives died by thousands in a desperate struggle
against the Spanish arms. The earliest accounts we have of our own
Germanic ancestors show a state of feeling and practice that made
self-preservation, in a material sense, strictly subordinate to honor.
“Death is better for every clansman than coward life,” says Beowulf,[57]
and there seems no doubt whatever that this was a general principle of
action, so that cowardice was a rare phenomenon. In modern life we see
the same subordination of sensation to sentiment among soldiers and in a
hundred other careers involving bodily peril—not as a heroic exception
but as the ordinary practice of plain men. We see it also in the general
readiness to undergo all sorts of sensual pains and privations rather
than cease to be respectable in the eyes of other people. It is well
known, for instance, that among the poor thousands endure cold and
partial starvation rather than lose their self-respect by begging. In
short, it does not seem too favorable a view of mankind to say that
under normal conditions their minds are ruled by the sentiment of
Norfolk:
“Mine honor is my life: both grow in one;
Take honor from me and my life is done.”
If we once grasp the fact that the self is primarily a social, ideal, or
imaginative fact, and not a sensual fact, all this appears quite natural
and not in need of special explanation.
In relation to the highest phases of individuality self-respect becomes
self-reverence, in the sense of Tennyson, when he says:
“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”[58]
or of Goethe when, in the first chapter of the second book of “Wilhelm
Meister’s Wanderjahre,” he names self-reverence—_Ehrfurcht vor sick
selbst_—as the highest of the four reverences taught to youth in his
ideal system of education.[59] Emerson uses self-reliance in a similar
sense, in that memorable essay the note of which is “Trust thyself,
every heart vibrates to that iron string,” and throughout his works.
Self-reverence, as I understand the matter, means reverence for a higher
or ideal self; a real “I,” because it is based on what the individual
actually is, as only he himself can know and appropriate it, but a
better “I” of aspiration rather than attainment; it is simply the best
he can make out of life. Reverence for it implies, as Emerson urges,
resistance to friends and counsellors and to any influence that the mind
honestly rejects as inconsistent with itself; a man must feel that the
final arbiter is within him and not outside of him in some master,
living or dead, as conventional religion, for instance, necessarily
teaches. Nevertheless this highest self is a social self, in that it is
a product of constructive imagination working with the materials which
social experience supplies. Our ideals of personal character are built
up out of thoughts and sentiments developed by intercourse, and very
largely by imagining how our selves would appear in the minds of persons
we look up to. These are not necessarily living persons; anyone that is
at all real, that is imaginable, to us, becomes a possible occasion of
social self-feeling; and idealizing and aspiring persons live largely in
the imagined presence of masters and heroes to whom they refer their own
life for comment and improvement. This is particularly true of youth,
when ideals are forming; later the personal element in these ideals,
having performed its function of suggesting and vivifying them, is
likely to fade out of consciousness and leave only habits and principles
whose social origin is forgotten.
Resentment, the attitude which an aggressive self takes in response to
imagined depreciation, may be regarded as self-feeling with a coloring
of anger; indeed, the relation between self-feeling and particular
emotions like anger and fear is so close that the latter might be looked
upon as simply specialized kinds of the former; it makes little
difference whether we take this view or think of them as distinct, since
such divisions must always be arbitrary. I shall say more of this
sentiment in the next chapter.
If a person conceives his image as depreciated in the mind of another;
and if, instead of maintaining an aggressive attitude and resenting that
depreciation, he yields to it and accepts the image and the judgment
upon it; then he feels and shows something in the way of humility. Here
again we have a great variety of nomenclature, indicating different
shades of humble feeling and behavior, such as shame, confusion,
abasement, humiliation, mortification, meekness, bashfulness,
diffidence, shyness, being out of countenance, abashed or crestfallen,
contrition, compunction, remorse, and so on.
Humility, like self-approval, has forms that consist with a high type of
character and are felt to be praiseworthy, and others that are felt to
be base. There is a sort that goes with vanity and indicates
instability, an excessive and indiscriminate yielding to another’s view
of one’s self. We wish a man to be humble only before what, from his own
characteristic point of view, is truly superior. His humility should
imply self-respect; it should be that attitude of deference which a
stable but growing character takes in the presence of whatever embodies
its ideals. Every outreaching person has masters in whose imagined
presence he drops resistance and becomes like clay in the hands of the
potter, that they may make something better of him. He does this from a
feeling that the master is more himself than he is; there is a receptive
enthusiasm, a sense of new life that swallows up the old self and makes
his ordinary personality appear tedious, base and despicable. Humility
of this sort goes with self-reverence, because a sense of the higher or
ideal self plunges the present and commonplace self into humility. The
man aims at “so high an ideal that he always feels his unworthiness in
his own sight and that of others, though aware of his own desert by the
ordinary standards of his community, country, or generation.”[60] But a
humility that is self-abandonment, a cringing before opinion alien to
one’s self, is felt to be mere cowardice and servility.
Books of the inner life praise and enjoin lowliness, contrition,
repentance, self-abnegation; but it is apparent to all thoughtful
readers that the sort of humility inculcated is quite consistent with
the self-reverence of Goethe or the self-reliance of Emerson—comes,
indeed, to much the same thing. The “Imitatio Christi” is the type of
such teaching, yet it is a manly book, and the earlier part especially
contains exhortations to self-trust worthy of Emerson. “Certa
viriliter,” the writer says, “consuetudo consuetudine vincitur. Si tu
scis homines dimittere, ipsi bene te dimittent tua facta facere.”[61]
The yielding constantly enjoined is either to God—that is, to an ideal
personality developed in one’s own mind—or, if to men, it is a
submission to external rule which is designed to leave the will free for
what are regarded as its higher functions. The whole teaching tends to
the aggrandizement of an ideal but intensely private self, worked out in
solitary meditation—to insure which worldly ambition is to be
renounced—and symbolized as God, conscience, or grace. The just
criticism of the doctrine that Thomas stands for is not that it
depreciates manhood and self-reliance, but that it calls these away from
the worldly activities where they are so much needed, and exercises them
in a region of abstract imagination. No healthy mind can cast out
self-assertion and the idea of personal freedom, however the form of
expression may seem to deny these things, and accordingly the Imitation,
and still more the New Testament, are full of them. Where there is no
self-feeling, no ambition of any sort, there is no efficacy or
significance. To lose the sense of a separate, productive, resisting
self, would be to melt and merge and cease to be.
Healthy, balanced minds, of only medium sensibility, in a congenial
environment and occupied with wholesome activity, keep the middle road
of self-respect and reasonable ambition. They may require no special
effort, no conscious struggle with recalcitrant egotism, to avoid
heart-burning, jealousy, arrogance, anxious running after approval, and
other maladies of the social self. With enough self-feeling to stimulate
and not enough to torment him, with a social circle appreciative but not
flattering, with good health and moderate success, a man may go through
life with very little use for the moral and religious weapons that have
been wrought for the repression of a contumacious self. There are many,
particularly in an active, hopeful, and materially prosperous time like
this, who have little experience of inner conflict and no interest in
the literature and doctrine that relate to it.
But nearly all persons of the finer, more sensitive sort find the social
self at times a source of passion and pain. In so far as a man amounts
to anything, stands for anything, is truly an individual, he has an ego
about which his passions cluster, and to aggrandize which must be a
principal aim with him. But the very fact that the self is the object of
our schemes and endeavors makes it a centre of mental disturbance: its
suggestions are of effort, responsibility, doubt, hope, and fear. Just
as a man cannot enjoy the grass and trees in his own grounds with quite
the peace and freedom that he can those abroad, because they remind him
of improvements that he ought to make and the like; so any part of the
self is, in its nature, likely to be suggestive of exertion rather than
rest. Moreover, it would seem that self-feeling, though pleasant in
normal duration and intensity, is disagreeable in excess, like any other
sort of feeling. One reason why we get tired of ourselves is simply that
we have exhausted our capacity for experiencing with pleasure a certain
kind of emotion.
As we have seen, the self that is most importunate is a reflection,
largely, from the minds of others. This phase of self is related to
character very much as credit is related to the gold and other
securities upon which it rests. It easily and willingly expands, in most
of us, and is liable to sudden, irrational, and grievous collapses. We
live on, cheerful, self-confident, conscious of helping make the world
go round, until in some rude hour we learn that we do not stand so well
as we thought we did, that the image of us is tarnished. Perhaps we do
something, quite naturally, that we find the social order is set
against, or perhaps it is the ordinary course of our life that is not so
well regarded as we supposed. At any rate, we find with a chill of
terror that the world is cold and strange, and that our self-esteem,
self-confidence, and hope, being chiefly founded upon opinions,
attributed to others, go down in the crash. Our reason may tell us that
we are no less worthy than we were before, but dread and doubt do not
permit us to believe it. The sensitive mind will certainly suffer,
because of the instability of opinion. _Cadit cum labili._ As social
beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance
of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it. In the days of
witchcraft it used to be believed that if one person secretly made a
waxen image of another and stuck pins into the image, its counterpart
would suffer tortures, and that if the image was melted the person would
die. This superstition is almost realized in the relation between the
private self and its social reflection. They seem separate but are
darkly united, and what is done to the one is done to the other.
If a person of energetic and fine-strung temperament is neither vain nor
proud, and lives equably without suffering seriously from mortification,
jealousy, and the like; it is because he has in some way learned to
discipline and control his self-feeling, and thus to escape the pains to
which it makes him liable. To effect some such escape has always been a
present and urgent problem with sensitive minds, and the literature of
the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate
passions of the social self. To the commoner and somewhat sluggish sorts
of people these passions are, on the whole, agreeable and beneficent.
Emulation, ambition, honor, even pride and vanity in moderation, belong
to the higher and more imaginative parts of our thought; they awaken us
from sensuality and inspire us with ideal and socially determined
purposes. The doctrine that they are evil could have originated only
with those who felt them so; that is, I take it, with unusually
sensitive spirits, or those whom circumstances denied a normal and
wholesome self-expression. To such the thought of self becomes painful,
not because of any lack of self-feeling; but, quite the reverse,
because, being too sensitive and tender, it becomes overwrought, so that
this thought sets in vibration an emotional chord already strained and
in need of rest. To such minds self-abnegation becomes an ideal, an
ideal of rest, peace and freedom, like green pastures and still waters.
The prophets of the inner life, like Marcus Aurelius, St. Paul, St.
Augustine, Thomas à Kempis, and Pascal, were men distinguished not by
the lack of an aggressive self, but by a success in controlling and
elevating it which makes them the examples of all who undergo a like
struggle with it. If their ego had not been naturally importunate they
would not have been forced to contend with it, and to develop the
tactics of that contention for the edification of times to come.
The social self may be protected either in the negative way, by some
sort of withdrawal from the suggestions that agitate and harass it, or
in the positive way, by contending with them and learning to control and
transform them, so that they are no longer painful; most teachers
inculcating some sort of a combination of these two kinds of tactics.
Physical withdrawal from the presence of men has always been much in
favor with those in search of a calmer, surer life. The passions to be
regulated are sympathetic in origin, awakened by imagination of the
minds of other persons with whom we come in contact. As Contarini
Fleming remarks in Disraeli’s novel, “So soon as I was among men I
desired to influence them.” To retire to the monastery, or the woods, or
the sea, is to escape from the sharp suggestions that spur on ambition;
and even to change from the associates and competitors of our active
life into the company of strangers, or at least of those whose aims and
ambitions are different from ours, has much the same effect. To get away
from one’s working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one’s
self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change. I can
hardly agree with those who imagine that a special instinct of
withdrawal is necessary to explain the prominence of retirement in the
ordinances of religion. People wish to retire from the world because
they are weary, harassed, driven by it, so that they feel that they
cannot recover their equanimity without getting away from it. To the
impressible mind life is a theatre of alarms and contentions, even when
a phlegmatic person can see no cause for agitation—and to such a mind
peace often seems the one thing fair and desirable, so that the cloister
or the forest, or the vessel on the lonesome sea, is the most grateful
object of imagination. The imaginative self, which is, for most
purposes, the real self, may be more battered, wounded and strained by a
striving, ambitious life than the material body could be in a more
visible battle, and its wounds are usually more lasting and draw more
deeply upon the vitality. Mortification, resentment, jealousy, the fear
of disgrace and failure, sometimes even hope and elation, are exhausting
passions; and it is after a severe experience of them that retirement
seems most healing and desirable.
A subtler kind of withdrawal takes place in the imagination alone by
curtailing ambition, by trimming down one’s idea of himself to a measure
that need not fear further diminution. How secure and restful it would
be if one could be consistently and sincerely humble! There is no
sweeter feeling than contrition, self-abnegation, after a course of
alternate conceit and mortification. This also is an established part of
the religious discipline of the mind. Thus we find the following in
Thomas: “Son, now I will teach thee the way of peace and of true
liberty.... Study to do another’s will rather than thine own. Choose
ever to have less rather than more. Seek ever the lower place and to be
subject to all; ever wish and pray that the will of God may be perfectly
done in thee and in all. Behold such a man enters the bounds of peace
and calm.”[62] In other words, lop off the aggressive social self
altogether, renounce the ordinary objects of ambition, accustom yourself
to an humble place in others’ thoughts, and you will be at peace;
because you will have nothing to lose, nothing to fear. No one at all
acquainted with the moralists, pagan or Christian, will need to be more
than reminded that this imaginative withdrawal of the self from strife
and uncertainty has ever been inculcated as a means to happiness and
edification. Many persons who are sensitive to the good opinion of
others, and, by impulse, take great pleasure in it, shrink from
indulging this pleasure because they know by experience that it puts
them into others’ power and introduces an element of weakness, unrest,
and probable mortification. By recognizing a favorable opinion of
yourself, and taking pleasure in it, you in a measure give yourself and
your peace of mind into the keeping of another, of whose attitude you
can never be certain. You have a new source of doubt and apprehension.
One learns in time the wisdom of entering into such relations only with
persons of whose sincerity, stability, and justice one is as sure as
possible; and also of having nothing to do with approval of himself
which he does not feel to have a secure basis in his character. And so
regarding self-aggrandizement in the various forms implicitly condemned
by Thomas’s four rules of peace; if a man is of so eager a temperament
that he does not need these motives to awaken him and call his faculties
into normal action, he will be happier and possibly more useful to the
world if he is able to subdue them by some sort of discipline. In this
way, it seems to me, we may chiefly account for and justify the
stringent self-suppression of Pascal and of many other fine spirits. “So
jealous was he of any surprise of pleasure, of any thought of vanity or
complacency in himself and his work, that he wore a girdle of iron next
his skin, the sharp points of which he pressed closely when he thought
himself in any danger....”[63]
Of course the objection to withdrawal, physical or imaginative, is that
it seems to be a refusal of social functions, a rejection of life,
leading logically to other-worldism, to the idea that it is better to
die than to live. According to this teaching, in its extreme form, the
best thing that can happen to a man is to die and go to heaven; but if
that is not permitted, then let the private, ambitious self, set to play
the tunes of this world, die in him, and be replaced by humble and
secluded meditation in preparation for the life to come. When this
doctrine was taught and believed to such an extent that a great part of
the finer spirits were led, during centuries, to isolate themselves in
deserts and cloisters, or at least to renounce and depreciate the
affections and duties of the family, the effect was no doubt bad; but in
our time there is little tendency to this extreme, and there is perhaps
danger that the usefulness of partial or occasional withdrawal may be
overlooked. Mr. Lecky thinks, for instance, that the complete
suppression of the conventual system by Protestantism has been far from
a benefit to women or the world, and that it is impossible to conceive
of any institution more needed than one which should furnish a shelter
for unprotected women and convert them into agents of charity.[64] The
amount and kind of social stimulation that a man can bear without harm
to his character and working power depends, roughly speaking, upon his
sensitiveness, which determines the emotional disturbance, and upon the
vigor of the controlling or co-ordinating functions, which measures his
power to guide or quell emotion and make it subsidiary to healthy life.
There has always been a class of persons, including a large proportion
of those capable of the higher sorts of intellectual production, for
whom the competitive struggles of ordinary life are overstimulating and
destructive, and who therefore cannot serve the world well without
apparently secluding themselves from it. It would seem, then, that
withdrawal and asceticism are often too sweepingly condemned. A sound
practical morality will consider these things in relation to various
types of character and circumstance, and find, I believe, important
functions for both.
But the most radical remedy for the mortifications and uncertainties of
the social self is not the negative one of merely secluding or
diminishing the I, but the positive one of transforming it. The two are
not easily distinguishable, and are usually phases of the same process.
The self-instinct, though it cannot be suppressed while mental vigor
remains, can be taught to associate itself more and more with ideas and
aims of general and permanent worth, which can be thought of as higher
than the more sensual, narrow, or temporary interests, and independent
of them. It must always be borne in mind that the self is any idea or
system of ideas with which is associated the peculiar appropriative
attitude we call self-feeling. Anything whose depreciation makes me feel
resentful is myself, whether it is my coat, my face, my brother, the
book I have published, the scientific theory I accept, the philanthropic
work to which I am devoted, my religious creed, or my country. The only
question is, Am I identified with it in my thought, so that to touch it
is to touch me? Thus in “Middlemarch” the true self of Mr. Casaubon, his
most aggressive, persistent, and sensitive part, is his system of ideas
relating to the unpublished “Key to All Mythologies.” It is about this
that he is proud, jealous, sore, and apprehensive. What he imagines that
the Brasenose men will think of it is a large part of his social self,
and he suffers hidden joy and torture according as he is hopeful or
despondent of its triumphant publication. When he finds that his body
must die his chief thought is how to keep this alive, and he attempts to
impose its completion upon poor Dorothea, who is a pale shadow in his
life compared with the Key, a mere instrument to minister to this
fantastic ego. So if one, turning the leaves of history, could evoke the
real selves of all the men of thought, what a strange procession they
would be!—outlandish theories, unintelligible and forgotten creeds,
hypotheses once despised but now long established, or _vice versa_—all
conceived eagerly, jealously, devotedly, as the very heart of the self.
There is no class more sensitive and none, not even the insane, in whom
self-feeling attaches to such singular and remote conceptions. An
astronomer may be indifferent when you depreciate his personal
appearance, abuse his relatives, or question his pecuniary honesty; but
if you doubt that there are artificial canals on Mars you cut him to the
quick. And poets and artists of every sort have always and with good
reason been regarded as a _genus irritabile_.
The ideas of self most commonly cherished, and the ambitions
corresponding to these ideas, fail to appease the imagination of the
idealist, for various reasons; chiefly, perhaps, for the following:
first because they seem more or less at variance with the good of other
persons, and so, to the imaginative and sympathetic mind, bring elements
of inconsistency and wrong, which it cannot accept as consonant with its
own needs; and second because their objects are at best temporary, so
that even if thought of as achieved they fail to meet the need of the
mind for a resting-place in some conception of permanent good or right.
The transformation of narrow and temporary ambitions or ideals into
something more fitted to satisfy the imagination in these respects, is
an urgent need, a condition precedent to peace of mind, in many persons.
The unquiet and discordant state of the unregenerate is a commonplace, a
thousand times repeated, of writings on the inner life. “_Superbus et
avarus numquam quiescunt_,” they tell us, and to enable us to escape
from such unrest is a chief aim of the discipline of self-feeling
enjoined by ethical and religious teachers. “Self,” “the natural man,”
and similar expressions indicate an aspect of the self thought of as
lower—in part at least because of the insecure, inconsistent, and
temporary character just indicated—which is to be so far as possible
subjected and forgotten, while the feelings once attached to it find a
less precarious object in ideas of justice and right, or in the
conception of a personal deity, in whom all that is best of personality
is to have secure existence and eternal success.
In this sense also we may understand the idea of freedom as it presented
itself to Thomas à Kempis and similar minds. To forget “self” and live
the larger life is to be free; free, that is, from the racking passions
of the lower self, free to go onward into a self that is joyful,
boundless, and without remorse. To gain this freedom the principal means
is the control or mortification of sensual needs and worldly ambitions.
Thus the passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it
will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher
by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self.
Wherever men find themselves out of joint with their social environment
the fact will be reflected in some peculiarity of self-feeling. Thus it
was in times when the general state of Europe was decadent and hopeless,
or later when ceaseless wars and the common rule of violence prevailed,
that finer spirits, for whose ambition the times offered no congenial
career, so largely sought refuge in religious seclusion, and there built
up among themselves a philosophy which compensated them by the vision of
glory in another world for their insignificance in this. An institution
so popular and enduring as monasticism and the system of belief that
throve in connection with it must have answered to some deep need of
human nature, and it would seem that, as regarded the more intellectual
class, this need was largely that of creating a social self and system
of selves which could thrive in the actual state of things. Their
natures craved success, and, following a tendency always at work, though
never more fantastic in its operation, they created an ideal or standard
of success which they could achieve—very much as a farmer’s boy with a
weak body but an active brain sometimes goes into law, seeking and
upholding an intellectual type of success. From this point of view—which
is, of course, only one of many whence monasticism may be regarded—it
appears as a wonderful exhibition of the power of human nature to
effectuate itself in a co-operative manner in spite of the most untoward
external circumstances.
If we have less flight from the world, corporeal or metaphysical, at the
present day, it is doubtless in part because the times are more
hospitable to the finer abilities, so that all sorts of men, within wide
limits, find careers in which they may hope to gratify a reasonable
ambition. But even now, where conditions are deranged and somewhat
anarchical, so that many find themselves cut off from the outlook toward
a congenial self-development, the wine of life turns bitter, and
harrying resentments are generated which more or less disturb the
stability of the social order. Each man must have his “I”; it is more
necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within
the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.
Persons of great ambitions, or of peculiar aims of any sort, lie open to
disorders of self-feeling, because they necessarily build up in their
minds a self-image which no ordinary social environment can understand
or corroborate, and which must be maintained by hardening themselves
against immediate influences, enduring or repressing the pains of
present depreciation, and cultivating in imagination the approval of
some higher tribunal. If the man succeeds in becoming indifferent to the
opinions of his neighbors he runs into another danger, that of a
distorted and extravagant self of the pride sort, since by the very
process of gaining independence and immunity from the stings of
depreciation and misunderstanding, he has perhaps lost that wholesome
deference to some social tribunal that a man cannot dispense with and
remain quite sane. The image lacks verification and correction and
becomes too much the reflection of an undisciplined self-feeling. It
would seem that the megalomania or delusion of greatness which Lombroso,
with more or less plausibility, ascribes to Victor Hugo and many other
men of genius, is to be explained largely in this way.
Much the same may be said regarding the relation of self-feeling to
mental disorder, and to abnormal personality of all sorts. It seems
obvious, for instance, that the delusions of greatness and delusions of
persecution so common in insanity are expressions of self-feeling
escaped from normal limitation and control. The instinct which under
proper regulation by reason and sympathy gives rise to just and sane
ambition, in the absence of it swells to grotesque proportions; while
the delusion of persecution appears to be a like extravagant development
of that jealousy regarding what others are thinking of us which often
reaches an almost insane point in irritable people whose sanity is not
questioned.
The peculiar relations to other persons attending any marked personal
deficiency or peculiarity are likely to aggravate, if not to produce,
abnormal manifestations of self-feeling. Any such trait sufficiently
noticeable to interrupt easy and familiar intercourse with others, and
make people talk and think _about_ a person or _to_ him rather than
_with_ him, can hardly fail to have this effect. If he is naturally
inclined to pride or irritability, these tendencies, which depend for
correction upon the flow of sympathy, are likely to be increased. One
who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably perhaps, but
cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly
excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every
countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion or pity, and in so far
as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the
lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others
can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore. He finds himself
apart, “not in it,” and feels chilled, fearful, and suspicious. Thus
“queerness” is no sooner perceived than it is multiplied by reflection
from other minds. The same is true in some degree of dwarfs, deformed or
disfigured persons, even the deaf and those suffering from the
infirmities of old age. The chief misery of the decline of the
faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it,
is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and
influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of
others can alleviate.
CHAPTER VII
HOSTILITY
SIMPLE OR ANIMAL ANGER—SOCIAL ANGER—THE FUNCTION OF HOSTILITY—THE
DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE—CONTROL AND TRANSFORMATION OF HOSTILITY
BY REASON—HOSTILITY AS PLEASURE OR PAIN—THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCEPTED
SOCIAL STANDARDS—FEAR.
Anger, like other emotions, seems to exist at birth as a simple,
instinctive animal tendency, and to undergo differentiation and
development parallel with the growth of imagination. Perez, speaking of
children at about the age of two months, says, “they begin to push away
objects that they do not like, and have real fits of passion, frowning,
growing red in the face, trembling all over, and sometimes shedding
tears.” They also show anger at not getting the breast or bottle, or
when washed or undressed, or when their toys are taken away. At about
one year old “they will beat people, animals, and inanimate objects if
they are angry with them,”[65] throw things at offending persons, and
the like.
I have observed phenomena similar to these, and no doubt all have who
have seen anything of little children. If there are any writers who tend
to regard the mind at birth as almost _tabula rasa_ so far as special
instincts are concerned, consisting of little more than a faculty of
receiving and organizing impressions, it must be wholesome for them to
associate with infants and notice how unmistakable are the signs of a
distinct and often violent emotion, apparently identical with the anger
or rage of adults. What grown-up persons feel seems to be different, not
in its emotional essence, but in being modified by association with a
much more complicated system of ideas.
This simple, animal sort of anger, excited immediately by something
obnoxious to the senses, does not entirely disappear in adult life.
Probably most persons who step upon a barrel-hoop or run their heads
against a low doorway can discern a moment of instinctive anger toward
the harming object. Even our more enduring forms of hostility seem often
to partake of this direct, unintellectual character. Most people, but
especially those of a sensitive, impressible nature, have antipathies to
places, animals, persons, words—to all sorts of things in fact—which
appear to spring directly out of the subconscious life, without any
mediation of thought. Some think that an animal or instinctive antipathy
to human beings of a different race is natural to all mankind. And among
people of the same race there are undoubtedly persons whom other persons
loathe without attributing to them any hostile state of mind, but with a
merely animal repugnance. Even when the object of hostility is quite
distinctly a mental or moral trait, we often seem to feel it in an
external way, that is, we _see_ it as behavior but do not really
understand it as thought or sentiment. Thus duplicity is hateful whether
we can see any motive for it or not, and gives a sense of slipperiness
and insecurity so tangible that one naturally thinks of some wriggling
animal. In like manner vacillation, fawning, excessive protestation or
self-depreciation, and many other traits, may be obnoxious to us in a
somewhat physical way without our imagining them as states of mind.
But for a social, imaginative being, whose main interests are in the
region of communicative thought and sentiment, the chief field of anger,
as of other emotions, is transferred to this region. Hostility ceases to
be a simple emotion due to a simple stimulus, and breaks up into
innumerable hostile sentiments associated with highly imaginative
personal ideas. In this mentally higher form it may be regarded as
hostile sympathy, or a hostile comment on sympathy. That is to say, we
enter by sympathy or personal imagination into the state of mind of
others, or think we do, and if the thoughts we find there are injurious
to or uncongenial with the ideas we are already cherishing, we feel a
movement of anger.
This is forcibly expressed in a brief but admirable study of antipathy
by Sophie Bryant. Though the antipathy she describes is of a peculiarly
subtle kind, it is plain that the same sort of analysis may be applied
to any form of imaginative hostility.
“A is drawn out toward B to feel what he feels. If the new feeling
harmonizes, distinctly or obscurely, with the whole system of A’s
consciousness—or the part then identified with his will—there follows
that joyful expansion of self beyond self which is sympathy. But if
not—if the new feeling is out of keeping with the system of A’s
will—tends to upset the system, and brings discord into it—there follows
the reaction of the whole against the hostile part which, transferred to
its cause in B, pushes out B’s state, as the antithesis of self, yet
threatening self, and offensive.” Antipathy, she says, “is full of
horrid thrill.” “The peculiar horror of the antipathy springs from the
unwilling response to the state abhorred. We feel ourselves actually
like the other person, selfishly vain, cruelly masterful, artfully
affected, insincere, ungenial, and so on.”... “There is some affinity
between those who antipathize.”[66] And with similar meaning Thoreau
remarks that “you cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric
affinity for that which shocks you,” and that “He who receives an injury
is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.”[67]
Thus the cause of hostility is imaginative or sympathetic, an inimical
idea attributed to another mind. We cannot feel this way toward that
which is totally unlike us, because the totally unlike is unimaginable,
has no interest for us. This, like all social feeling, requires a union
of likeness with difference.
It is clear that closer association, and more knowledge of one another,
offer no security against hostile feeling. Whether intimacy will improve
our sentiment toward another man or not depends upon the true relation
of his way of thinking and feeling to ours, which intimacy is likely to
reveal. There are many persons with whom we get on very well at a
certain distance, who would turn out intensely antipathetic if we had to
live in the same house with them. Probably all of us have experienced in
one form or another the disgust and irritation that may come from
enforced intimacy with people we liked well enough as mere
acquaintances, and with whom we can find no particular fault, except
that they rub us the wrong way. Henry James, speaking of the aversion of
the brothers Goncourt for Saint Beuve, remarks that it was “a plant
watered by frequent intercourse and protected by punctual notes.”[68] It
is true that an active sense of justice may do much to overcome
unreasonable antipathies; but there are so many urgent uses for our
sense of justice that it is well not to fatigue it by excessive and
unnecessary activity. Justice involves a strenuous and symmetrical
exercise of the imagination and reason, which no one can keep up all the
time; and those who display it most on important occasions ought to be
free to indulge somewhat their whims and prejudices in familiar
intercourse.
Neither do refinement, culture, and taste have any necessary tendency to
diminish hostility. They make a richer and finer sympathy possible, but
at the same time multiply the possible occasions of antipathy. They are
like a delicate sense of smell, which opens the way to as much disgust
as appreciation. Instead of the most sensitive sympathy, the finest
mental texture, being a safeguard against hostile passions, it is only
too evident from a study of the lives of men of genius that these very
traits make a sane and equable existence peculiarly difficult. Read, for
instance, the confessions of Rousseau, and observe how a fine nature,
full of genuine and eager social idealism, is subject to peculiar
sufferings and errors through the sensibility and imagination such a
nature must possess. The quicker the sympathy and ideality, the greater
the suffering from neglect and failure, the greater also the difficulty
of disciplining the multitude of intense impressions and maintaining a
sane view of the whole. Hence the pessimism, the extravagant indignation
against real or supposed wrong-doers, and not infrequently, as in
Rousseau’s case, the almost insane bitterness of jealousy and mistrust.
The commonest forms of imaginative hostility are grounded on social
self-feeling, and come under the head of resentment. We impute to the
other person an injurious thought regarding something which we cherish
as a part of our self, and this awakens anger, which we name pique,
animosity, umbrage, estrangement, soreness, bitterness, heart-burning,
jealousy, indignation, and so on; in accordance with variations which
these words suggest. They all rest upon a feeling that the other person
harbors ideas injurious to us, so that the thought of him is an attack
upon our self. Suppose, for instance, there is a person who has reason
to believe that he has caught me in a lie. It makes little difference,
perhaps, whether he really has or not; so long as I have any
self-respect left, and believe that he entertains this depreciatory idea
of me, I must resent this idea whenever, through my thinking of him, it
enters my mind. Or suppose there is a man who has met me running in
panic from the field of battle; would it not be hard not to hate him?
These situations are perhaps unusual, but we all know persons to whom we
attribute depreciation of our characters, our friends, our children, our
workmanship, our cherished creed or philanthropy; and we do not like
them.
The resentment of charity or pity is a good instance of hostile
sympathy. If a man has self-respect, he feels insulted by the
depreciating view of his manhood implied in commiserating him or
offering him alms. Self-respect means that one’s reflected self is up to
the social standard: and the social standard requires that a man should
not need pity or alms except under very unusual conditions. So the
assumption that he does need them is an injury—whether he does or
not—precisely as it is an insult to a woman to commiserate her ugliness
and bad taste, and suggest that she wear a veil or employ someone to
select her gowns. The curious may find interest in questions like this:
whether a tramp can have self-respect unless he deceives the one who
gives him aid, and so feels superior to him, and not a mere dependent.
In the same way we can easily see why criminals look down upon paupers.
The word indignation suggests a higher sort of imaginative hostility. It
implies that the feeling is directed toward some attack upon a standard
of right, and is not merely an impulse like jealousy or pique. A higher
degree of rationalization is involved; there is some notion of a
reasonable adjustment of personal claims, which the act or thought in
question violates. We frequently perceive that the simpler forms of
resentment have no rational basis, could not be justified in open court,
but indignation always claims a general or social foundation. We feel
indignant when we think that favoritism and not merit secures promotion,
when the rich man gets a pass on the railroad, and so on.
It is thus possible rudely to classify hostilities under three heads,
according to the degree of mental organization they involve; namely, as
1. Primary, immediate, or animal.
2. Social, sympathetic, imaginative, or personal, of a comparatively
direct sort, that is, without reference to any standard of justice.
3. Rational or ethical; similar to the last but involving reference to a
standard of justice and the sanction of conscience.
The function of hostility is, no doubt, to awaken a fighting energy, to
contribute an emotional motive force to activities of self-preservation
or aggrandizement.
In its immediate or animal form this is obvious enough. The wave of
passion that possesses a fighting dog stimulates and concentrates his
energy upon a few moments of struggle in which success or failure may be
life or death; and the simple, violent anger of children and impulsive
adults is evidently much the same thing. Vital force explodes in a flash
of aggression; the mind has no room for anything but the fierce
instinct. It is clear that hostility of this uncontrolled sort is proper
to a very simple state of society and of warfare, and is likely to be a
source of disturbance and weakness in that organized state which calls
for corresponding organization in the individual mind.
There is a transition by imperceptible degrees from the blind anger that
thinks of nothing to the imaginative anger that thinks of persons, and
pursues the personal idea into all possible degrees of subtlety and
variety. The passion itself, the way we feel when we are angry, does not
seem to change much, except, perhaps, in intensity, the change being
mostly in the idea that awakens it. It is as if anger were a strong and
peculiar flavor which might be taken with the simplest food or the most
elaborate, might be used alone, strong and plain, or in the most curious
and recondite combinations with other flavors.