REFERENCES ON SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

James's Psychology, ch. x.

Royce's Studies of Good and Evil, ch. vi.-ix.

Ferrier's Philosophy of Consciousness, in his Philosophical Remains.

Calkins's Introduction to Psychology, bk. ii.

Wundt's Human and Animal Psychology, lect. xxvii.

IV

SELF-DIRECTION

I

In the last chapter I began to discuss the nature of goodness

distinctively personal. This has its origin in the differing

constitutions of persons and things. Into the making of a person four

characteristics enter which are not needed in the formation of a

thing. The most fundamental of these I examined. Persons and things

are unlike in this, that each force which stirs within a self-

conscious person is correlated with all his other forces. So great and

central is this correlation that a person can say, "I have an

experience," not--as, possibly, the brutes--"I am an experience." Yet

although a person tends thus to be an organic whole, he did not begin

his existence in conscious unity. Probably the early stages of our

life are to be sought rather in the regions of unconsciousness. Rising

out of unconscious conditions into reflex actions--those ingenious

provisions for our security at times when we have no directing powers

of our own--we gradually pass into conditions of consciousness, where

we are able to seize the single experience and to be absorbed in it.

Out of this emerges by degrees an apprehension of ourselves contrasted

with our experiences. Even, however, when this self-consciousness is

once established, it may on vivacious or morbid occasions be

overthrown. It by no means attends all the events of our lives. Yet it

marks all conduct that can be called good. Goodness which is

distinctively personal must in some way express the formation and

maintenance of a self-conscious life.

But more is needed. A person fashioned in the way described would be

aware of himself, aware of his mental changes, perhaps aware of an

objective order of things producing these changes, and still might

have no real share himself in what was going on. We can at least

imagine a being merely contemplative. He sits as a spectator at his

own drama. Trains of associated ideas pass before his interested gaze;

a multitude of transactions occur in his contemplated surroundings;

but he is powerless to intervene. He passively beholds, and does

nothing. If such a state of things can be imagined, and if something

like it occasionally occurs in our experience, it does not represent

our normal condition. Our life is no mere affair of vision. Self-

consciousness counts as a factor. Through it changes arise both

without and within. I accordingly entitle this fourth chapter Self-

direction. In it I propose to consider how our life goes forth in

action; for in fact wherever self-consciousness appears, there is

developed also a centre of activity, and an activity of an altogether

peculiar kind.

It is well known that in interpreting these facts of action the

judgment of ethical writers is divided. Libertarians and determinists

are here at issue. Into their controversy I do not desire to enter. I

mean to attempt a brief summary of those facts relating to human

action which are tolerably well agreed upon by writers of both

schools. In these there are intricacies enough. To raise the hand, to

wave it in the air, to lay it on the table again, would ordinarily be

reckoned simple matters. Yet operations so simple as these I shall

show pass through half a dozen steps, though they are ordinarily

performed so swiftly that we do not notice their several parts. In

life much is knitted together which cannot be understood without

dissection. In such dissection I must now engage. As a good pedagogue

I must discuss operations separately which in reality get all their

meaning through being found together. Against the necessary

distortions of such a method the reader must be on his guard.

II

In the total process of self-direction there are evidently two main

divisions,--a mental purpose must be formed, and then this purpose

must be sent forth into the outer world. It is there accepted by those

agencies of a physical sort which wait to do our bidding. The

formation of the mental purpose I will, for the sake of brevity, call

the intention, and to the sending of it forth I will give the name

volition. That these terms are not always confined within these limits

is plain. But I shall not force their meaning unduly by employing them

so, and I need a pair of terms to mark the great contrasted sides of

self-direction. The intention (A) shall designate the subjective side.

But those objective adjustments which fit it to emerge and seek in an

outer world its full expression I shall call the volition (B).

For the present, then, regarding entirely the former, let us see how

an intention arises,--how self-consciousness sets to work in stirring

up activity. To gain clearness I shall distinguish three subordinate

stages, designating them by special names and numerals.

III

At the start we are guided by an end or ideal of what we would bring

about. To a being destitute of self-consciousness only a single sort

of action is at any moment possible. When a certain force falls upon

it, it meets with a fixed response. Or, if the causative forces are

many, what happens is but the well-established resultant of these

forces operating upon a being as definite in nature as they. Such a

being contemplates no future to be reached through motions set up

within it. Its motions do not occur for the sake of realizing in

coming time powers as yet but half-existent. It is not guided by

ideals. Its actions set forth merely what it steadily is, not what it

might be. Something like the opposite of all this shapes personal

acts. A person has imagination. He contemplates future events as

possible before they occur, and this contemplation is one of the very

factors which bring them about. For example: while writing here, I can

emancipate my thought from this present act and set myself to

imagining my situation an hour hence. At that time I perceive I may be

still at my writing-desk, I may be walking the streets, I may be at

the theatre, or calling on my friend. A dozen, a hundred, future

possibilities are depicted as open to me. On one or another of these I

fix my attention, thereby giving it a causal force over other present

ideas, and rendering its future realization likely.

So enormously important is imagination. By it we effect our

emancipation from the present. Without this power to summon pictures

of situations which at present are not, we should be exactly like the

things or brutes already described. For in the thing a determined

sequence follows every impulse. There is no ambiguous future

disclosed, no variety of possibilities, no alternatives. Present

things under definite causes have but a single issue; and if the

account given of the brute is correct, his condition is unlike that of

things only in this respect, that in him curious automatic springs are

provided which set him in appropriate motion whenever he is exposed to

harm, so enabling him suitably to face a future of which, however, he

forms no image. In both brutes and things there is entire limitation

to the present. This is not the case with a person. He takes the

future into his reckoning, and over him it is at least as influential

as the past. A person, through imagination laying hold of future

possibilities, has innumerable auxiliary forces at his command. Choice

appears. A depicted future thus held by attention for causal purposes

is no longer a mere idea; it becomes an ideal.

But in order to transform the depicted future from an idea to an

ideal, I must conceive it as rooted in my nature, and in some degree

dependent on my power. Attracted by the brilliancy of the crescent

moon, I think what sport it would be to hang on one of its horns and

kick my heels in the air. But no, that remains a mere picture. It will

not become an ideal, for it has no relation to my structure and

powers. But there are other imaginable futures,--going to Europe,

becoming a physician, writing a book, buying a house, which, though

not fully compatible with one another, still represent, each one of

them, some capacity of mine. Attention to one or the other of these

will make it a reality in my life. They are competing ideals, and

because of such competition my future is uncertain. The ambiguous

future is accordingly a central characteristic of a person. He can

imagine all sorts of states of himself which as yet have no existence,

and one of these selected as an ideal may become efficient. This first

stage, then, in the formation of the purpose, where various depicted

future possibilities are summoned for assessment, may be called our

fashioning of an ideal.

IV

But a second stage succeeds, the stage of desire. Indeed, though I

call it a second, it is really but a special aspect of the first; for

the ideal which I form always represents some improvement in myself.

An ideal which did not promise to better me in some way would be no

ideal at all. It would be quite inoperative. I never rise from my

chair except with the hope of being better off. Without this, I should

sit forever. But I feel uneasiness in my present position, and

conceive the possibility of not being constrained; or I think of some

needful work which remains unexecuted as long as I sit here, and that

work undone I perceive will leave my life less satisfactory than it

might be. And this imagined betterment must always be in some sense my

own. If it is a picture of the gains of some one else quite

unconnected with myself, it will not start my action.

But it will be objected that we do often act unselfishly and in behalf

of other persons. Indeed we do. Perhaps our impulses are more largely

derived from others than from ourselves, yet from desire our own share

is never quite eliminated. I give to the poor. But it is because I

hate poverty; or because I am attracted by the face, the story, or the

supposed character of him who receives; or because I am unable to

separate my interests from those of humanity everywhere. In some

subtle form the I-element enters. Leave it out, and the action would

lose its value and become mechanical. What I did would be no

expression of self-conscious me. And such undoubtedly is the case with

much of our conduct. The reflex actions, described in the last

chapter, and many of our habits too, contain no precise reference to

our self. Intelligent, purposeful, moral conduct, however, is

everywhere shaped by the hope of improving the condition of him who

acts. We do not act till we find something within or about us

unsatisfactory. If contemplating myself in my actual conditions I

could pronounce them all good, creation would for me be at an end. To

start it, some sense of need is required. Accordingly I have named

desire as the second state in the formation of a purpose, for desire

is precisely this sense of disparity between our actual self and that

possible bettered self depicted in the ideal.

Popular speech, however, does not here state the matter quite fully.

We often talk as if our desires were for other things than ourselves.

We say, for example, "I want a glass of water." In reality it is not

the water I want. That is but a fragment of my desire. It is water

plus self. Only so is the desire fully uttered. Beholding my present

self, my thirsty and defective self, I perceive a side of myself

requiring to be bettered. Accordingly, among imagined pictures of

possible futures I identify myself with that one which represents me

supplied with water. But it is not water that is the object of my

desire, it is myself as bettered by water. Since, however, this

betterment of self is a constant factor of all desire, we do not

ordinarily name it. We say, "I desire wealth, I desire the success of

my friend, or the freedom of my country," omitting the important and

never absent portion of the desire, the betterment of self.

Of course a stage in the formation of the purpose so important as

desire receives a multitude of names. Perhaps the simplest is

appetite. In appetite I do not know what I want. I am blindly impelled

in a certain direction. I do not perceive that I have a suffering

self, nor know that this particular suffering would be bettered by

that particular supply. Appetite is a mere instinct. In the mechanic

structure of my being it is planned that without comprehension of the

want I shall be impelled to the source of supply. But when appetite is

permeated with a consciousness of what is lacking, I apprehend it as a

need. Through needs we become persons. The capacity for

dissatisfaction is the sublime thing in man. We can know our poor

estate. We can say, That which I am I would not be. Passing the blind

point of appetite, we come into the region of want or need; if we then

can discern what is requisite to supply this need, we may be said to

have a desire. That desire, if specific and urgent, we call a wish.

All these varieties of desire include the same two factors: on the one

hand a recognition of present defect in ourselves, on the other

imagination of possible bettered conditions. Diminish either, and

personal power is narrowed. The richer a man's imagination, and the

more abundant his pictures of possible futures, the more resourceful

he becomes. Pondering on desire as rooted in the sense of defect, we

may feel less regret that our age is one not easily satisfied. Never

were there so many discontents, because there were never so many

aspirations. It is true there may be a devilish discontent or a divine

one. There is a discontent without definite aims, one which merely

rejects what is now possessed; and there is one which seeks what is

wisely attainable. Yet after all, it is a small price to pay for

aspiration that it is often attended by vagueness and unwisdom.

V

But before the formation of the purpose is complete it must pass

through a third stage, the stage of decision. Ideals and desires are

not enough, or rather they are too many; for there may be a multitude

of them. Certain ideals are desired for supplying certain of my wants,

others for supplying others. But on examination these many desirable

ideals will often prove conflicting; all cannot be attained, or at

least not all at once. Among them I must pick and choose, reducing and

ordering their number. This process is decision. Starting with my

ambiguous future, imagination brings multifold possibilities of good

before me. But before these can be allowed to issue miscellaneously

into action, comparison and selection reduce them to a single best. I

accordingly assess the many desirable but competing ideals and see

which of them will on the whole most harmoniously supplement my

imperfections. On that I fasten, and the intention is complete.

All this is obvious. But one part of the process, and perhaps the most

important part, is apt to receive less attention than it deserves. In

decision we easily become engrossed with the single selected ideal,

and do not so fully perceive that our choice implies a rejection of

all else. Yet this it is--this cutting off--which rightly gives a name

to the whole operation. The best is arrived at only by a process of

exclusion in which we successively cut off such ideals as do not tend

to the largest supply of our contemplated defects. Walking by the

candy-shop, and seeing the tempting chocolates, I feel a strong desire

for them. My mouth waters. I hurry into the shop and deposit my five-

cent piece. In the evening I find that by spending five cents for the

chocolates I am cut off from obtaining my newspaper, a loss

unconsidered at the time. But to decide for anything is to decide

against a multitude of other things. Taking is still more largely

leaving. The full extent of this negative decision often escapes our

notice, and through the very fact of choosing a good we blindly

neglect a best.

VI

Here, then, are the three steps in the formation of the purpose,--the

ideal, the desire, and the decision,--each earlier one preparing the

way for that which is to follow. But an intention is altogether

useless if it pauses here. It was formed to be sent forth, to he

entrusted to forces stretching beyond the intending mind. The laws of

nature are to take it in charge. The Germans have a good proverb: "A

stone once thrown belongs to the devil." When once it parts from our

hands, it is no longer ours. It is taken up, for evil or for good, by

agencies other than our own. If we mistake the agency to which we

intrust it, enormous mischief may ensue, and we shall he helpless.

These agencies, accordingly, need careful scrutiny before being called

on to work their will. The business of scrutinizing them and of

turning over the purpose to their keeping, forms the second half (B)

of self-direction. In contrast with (A), the formation of the purpose

or the intention, this may be called the realization of the purpose,

or volition. Volition, it is true, is often employed more

comprehensively, but we shall do the term no violence if we confine

its meaning to the discharge of our subjective purpose into the

objective world. Volition then will also, under our scheme, have three

subordinate stages.

VII

The first of them I will call deliberation, in order to approximate it

as closely as possible to the preceding decision. Having now my

purpose decisively formed, I have to ask myself what physical means

will best carry it out. I summon before my mind as complete a list as

possible of nature's conveyances, and judge which of them will with

the greatest efficiency and economy execute my intention. Here I am at

a friend's house, but I have decided to go to my own. I must compare,

then, the different modes of getting there, so as to pick out just

that one which involves the least expenditure and the most certain

result. One way occurs to me which I have never tried before, a swift

and interesting way. I might go by balloon. In that balloon I could

sail at my ease over the tops of the houses and across the beautiful

river. When the tower of Memorial Hall comes in sight, I could pull a

cord and drop gently down at my own door, having meanwhile had the

seclusion and exaltation of an unusual ride. What a delightful

experience! But there is one disadvantage. Balloons are not always at

hand. I might be obliged to wait here for hours, for days, before

getting one. I dismiss the thought of a balloon. It does not

altogether suit my purpose.

Or, I might call a carriage. So I should secure solitude and a certain

speed, but should pay for these with noise, jolting, and more money

than I can well spare. There would be waiting, too, before the

carriage comes. Perhaps I had better ask my friend to lend me his arm

and to escort me home. In this there would be dignity and a saving of

my strength. We could talk by the way, and I always find him

interesting. But should I be willing to be so much beholden to him,

and would not the wind to-day make our walk and talk difficult? Better

postpone till summer weather. And after all there is Boston's most

common mode of locomotion right at hand, the electric car. Strange it

was not thought of before! The five-cent piece saved from the

chocolates will carry me, swiftly, safely, and with independence.

It is in this way that we go through the process of deliberation. All

the possible means of effecting our purpose are summoned for judgment.

The feasibility of each is examined, and the cost involved in its

employment. Comparison is made between the advantages offered by

different agencies; and oftentimes at the close we are in a sad

puzzle, finding these advantages and disadvantages so nearly balanced.

One, however, is finally judged superior in fitness. To this we tie

ourselves, making it the channel for our out-go. The whole process,

then, in its detailed comparison and final fixation, is identical with

that to which I have given the name of decision, except that the

comparisons of decision refer to inner facts, those of deliberation to

outer.

VIII

We now reach the climax of the whole process, effort, the actual

sending forth through the deliberately chosen channel of the ideal

desired and decided on. To it all the rest is merely preliminary, and

in it the final move is made which commits us to the deed. About it,

therefore, we may well desire the completest information. To tell the

truth, I have none to give, and nobody else has. The nature of the

operation is substantially unknown. Though something which we have

been performing all day long, we and all our ancestors, no one of us

has succeeded in getting a good sight of what actually takes place.

Our purposes are prepared as I have described, and then those

purposes--something altogether mental--change on a sudden to material

motions. How is the transmutation accomplished? How do we pass from a

mental picture to a set of motions in the physical world? What is the

bridge connecting the two? The bridge is always down when we direct

our gaze upon it, though firm when any act would cross.

Nor can we trace our passage any more easily in the opposite

direction. When my eyes are turned on my watch, for example, the

vibrations of light striking its face are reflected on the pupil of my

eye. There the little motions, previously existing only in the

surrounding ether, are communicated to my optic nerve. This vibrates

too, and by its motion excites the matter of my brain, and then--well,

I have a sensation of the white face of my watch. But what was

contained in that _then_ is precisely what we do not understand.

Incoming motions may be transmuted into thought; or, as in effort,

outgoing thought may be transmuted into motion. But alike in both

cases, on the nature of that transmutation, the very thing we most

desire to know, we get no light. In regard to this crucial point no

one, materialist or idealist, can offer a suggestion. We may of

course, in fault of explanation, restate the facts in clumsy

circumlocution. Calling thought a kind of motion, we may say that in

action it propagates itself from the mind through the brain into the

outer world; while in the apprehension of an idea motions of the outer

world pass into the brain, and there set up those motions which we

know as thought. But after such explanations the mystery remains

exactly where it was before. How does a "mental motion" come out of a

bodily motion, or a bodily from a mental? It is wiser to acknowledge a

mystery and to mark the spot where it occurs.

This marking of the spot may, however, illuminate the surrounding

territory. If we cannot explain the nature of the crucial act, it may

still be well to study its range. How widely is effort exercised? We

should naturally answer, as widely as the habitable globe. I can sit

in my office in Boston and carry on business in China. When I touch a

button, great ships are loaded on the opposite side of the earth and

cross the intervening oceans to work the bidding of a person they have

never seen. Perhaps some day we may send our volition beyond the globe

and enter into communication with the inhabitants of Mars. It would

seem idle, then, to talk about the limitations of volition and a

restricted range of will. But in fact that will is restricted, and its

range is much narrower than the globe. For when we consider the

matter, with precision, it is not exactly I who have operated in

China. I operate only where I am. In touching the button my direct

agency ceases. It is true that connected with that button are wires

conducting to a wide variety of consequences. But about the details of

that conduction I need know nothing. The wire will work equally well

whether I understand or do not understand electricity. Its working is

not mine, but its own. The pressure of my finger ends my act, which is

then taken up and carried forward by automatic and mechanical

adjustments requiring neither supervision nor consciousness on my

part. We might then more accurately say that my direct volition is

circumscribed by my own body. My finger tips, my lips, my nodding head

are the points where I part with full control, though indefinitely

beyond these I can forecast changes which the automatic agencies, once

set astir, will induce.

Am I niggardly in thus confining the action of each of us within his

own body? Is the range of volition thus marked out too narrow? On the

contrary, it is probably still too wide. We are as powerless to direct

our bodies as we are to manage affairs in China. This, at least, is

the modern psychological doctrine of effort. It is now believed that

volition is entirely a mental affair, and is confined to the single

act of attention. It is alleged that when I attend to an ideal, fixing

my mind fully upon it, the results are altogether similar to what

occurred on my touching the button. Every idea tends to pass

automatically into action through agencies about which I know as

little as I do about ocean telegraphs. This physical frame of mine is

a curious organic mechanism, in which reflex actions and instincts do

their blind work at a hint from me. I am said to raise my arm. But

never having been a student of anatomy and physiology, I have not the

least idea how the rise was effected; and if I am told that nerves

excite muscles, and these in turn contract like cords and pull the arm

this way or that, the rise will not be accomplished a bit better for

the information. For, as in electric transmission, it is not I who do

the work. My part is attention. The rest is adapted automatism. When I

have driven everything else out of my mind except the picture of the

rising arm, it rises of itself, the after-effects on nerves and

muscles being apprehended by me as the sense of effort.

We cannot, then, exercise our will with a wandering mind. So long as

several ideas are conflictingly attended to, they hinder each other.

This we verify in regrettable experiences every day. On waking this

morning, for example, I saw it was time to get up. But the bed was

comfortable, and there were interesting matters to think of. I meant

to get up, for breakfast was waiting, and there was that new book to

be examined, and that letter to be written. How long would this

require, and how should the letter be planned? But I must get up.

Possibly those callers may come. And shall I want to see them? It is

really time to get up. What a curious figure the pattern of the paper

makes, viewed in this light! The breakfast bell! Out of my head go all

vagrant reflections, and suddenly, before I can notice the process, I

find myself in the middle of the floor. That is the way. From wavering

thoughts nothing comes. But suddenly some sound, some sight, some

significant interest, raises the depicted act into exclusive vividness

of attention, and our part is done. The spring has been touched, and

the physical machinery, of which we may know little or nothing, does

its work. There it stands ready, the automatic machinery of this

exquisite frame of ours, waiting for the unconfused signal,--our only

part in the performance,--then automatically it springs to action and

pushes our purpose into the outer world. Such at least is the

fashionable teaching of psychologists to-day. Volition is full

attention. It has no wider scope. With bodily adjustments it does not

meddle. These move by their own mechanic law. Of real connection

between body and mind we know nothing. We can only say that such

parallelism exists that physical action occurs on occasion of complete

mental vision.

No doubt this theory leaves much to be desired in the way of

clearness. What is meant by fixing the attention exclusively? Is

unrelated singleness possible among our mental pictures? Or how

narrowly must the field of attention be occupied before these strange

springs are set in motion? At the end of the explanation do not most

of the puzzling problems of scope, freedom, and selection remain,

existing now as problems about the nature and working of attention

instead of, as formerly, problems about the emergence of the intention

into outward nature? No doubt these classical problems puzzle us

still. But a genuine advance toward clarity is made when we confine

them within a small area by identifying volition with mental

attention. Nor will it be anything to the point to say, "But I know

myself as a physical creature to be involved in effort. The strain of

volition is felt in my head, in my arm, throughout my entire body."

Nobody denies it. After we have attended, and the machinery is set in

motion, we feel its results. The physical changes involved in action

are as apprehensible in our experience as are any other natural facts,

and are remembered and anticipated in each new act.

IX

Only one stage more remains, and that is an invariable one, the stage

of satisfaction. It is fortunately provided that pleasure shall attend

every act. Pleasure probably is nothing else but the sense that some

one of our functions has been appropriately exercised. Every time,

then, that an intention has been taken, up in the way just described,

carried forth into the complex world, and there conducted to its mark,

a gratified feeling arises. "Yes, I have accomplished it. That is

good. I felt a defect, I desired to remove it, and betterment is

here." We cannot speak a word, or raise a hand, perhaps even draw a

breath, without something of this glad sense of life. It may be

intense, it may be slight or middling; but in some degree it is always

there. For through action we realize our powers. This seemingly fixed

world is found to be plastic in our hands. We modify it. We direct

something, mean something. No longer idle drifters on the tide,

through our desires we bring that tide our way. And in the sense of

self-directed power we find a satisfaction, great or small according

to the magnitude of our undertaking.

In such a catalogue of the elements of action as has just been given

there is something uncanny. Can we not pick up a pin without going

through all six stages? Should we ever do anything, if to do even the

simplest we were obliged to do six things? Have I not made matters

needlessly elaborate? No, I have not unduly elaborated. We are made

just so complex. Yet as a good teacher I have falsified. For the sake

of clearness I have been treating separately matters which go

together. There are not six operations, there is but one. In this one

there are six stages; that is, there are six points of view from which

the single operation may advantageously be surveyed. But these do not

exist apart. They are all intimately blended, each affecting all the

rest. Because of our dull faculties we cannot understand, though we

can work, them _en bloc_. He who would render them comprehensible

must commit the violence of plucking them asunder, holding them up

detachedly, and saying, "Of such diverse stuff is our active life

composed." But in reality each gets its meaning through connection

with all the others. Life need not terrify because for purposes of

verification it must be represented as so intricate an affair. It is I

who have broken up its simplicity, and it belongs to my reader to put

it together again.

REFERENCE ON SELF-DIRECTION

James's Psychology, ch. xxvi.

Sigwart's Der Begriff des Wollen's, in his Kleine Schriften.

A. Alexander's Theories of the Will.

Munsterberg's Die Willenshandlung.

Hoffding's Psychology, ch. vii.

V

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

I

Conceivably a being such, as has been described might advance no

farther. Conscious he might be, observant of everything going on

within him and without; occupied too with inducing the very changes he

observes, and yet with no aim to enlarge himself or improve the world

through any of the changes so induced. Complete within himself at the

beginning, he might be equally so at the close, his activity being

undertaken for the mere sake of action, and not for any beneficial

results following in its train. Still, even such a being would be

better off while acting than if quiet, and by his readiness to act

would show that he felt the need of at least temporary betterment. In

actual cases the need goes deeper.

A being capable of self-direction ordinarily has capacities

imperfectly realized. Changing other things, he also changes himself;

and it becomes a part of his aim in action to make these changes

advantageous, and each act helpfully reactive. Accordingly the aim at

self-development regularly attends self-direction. I could not,

therefore, properly discuss my last topic without in some measure

anticipating this. Every ideal of action, I was obliged to say,

includes within it an aim at some sort of betterment of the actor. Our

business, then, in the present chapter is not to announce a new theme,

but simply to render explicit what before was implied. We must detach

from action the influence which it throws back upon us, the actors. We

must make this influence plain, exhibit its method, and show wherein

it differs from other processes in some respects similar.

II

The most obvious fact about self-development is that it is a species

of change, and that change is associated with sadness. Heraclitus, the

weeping philosopher of the Greeks, discovered this fact five hundred

years before Christ. "Nothing abides," he said, "all is fleeting." We

stand in a moving tide, unable to bathe twice in the same stream;

before we can stoop a second time the flood is gone. In every age this

is the common theme of lamentation for poet, moralist, common man and

woman. All other causes of sadness are secondary to it. As soon as we

have comprehended anything, have fitted it to our lives and learned to

love it, it is gone.

Such is the aspect which change ordinarily presents. It is tied up

with grief. We regard what is precious as stable; and yet we are

obliged to confess that nothing on earth is stable--nothing among

physical things, and just as little among mental and spiritual things.

But there are many kinds of change. We are apt to confuse them with

one another, and in so doing to carry over to the nobler sorts

thoughts applicable only to the lower. In beginning, then, the

discussion of self-development, I think it will conduce to clearness

if I offer a conspectus of all imaginable changes. I will set them in

groups and show their different kinds, exhibiting first those which

are most elementary, then those more complex, and finally those so

dark and important that they pass over into a region of mystery and

paradox.

III

Probably all will agree that the simplest possible change is the

accidental sort, that where only relations of space are altered. My

watch, now lying in the middle of the desk, is shifted to the right

side, is laid in its case, or is lost in the street. I call these

changes accidental, because they in no way affect the nature of the

watch. They are not really changes in it, but in its surroundings. The

watch still remains what it was before. To the same group we might

refer a large number of other changes where no inner alteration is

wrought. The watch is now in a brilliant light; I lay my hand on it,

and it is in darkness. Its place has not been changed, but that of the

light has been. Many of the commonest changes in life are of this

sort. They are accidental or extraneous changes. In them, through all

its change, the thing abides. There is no necessary alteration of its

nature.

IV

But unhappily this is not the only species of change. It is not that

which has brought a wail from the ages, when men have seen what they

prize slip away. The common root of sorrow has been destructive

change. Holding the watch in my hand, I may drop it on the floor; and

at once the crystal, which has been so transparently protective, is

gone. If the floor is of stone, the back of the watch may be wrenched

away, the wheels of its delicate machinery jarred asunder. Destruction

has come upon it, and not merely an extraneous accident. In

consequence of altered surroundings, dissolution is wrought within.

Change of a lamentable sort has come. What before was a beautiful

whole, organically constituted in the way described in my first two

chapters, has been torn asunder. What we formerly beheld with delight

has disappeared.

And let us not accept false comfort. We often hear it said that, after

all, destruction is an illusion. There is no such thing. What is once

in the world is here forever. No particle of the watch can by any

possibility be lost. And what is true of the watch is true of things

far higher, of persons even. When persons decay and die, may not their

destruction be only in outward seeming? We cannot imagine absolute

cessation. As well imagine an absolute beginning. There is no loss.

Everything abides. Only to our apprehension do destructive changes

occur. We are all familiar with consolation of this sort, and how

inwardly unsatisfactory it is! For while it is true that no particle

of the watch is destroyed, it is precisely those particles which were

in our minds of little consequence. Almost equally well they might

have been of gold, silver, or steel. The precious part of the, watch

was the organization of its particles, and that is gone. The face and

form of my friend can indeed be blotted out in no single item. But I

care nothing for its material items, The totality may be wrecked, and

it is that totality to which my affections cling. And so it is in the

world around--material remains, organic wholeness goes. It is almost a

sarcasm of nature that she counts our precious things so cheap, while

the bricks and mortar of which these are made--matters on which no

human affection can fasten--she holds for everlasting. The

lamentations of the ages, then, have not erred. Something tragic is

involved in the framework of the universe. In order to abide,

divulsion must occur. Destruction of organism is going on all around

us, and ever will go on. Things must unceasingly be torn apart. One

might call this destructive and lamentable change the only steadfast

feature of the world.

V

Yet after all, and often in this very process of divulsion, we catch

glimpses of a nobler sort of change, For there is a third species to

which I might perhaps give the name of transforming: change. When, for

example, a certain portion of oxygen and a certain portion of

hydrogen, each having its own distinctive qualities, are brought into

contact with one another, they utterly change. The qualities of both

disappear, and a new set of qualities takes their place. The old ones

are gone,--gone, but not lost; for they have been transformed into new

ones of a predetermined and constant kind. Only a single sort of

change is open to these elements when in each other's presence, and in

precisely that way they will always change. In so changing they do

not, it is true, fully keep their past; but a fixed relation to it

they do keep, and under certain conditions may return to it again. The

transforming changes of chemistry, then, are of a different nature

from those of the mechanic destruction just described. In those the

ruined organism leaves not a wrack behind. In chemic change something

definite is held, something that originally was planned and can he

prophesied. An end is attained: the fixed combination of just so much

oxygen with just so much hydrogen for the making of the new substance,

water. Here change is productive, and is not mere waste, as in organic

destruction. Something, however, is lost--the old qualities; for these

cannot be restored except through the disruption of the new substance,

the water in which they are combined.

VI

But there is a more peculiar change of a higher order still, that

which we speak of as development, evolution, growth. This sort of

change might be described as movement toward a mark. When the seed

begins to be transformed in the earth, it is adapted not merely to the

next stage; but that stage has reference to one farther on, and that

to still others. It would hardly be a metaphor to declare that the

whole elm is already prophesied when its seed is laid in the earth.

For though the entire tree is not there, though in order that the seed

may become an elm it must have a helpful environment, still a certain

plan of movement elmwards is, we may say, already schemed in the seed.

Here accordingly, change--far from being a loss--is a continual

increment and revelation. And since the later stages successively

disclose the meaning of those which went before, these later stages

might with accuracy he styled the truth of their predecessors, and

those be accounted in comparison trivial and meaningless until thus

changed. This sort of change carries its past along with it. In the

destructive changes which we were lamenting a moment ago, the past was

lost and the new began as an independent affair. Even in chemic change

this was true to a certain extent. Yet there, though the past was

lost, a future was prophesied. In the case of development the future,

so far from annihilating the past, is its exhibition on a larger

scale. The full significance of any single stage is not manifest until

the final one is reached.

I suppose when we arrive at this thought of change as expressing

development, our lamentation may well turn to rejoicing. Possibly this

may be the reason why the gloom which is a noticeable feature of the

thought of many preceding centuries has in our time somewhat

disappeared. While our ambitions are generally wider, and we might

seem, therefore, more exposed to disappointment, I think the last half

of the century which has closed has been a time of large hopefulness.

Perhaps it has not yet gone so far as rejoicing, for failure and

sorrow are still by no means extirpated. But at least the thoughts of

our day have become turned rather to the future than the past, a

result which has attended the wider comprehension of development. To

call development the discovery of our century would, however, be

absurd. Aristotle bases his whole philosophy upon it, and it was

already venerable in his time. Yet the many writers who have expounded

the doctrine during the last fifty years have brought the thought of

it home to the common man. It has entered into daily life as never

before, and has done much to protect us against the sadness of

destructive change. Perceiving that changes, apparently destructive,

repeatedly bring to light meaning previously undisclosed, we more

willingly than our ancestors part with the imperfect that a path to

the perfect may be opened.

Is not this, then, the great conception of change which we now need to

study as self-development? I believe not. One essential feature is

omitted. In the typical example which I have just reviewed, the growth

of an elm from its seed, we cannot say that the seed expands itself

with a view to becoming a tree. That would be to carry over into the

tree's existence notions borrowed from an alien sphere. Indeed, to

assert that there has been any genuine development from the seed up to

the finished tree is to use terms in an accommodated, metaphoric, and

hypothetical way. Development there certainly has been as estimated by

an outsider, an onlooker, but not as perceived by the tree itself. It

has not known where it was going. Out of the unknown earth the seed

pushes its way into the still less known air. But in doing so it is

devoid of purpose. Nor, if we endow it with consciousness, can we

suppose it would behold its end and seek it. The forces driving it

toward that end are not conscious forces; they are mechanic forces.

Through every stage it is pushed from behind, not drawn from before.

There is no causative goal set up, alluring the seed onward. In

speaking as if there were, we employ language which can have

significance only for rational beings. We may hold that there is a

rational plan of the universe which that seed is fulfilling. But if

so, the plan does not belong to the seed. It is imposed from without,

and the seed does its bidding unawares.

VII

But we may imagine a different state of affairs. Let us assume that

when the seed sprouted it foreknew the elm that was to be. Every time

it sucked in its slight moisture it was gently adapting this

nourishment to the fulfillment of its ultimate end, asking itself

whether the small material had better be bestowed on the left bough or

the right, whether certain leaves should curve more obliquely toward

the sun, and whether it had better wave its branches and catch the

passing breeze or leave them quiet. If we could rightly imagine such a

state of things, our tree would be much unlike its brothers of the

forest; for, superintending its own development, it would be not a

thing at all but a person. We persons are in this very way entrusted

with our growth. A plan there is, a normal mode of growth, a

significance to which we may attain. But that significance is not

imposed on us from without, as an inevitable event, already settled

through our past. On the contrary, we detect it afar as a possibility,

are thus put in charge of it, and so become in large degree our own

upbuilders. Development is movement toward a mark. In self-development

the mark to be reached is in the conscious keeping of him who is to

reach it. Toward it he may more or less fully direct his course.

And what an astonishing state of things then appears! Self-development

involves a kind of contradiction in terms. How can I build if at

present there is no I? Why should I build if at present there is an I?

Whichever alternative we take, we fall into what looks like absurdity.

Yet on that absurdity personal life is based. There is no avoiding it.

Wordsworth has daringly stated the paradox: "So build we up the being

that we are." On coming into the world we are only sketched out. Of

each of us there is a ground plan of which we progressively become

aware. Hidden from us in our early years, it resides in the minds of

our parents, just as the plan of the tree's structure is in the

keeping of nature. Gradually through our advancing years and the care

of those around us we catch sight of what we might be. Detecting in

ourselves possibilities, we make out their relation to a plan not yet

realized. We accordingly take ourselves in hand and say, "If any

personal good is to come to me, it must be of my making. I cannot own

myself till I am largely the author of myself. From day to day I must

construct, and whenever I act study how the action will affect my

betterment,--whether by performing it I am likely to degrade or to

consolidate myself." And to this process there must be no end.

Obviously, nothing like this could occur if our actual condition were

our ideal condition. Self-development is open only to a being in whom

there are possibilities as yet unfulfilled. The things around us have

their definite constitution. They can do exactly thus and no more.

What shall be the effect of any impulse falling on them is already

assured. If the condition of the brutes is anything like that which we

disrespectfully attributed to them, then they are in the same case;

they too are shut up to fixed responses, and have in them no

unfulfilled capacities. It is the possession of such empty capacities

which makes us personal. Well has it been said that he who can

declare, "I am that I am," is either God or a brute. No human being

can say it. To describe myself as if I were a settled fact is to make

myself a thing. My life is in that which may be. The ideals of

existence are my realities, and "ought" is my peculiar verb. "Is" has

no other application to a person than to mark how far he has advanced

along his ideal line. Were he to pause at any point as if complete, he

would cease to be a person.

VIII

But it is necessary to trace somewhat carefully the method of such

self-development. How do we proceed? Before the architect built the

State House, he drew up a plan of the finished building, and there was

no moving of stone, mortar, or tool, till everything was complete on

paper. Each workman who did anything subsequently did it in deference

to that perfected design. Each stone brought for the great structure

was numbered for its place and had its jointing cut in adaptation to

the remaining stones. If, then, each one of us is to become an

architect of himself, it might seem necessary to lay out a plan of our

complete existence before setting out in life, or at whatever moment

we become aware that henceforth our construction is to be in our own

charge. Only with such a plan in hand would orderly building seem

possible. This is a common belief, but in my judgment an erroneous

one. Indeed the whole analogy of the architect and his mechanisms is

misleading. We rarely have in mind the total plan of our unrealized

being and rarely ought we to have. Our work begins at a different

point. We do not, like the architect, usually begin with a thought of

completion. Bather we are first stirred by a sense of weakness.

In my own education I find this to be true. After some years as a boy

in a Boston public school, I went to Phillips Academy in Andover, then

to Harvard College, and subsequently to a German university, and why

did I do all this? Did I have in mind the picture of myself as a

learned man? I will not deny that such a fancy drifted through my

brain. But it was indistinct and occasional. I did not even know what

it was to be a learned man. I do not know now. The driving force that

was on me was something quite different. I found myself disagreeably

ignorant. Reading books and newspapers, I continually found matters

referred to of which I knew nothing. Looking out on the universe, I

did not understand it; and looking into the yet more marvelous

universe within, I was still more grievously perplexed. I thought life

not worth living on such terms. I determined to get rid of my

ignorance and to endure such limitations of knowledge no longer. Is

there, I asked, any place where at least a portion of my stupidity may

be set aside? I removed a little fraction at school, but revealed also

enormous expanses which I had not suspected before. I therefore

pressed on farther, and to-day am still engaged in the almost hopeless

attempt to extirpate my ignorance. What incites me continually is the

sense of how small I am, not that which a few moments ago seemed my

best incentive--the picture of myself as large. That on the whole has

had comparatively little influence. Of course I do not assert that we

are altogether without visions of a larger life. That is far from

being the case. Were it so, desire would cease. We must contrast the

poverty of the present with the fullness of a possible future, or we

should not incline to turn from that present. Yet our grand driving

force is that sense of limitation, of want or need, which was

discussed in the last chapter. And our aim is rather at a better than

at a best, at the removal of some small distinct hindrance than at

arrival at a completed goal. We come upon excellence piecemeal, and do

not, like the architect, look upon it in its entirety at the outset.

Yet in the pursuit of this "better," the more vividly we can figure

the coming stages, the more easily will they be attained. For this

purpose the careers of those who have gone before us are helpful,--

reports about the great ones of the past, and the revelations of

themselves which they have left us in literature and institutions.

Example is a powerful agent in making our footsteps quick and true.

But it has its dangers, and may be a means of terrifying unless we

feel that even in our low estate there are capacities allying us with

our exemplar. The first vision of excellence is overwhelming. We draw

back, knowing that we do not look like that, and we cannot bear to

behold what is so superior. But by degrees, feeling our kinship with

excellence, we are befriended.

I would not, then, make rigid statements in regard to this point of

method. Grateful as I believe we should be for every sense of need,

this is obviously not enough. To some extent we must have in mind the

betterment which we may obtain through supplying that need. Yet I do

not think a full plan of our ultimate goal is usually desirable. In

small matters it is often possible and convenient. I plan my stay in

Europe before going there. I figure my business prospects before

forming a partnership. But in profounder affairs, I more wisely set

out from the thought of the present, and the patent need of improving

it, than from the future with its ideal perfection. Goethe's rule is a

good one:--

"Willst du ins Unendliebe schreiten?

So sucht das Endliche, nach allen Seiten."

Would you reach the infinite? Then enter into finite things, working

out all that they contain.

IX

If in working them out a test is wanted to enable us to decide whether

we are working wisely or to our harm, I believe such a test may be

found in the congruity of the new with the old. Shall I by adding a

fresh power to myself strengthen those I already possess? By taking

this path, rich in a certain sort of good as it undoubtedly is, shall

I be diverted from paths where my special goods lie? Here I am, a

student of ethics. A friend calls and tells me of the charms of

astronomy, a study undoubtedly majestic and delightful. Since I desire

to take all knowledge for my province, why not hurry off at once to

study astronomy? No indeed. No astronomy for me. I draw a ring about

that subject and say, "Precious subject, fundamentally valuable for

all men. But I will remain ignorant of it, because it is not quite

congruous with the studies I already have on hand." That must be my

test: not how important is the study itself, but how important is it

for me? How far will it help me to accept and develop those

limitations to which I am now pledged?

In this acceptance of limitation, therefore, which seems at first so

humiliating, I believe we have the starting point of all self-

development. Our very imperfections, once accepted, prove our best

means of discerning more. That is a profound remark of Hegel's that

knowledge of a limit is a knowledge beyond that limit. Let us consider

for a moment what it means. Suppose I should come upon Kaspar Hauser,

shut in his little room. "And how long have you been here," I ask.

"Ever since I was born," he answers. "Indeed! How much, then, do you

know?" "Nothing beyond the walls of this room." Might I not fairly

reply, "You contradict yourself. How can you know anything about walls

of a room unless you also know of much beyond them?" We cannot

conceive a limit except as a limit from something. Accordingly, when

we detect our ignorance we become by that very fact not ignorant. We

have gone beyond ourselves and have seen that we are not what we

should be. And this is the way of self-development. Becoming aware of

our imperfections, we by that very fact continually lay hold on

whatever perfect is within our reach.

X

When then we ask whether at any moment we are fully persons, we must

answer, No. The actual extent of personality is at any time small. It

is rather a goal than something ever attained. We have seen that it is

not to be described in terms of the verb "to be." We cannot say "I am

a person," but, only "I ought to be a person. I am seeking to be." The

great body of our life is, we know, a purely natural affair. Our

instincts, our wayward impulses, our unconnected disorderly purposes--

these, which fill the larger portion of our existence, do not express

our personal nature. Each of them goes on its own way, neglectful of

the whole. Therefore we must confess that at no time can we account

ourselves completed persons. Justly we use such strange expressions as

"He is much of a person," "He is very little of a person." Personality

is an affair of degree. We are moving toward it, but have not yet

arrived. "Man partly is and wholly hopes to be." And can we ever

arrive? I do not see how. We are chasing a flying goal. The nearer we

approach, the farther it removes. Shall we call this fact

discouraging, then, or even say that self-development is a useless

process, since it never can be fulfilled? I think not. I should rather

specify this feature of it as our chief source of encouragement; for I

hold that only those aims which do thus contain an infinite element

and are, strictly speaking, unattainable, move mankind to passionate

pursuit. Probably all will agree that riches, fame, and wisdom are

ideals which predominantly move us, and they are all unattainable.

Suppose, some morning, when I see a merchant setting off for his

office quite too early, I ask him why he is hastening so. He answers,

"Why, there is money to be made. And as I intend to be a rich man some

day, I must leave home comforts and be prompt at my desk." But I

persist, "You have forgotten something. It occurs to me that you never

can be rich. No rich man was ever seen. Whoever has obtained a million

dollars can get a million more, and the man of two millions can become

one of three. Obviously, then, neither you nor any one can become a

completely rich man." Should I stay that merchant from his exit by

remarks of this kind? If he answered at all, he would merely say,

"Don't read too much. You had better mix more with men."

And I should get no better treatment from the scholar, the man who is

seeking wisdom. It is true no really wise man ever was on earth, or

ever will be. But that is the very reason why we are all so

impassioned for wisdom, because every bit we seize only opens the door

to more. If we could get it in full, if some time or other, knowing

that we are now wise, we could sit down in our armchairs with nothing

further to do, it would be a death blow to our colleges. Nobody would

attend them or care for wisdom longer. An aim which one can reach, and

discover to be finally ended, moves only children. They will make

collections of birds' eggs, though conceivably they might obtain every

species in the neighborhood. But these are not the things which excite

earnest men. They run after fame, because they can never be quite

famous. They may become known to every person on their street, but

there is the street beyond. Or to every one in their town, but there

are other towns. Or if to every person on earth, there are still the

after ages. Entire fame cannot be had; and exactly on that account it

stirs every impulse of our nature in pursuit.

Now the aim at personal perfection is precisely of this sort. As

servants of righteousness we cannot accept any other precept than "Be

ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." But we know

such perfection to be unattainable, Yet I sometimes doubt whether we

state the matter truly so. Would it not be juster to say that

perfection can always be attained, and that it is about the only thing

which can be? We might well say of all the infinite ideals that they

differ from the finite ones simply in this, that the finite can be

attained but once, and then are ended, while the infinite are

continually attained. At no moment of his life shall the merchant be

cut off from becoming richer, or the scholar from growing wiser, or

the public benefactor from acquiring further fame. These aims, then,

are always attainable; for in them what we think of as the goal is

not, as in other cases, a single point which, once reached, renders

the rest of life useless and listless. The goal here is the line of

increase. To be moving along that line should be our daily endeavor.

Our proper utterance should be, "I was never so good as to-day, and I

hope never to be so bad again."

XI

But when we have seen how slender is our actual perfection, how slight

must be reckoned the attainment of personality at any moment, we are

brought face to face with the profound problem of its possible extent.

How far can the self be developed? Infinitely? Is each one of us an

infinite being? I will not say so. I do not like to make a statement

which runs beyond my own experience. But confining myself to this, let

us see what it will show.

When at any time I seek to perfect myself, does my attainment of any

grade of improvement prevent or further another step? All will agree

that it simply opens a new door. Perhaps I am seeking to withdraw from

habits of mendacity, and beginning to tell the truth. Then every time

I tell the truth I shall discover more truth to tell. And will this

process ever come to an end? I have nothing to do with "evers." I can

only say that each time I try it, advance is more possible, not less

possible. In the personal life there is, if I may say so, no provision

for checkage. As I understand it, in the animal life there is such

provision. In my first chapter I was pointing out the difference

between extrinsic and intrinsic goodness; and I said that the table's

entering into use and holding objects on its top tended to destroy it,

though we might imagine a magic table in which every exercise of

function would be preservative. Now in the personal nature we find

just such a magical provision. Each time a person normally exerts

himself he makes further exertion in those normal ways more possible.

And if this is true of all personal action within our experience, what

right have we to set a limit to it anywhere? It may not be suitable to

say that I know myself infinite, but it is certainly true that I

cannot conceive myself as finite. I can readily see that this body of

mine has in it what I have called a provision for checkage. Every time

the blood moves in my veins it leaves its little deposit. Further

motion of that blood is slightly impeded. But every time a moral

purpose moves my life, it makes the next move surer. It is impossible

to draw lines of limitation in moral development.

XII

Such, then, is the vast conception with which we have been dealing.

Goodness, to be personal, must express perpetual self-development. All

the moral aims of life may be summed up in the single word, "self-

realization." Could I fully realize myself, I should have fulfilled

all righteousness, and this view is sanctioned by the Great Teacher

when he asks, "What shall a man give in exchange for his life?"--his

life, his soul, his self. If any one fully believed this, and lived as

if all his desires were fulfilled so long as he had opportunities of

self-development, he might be said to have insured himself against

every catastrophe. Little could harm him. Whatever occurred, instead

of exclaiming, "How calamitous!" he would simply ask, "What fresh

opportunities do these strange circumstances present for enlarged

living? Let me add this new discipline to what I had before. Seeking

as I am to become expanded into the infinite, this experience

discloses a new avenue thither. All things work together for good to

them that love the Lord."

REFERENCES ON SELF-DEVELOPMENT

Bradley's Ethical Studies, essay vi.

Green's Prolegomena of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. ii.

Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. iii. ch. iv.

Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. iii.

Mackenzie's Manual of Ethics, pt. i. ch. vii.

Dewey in Philos. Journal, Dec., 1893.

VI

SELF-SACRIFICE

I

The view of human goodness presented in the preceding chapter is one

which is at present finding remarkably wide acceptance. Philosophers

are often reproached with an indisposition to agree, and naturally

where inquiry is active diversity will obtain. But to-day there

appears a strange unanimity as regards the ultimate formula of ethics.

The empirical schools state this as the highest form of the struggle

for existence; the idealistic, as self-realization. The two are the

same so far as they both regard morality as having to do with the

development of life in persons. These curious beings, both also

acknowledge, can never rest till they attain a completeness now

incalculable.

Of course there is abundant diversity in the application of such

formulae. In interpreting them we come upon problems no less urgent

and tangled than those which vexed our fathers. Who and what is a

person? How far is he detachable from nature? How far from his fellow

men? Is his individuality an illusion, and each of us only an

imperfect phase of a single universal being, so that in strictness we

must own that there is none good but one, that is God? These and

kindred questions naturally oppress the thought of our time. Yet all

are but so many attempts to push the formula of self-realization into

entire clearness. The considerable agreement in ethical formulae

everywhere noticeable shows that at least so much advance has been

made: morality has ceased to be primarily repressive, and is now

regarded as the amplest exhibit of human nature, free from every

external precept, however sacred. Man is the measure of the moral

universe, and the development of himself his single duty.

But when we thus accept self-realization as our supreme aim, we bring

ourselves into seeming conflict with one of our profoundest moral

instincts. It is self-sacrifice that calls forth from all mankind, as

nothing else does, the distinctively moral response of reverence.

Intelligence, skill, beauty, learning--we admire them all; but when we

see an act of self-sacrifice, however small, an awe falls on us; we

bow our heads, fearful that we might not have been capable of anything

so glorious. We thus acknowledge self-sacrifice to be the very

culmination of the moral life. He who understand it has comprehended

all righteousness, human and divine. But how does self-sacrifice

accord with self-development? Will he who is busy cultivating himself

sacrifice himself? Is there not a kind of conflict between the two?

Yet can we abandon either? And if not, must not the formula of self-

realization accept modification?

This, then, is the problem to which I must now turn: the possible

adjustment of these two imperative claims,--the claim to realize one's

self and the claim to sacrifice one's self. And I shall most easily

set my theme before my readers if I state at once the four historic

objections to the reality of self-sacrifice. I call them historic, for

they have appeared and reappeared in the history of ethics, and have

been worked out there on a great scale. While not altogether

consistent with one another, no one of them is unimportant. Together

they compactly present those conflicting considerations which must be

borne in mind when we attempt to comprehend the subtleties of self-

sacrifice. I will endeavor to state them briefly and sympathetically.

First, self-sacrifice is psychologically impossible. No man ever

performs a strictly disinterested act, as has been shown in my chapter

on self-direction. Before desire will start, his own interest must be

engaged. In action we seek to accomplish something, and between that

something and ourselves some sort of valued connection must be felt.

Every wish indicates that the wisher experiences a need which he

thinks might be supplied by the object wished for. It is true that

wishes and wills are often directed upon external objects, but only

because we believe that our own well-being is involved in their union

with us. I devote myself to my friend as _my_ friend, counting his

happiness and my own inseparable. Were he so entirely a foreigner

that I had no interest in him, my sacrifices for him--even if

conceivable--would be meaningless. They acquire meaning only through

my sense of a tie between him and me. My service of him may be

regarded as my escape from petty selfishness into broad selfishness,

from immediate gain to remote gain. But the prospect of gain in some

form, proximate or ultimate, gain often of an impalpable and spiritual

sort, always attends my wish and will. The aim at self-realization,

however hidden, is everywhere the root of action. No belittlement of

ourselves can appear desirable except as a step toward ultimate

enlargement. Self-sacrifice in any true and thorough-going sense never

occurs.

So cogent is this objection, and so frequently does it appear, not

only in ethical discussion but in the minds of the struggling

multitude, that he who has not faced it, and taken its truth well to

heart, can have little comprehension of self-sacrifice. But it is a

blessed fact that thousands who comprehend self-sacrifice little

practise it largely.

III

A second objection strips off the glory of self-sacrifice and regards

it as a sad necessity. While there is nothing in it to attract or be

approved, the lamentable fact is that we are so crowded together and

disposed to trample on one another that, partially to escape, we must

each agree to abate something of our own in behalf of a neighbor's

gain. We cannot each be all we would. It is a sign of our mean estate

that again and again we need to cut off sections of what we count

valuable in order to save any portion. Only by such compromises are we

able to get along with one another. He who refuses them finds himself

exposed to still greater loss. The hard conditions under which we live

appear in the fact that such restraint is inevitable. I call self-

sacrifice, therefore, a sad necessity.

This theory of sacrifice is urged by Hobbes and by the later moralists

who follow his daring lead. It should be counted among the objections

because, while it admits the fact of self-sacrifice, it denies its

dignity.

IV

A third objection declares sacrifice to be needless. Its very

appearance rests on a misconception. We mistakenly suppose that in

abating our own for the sake of our neighbor's good, we lose. In

reality this is our true mode of enlargement. The interests of the

individual and society are not hostile or alien, but supplemental.

Society is nothing but the larger individual; so that he alone

realizes himself who enters most fully into social relations, making

the well-being of society his own. This is plain enough when we study

the working of a small and comprehensible portion of society. The

child does not lose through identification with family life. That is

his great means of realizing himself. To assume contrast and

antagonism between family interest and the interest of the child is

palpably unwarranted and untrue. Equally unwarranted is a similar

assumption in the broader ranges of society. When we talk of

sacrifice, we refer merely to the first stage and outer aspect of the

act. Underneath, self-interest is guarded, the individual giving up

his individuality only through obtaining a larger individuality still.

Such identity of interest between society and the individual the

moralists of the eighteenth century are never tired of pointing out.

If they are right, and the identity is complete, then sacrifice is

abolished or is only a generous illusion. But these men never quite

succeeded in persuading the English people of their doctrine, at least

they never carried their thought fully over into the common mind.

V

That common mind has always thought of sacrifice in a widely different

way, but in one which renders it still more incomprehensible. Self-

sacrifice it regards as a glorious madness. Though the only act which

ever forces us to bow in reverent awe, it is insolubly mysterious,

irrational, crazy perhaps, but superb. For in it we do not deliberate.

We hear a call, we shut our ears to prudence, and with courageous

blindness as regards damage of our own, we hasten headlong to meet the

needs of others. To reckon heroism, to count, up opposing gains and

losses, balancing them one against another in order clear-sightedly to

act, is to render heroism impossible. Into it there enters an element

of insanity. The sacrificer must feel that he cares nothing for what

is rational, but only for what is holy, for his duty. The rational and

the holy,--in the mind of him who has not been disturbed by theoretic

controversy these two stand in harsh antithesis, and the antithesis

has been approved by important ethical writers of our time. The

rational man is, of course, needed in the humdrum work of life. His

assertive and sagacious spirit clears many a tangled pathway. But he

gets no reverence, the characteristic response of self-sacrifice. This

is reserved for him who says, "No prudence for me! I will he admirably

crazy. Let me fling myself away, so only there come salvation to

others."

Such, then, are the four massive objections: self-sacrifice is unreal

psychologically, aesthetically, morally, or rationally: But negative

considerations are not enough. No amount of demonstration of what a

thing is not will ever reveal what it is. Objections are merely of

value for clearing a field and marking the spots on which a structure

cannot be reared. The serious task of erecting that structure

somewhere still remains. To it I now address myself.

VI

What we need to consider first is the reality and wide range of self-

sacrifice. The moment the term is mentioned there spring up before our

minds certain typical examples of it. We see the soldier advancing

toward the battlefield, to stake his life for a country in whose

prosperity he may never share. We see the infant falling into the

water, and the full-grown man flinging in after it his own assured and

valued life in hopes of rescuing that incipient and uncertain thing, a

little child. Yes, I myself came on a case of heroism hardly less

striking. I was riding my bicycle along the public street when there

dashed past me a runaway horse with a carriage at his heels, both

moving so madly that I thought all the city was in danger. I pursued

as rapidly as I could, and as I neared my home, saw horse and carriage

standing by the sidewalk. By the horse's head stood a negro. I went up

to him and said, "Did you catch that horse?" "Yes, sir," he answered.

"But," I said, "he was going at a furious pace." "Yes, sir." "And he

might have run you down." "Yes, sir, but I know horses, and I was

afraid he would hurt some of these children." There he stood, the big

brown hero, unexalted, soothing the still restive horse and unaware of

having done anything out of the ordinary. I entered my house ashamed.

Had I possessed such skill, would I have ventured my life in such a

fashion?

Such are some of the shining examples of self-sacrifice which occur to

us at the first mention of the word. But we shall mislead ourselves if

we confine our thoughts to cases so climactic, triumphant, and

spectacular. Deeds like these dazzle and do not invite to full

analysis of their nature. Let us turn to affairs more usual.

I have happened to know intimately members of three professions--

ministers, nurses, teachers-and I find self-sacrifice a matter of

daily practice with them all. To it the minister is dedicated. He must

not look for gain. He has a salary, of course; but it is much in the

nature of a fee, a means of insuring him a certain kind of living. And

while it is common enough to find a minister studying how he may make

money in his parish, it is commoner far to find one bent on seeing how

he can make righteousness prevail there, though it overwhelm him. The

other professions do not so manifestly aim at self-sacrifice. They are

distinctly money-making. They exact a given sum for a given service.

Still, in them too how constantly do we see that that which is given

far outruns that which is paid for. I have watched pretty closely the

work of a dozen or more trained nurses, and I believe it Would be hard

to find any class in the community showing a higher average of

estimable character. How quiet they are under the most irritating

circumstances! How fully they pour themselves into the lives of their

patients! How prompt is the deft hand! How considerate the swift

intelligence! Their hearts are aglow over what can be given, not over

what can be got. A similar temper is widely observable among teachers,

especially among those of the lower grades. Paid though they are for a

certain task, how indisposed they are to limit themselves to that task

or to confine their care of their children to the schoolroom! The

hard-worked creatures acquire an intimate interest in the little lives

and, heedless of themselves, are continually ready to spend and be

spent for those who cannot know what they receive. Among such teachers

I find self-sacrifice as broad, as deep, as genuine, if not so

striking, as that of the soldier in the field.

Evidently, then, self-sacrifice may be wide-spread and may permeate

the institutions of ordinary life; being found even in occupations

primarily ordered by principles of give and take, where it expresses

itself in a kind of surplusage of giving above what is prescribed in

the contract. In this form it enters into trade. The high-minded

merchant is not concerned merely with getting his money back from an

article sold. He interests himself in the thoroughly excellent quality

of that article, in the accommodation of his customers, the soundness

of his business methods, and the honorable standing of his firm. And

when we turn to our public officials, how frequent it is--how frequent

in spite of what the newspapers say--to find men eager for the public

good, men ready to take labor on themselves if only the state may be

saved from cost and damage!

But I still underestimate the prevalence of the principle. Our

instances must be homelier yet. Each day come petty citations to self-

sacrifice which are accepted as a matter of course. As I walk to my

lecture-room somebody stops me and says, "What is the way to Berkeley

Street?" Do I reprovingly answer, "You must have made a mistake. I

have no interest in Berkeley Street. I think it is you who are going

there, and why are you putting me to inconvenience merely that you may

the more easily find your way?" Should I answer so, he would think and

possibly say, "There are strange people in Cambridge, remoter from

human kind than any known elsewhere." Every one would feel

astonishment at the man who declined to bear his little portion of a

neighbor's burden. Our commonest acceptance of society involves self-

sacrifice, and in all our trivial intercourse we expect to put

ourselves to unrewarded inconvenience for the sake of others.

VII

What I have set myself to make plain in this series of graded examples

is simply this: self-sacrifice is not something exceptional, something

occurring at crises of our lives, something for which we need

perpetually to be preparing ourselves, so that when the great occasion

comes we may be ready to lay ourselves upon its altar. Such

romanticism distorts and obscures. Self-sacrifice is an everyday

affair. By it we live. It is the very air of our moral lungs. Without

it society could not go on for an hour. And that is precisely why we

reverence it so--not for its rarity, but for its importance. Nothing

else, I suppose, so instantly calls on the beholder for a bowing of

the head. Even a slight exhibit of it sends through the sensitive

observer a thrill of reverent abasement. Other acts we may admire;

others we may envy; this we adore.

Perhaps we are now prepared to sum up our descriptive account and

throw what we have observed into a sort of definition. I mean by self-

sacrifice any diminution of my own possessions, pleasures, or powers,

in order to increase those of others. Naturally what we first think of

is the parting with possessions. That is what the word charity most

readily suggests, the giving up of some physical object owned by us

which, even at the moment of giving, we ourselves desire. But the gift

may be other than a physical object. When I would gladly sit, I may

stand in the car for the sake of giving another ease. But the greatest

conceivable self-sacrifice is when I give myself: when, that is, I in

some way allow my own powers to be narrowed in order that those of

some one else may be enlarged. Parents are familiar with such

exquisite charity, parents who put themselves to daily hardship

because they want education for their boys. But they have no monopoly

in this kind. I who stand in the guardianship of youth have frequent

occasion to miss a favorite pupil, boy or girl, who throws up a

college training and goes home--often, in my judgment, mistakenly--to

support, or merely to cheer, the family there. Of course such gifts

are incomparable. No parting with one's goods, no abandonment of one's

pleasures, can be measured against them. Yet this is what is going on

all over the country where devoted mother, gallant son, loyal husband,

are limiting their own range of existence for the sake of broadening

that of certain whom they hold dear.

VIII

But when we have thus assembled our omnipresent facts and set them in

order for cool assessment, the enigma of self-sacrifice only appears

the more clearly. Why _should_ a man sacrifice himself? Why

voluntarily accept loss? Each of us has but a single life. Each feels

the pressure of his own needs and desires. These point the way to

enlargement. How, then, can I disinterestedly prefer another's gain?

Each of us is penned within the range of his solitary consciousness,

which may be broadened or narrowed but cannot be passed. It is

incumbent on us, therefore, to study our own enrichment. Anticipating

whatever might confirm or crumble our being, we should strenuously

seize the one and reject the other. Deliberately to turn toward loss

would seem to be crazy. What should a man accept in exchange for his

life?