"Of the form of the earth, I had no idea in my childhood, except that,

from a look at a map of the hemispheres, I inferred there were two

immense disks of matter lying near each other. I also believed the

sun and moon to be round, flat plates of illuminating matter; and for

those luminaries I entertained a sort of reverence on account of their

power of lighting and heating the earth. I thought from their coming

up and going down, travelling across the sky in so regular a manner

that there must be a certain something having power to govern their

course. I believed the sun went into a hole at the west and came out

of another at the east, travelling through a great tube in the earth,

describing the same curve as it seemed to describe in the sky. The

stars seemed to me to be tiny lights studded in the sky.

"The source from which the universe came was the question about which

my mind revolved in a vain struggle to grasp it, or rather to fight

the way up to attain to a satisfactory answer. When I had occupied

myself with this subject a considerable time, I perceived that it was

a matter much greater than my mind could comprehend; and I remember

well that I became so appalled at its mystery and so bewildered at my

inability to grapple with it that I laid the subject aside and out

of my mind, glad to escape being, as it were, drawn into a vortex of

inextricable confusion. Though I felt relieved at this escape, yet I

could not resist the desire to know the truth; and I returned to the

subject; but as before, I left it, after thinking it over for some

time. In this state of perplexity, I hoped all the time to get at the

truth, still believing that the more I gave thought to the subject,

the more my mind would penetrate the mystery. Thus I was tossed like

a shuttlecock, returning to the subject and recoiling from it, till I

came to school.

"I remember that my mother once told me about a being up above,

pointing her finger towards the sky and with a solemn look on her

countenance. I do not recall the circumstance which led to this

communication. When she mentioned the mysterious being up in the sky,

I was eager to take hold of the subject, and plied her with questions

concerning the form and appearance of this unknown being, asking if it

was the sun, moon, or one of the stars. I knew she meant that there

was a living one somewhere up in the sky; but when I realized that

she could not answer my questions, I gave it up in despair, feeling

sorrowful that I could not obtain a definite idea of the mysterious

living one up in the sky.

"One day, while we were haying in a field, there was a series of

heavy thunder-claps. I asked one of my brothers where they came from.

He pointed to the sky and made a zigzag motion with his finger,

signifying lightning. I imagined there was a great man somewhere in

the blue vault, who made a loud noise with his voice out of it; and

each time I heard[239] a thunder-clap I was frightened, and looked up

at the sky, fearing he was speaking a threatening word."[240]

[Illustration: FIG. 28.]

Here we may pause. The reader sees by this time that it makes little or

no difference in what sort of mind-stuff, in what quality of imagery,

his thinking goes on. The only images _intrinsically_ important are

the halting-places, the substantive conclusions, provisional or final,

of the thought. Throughout all the rest of the stream, the feelings of

relation are everything, and the terms related almost naught. These

feelings of relation, these psychic overtones, halos, suffusions, or

fringes about the terms, may be the same in very different systems of

imagery. A diagram may help to accentuate this indifference of the

mental means where the end is the same. Let _A_ be some experience from

which a number of thinkers start. Let _Z_ be the practical conclusion

rationally inferrible from it. One gets to the conclusion by one line,

another by another; one follows a course of English, another of German,

verbal imagery. With one, visual images predominate; with another,

tactile. Some trains are tinged with emotions, others not; some are

very abridged, synthetic and rapid, others, hesitating and broken into

many steps. But when the penultimate terms of all the trains, however

differing _inter se_, finally shoot into the same conclusion, we say

and rightly say, that all the thinkers have had substantially the same

thought. It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be

let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery

there was from that in his own.

Thought is in fact a kind of Algebra, as Berkeley long ago said, "in

which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to

proceed right, it is not requisite that in every step each letter

suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to

stand for." Mr. Lewes has developed this algebra-analogy so well that I

must quote his words:

"The leading characteristic of algebra is that of operation on

relations. This also is the leading characteristic of Thought.

Algebra cannot exist without values, nor Thought without Feelings.

The operations are so many blank forms till the values are assigned.

Words are vacant sounds, ideas are blank forms, unless they symbolize

images and sensations which are their values. Nevertheless it is

rigorously true, and of the greatest importance, that analysts carry

on very extensive operations with blank forms, never pausing to

supply the symbols with values until the calculation is completed;

and ordinary men, no less than philosophers, carry on long trains

of thought without pausing to translate their ideas (words) into

images.... Suppose some one from a distance shouts 'a lion!' At once

the man starts in alarm.... To the man the word is not only an ...

expression of all that he has seen and heard of lions, capable of

recalling various experiences, but is also capable of taking its

place in a connected series of thoughts without recalling any of

those experiences, without reviving an image, however faint, of the

lion--simply as a sign of a certain relation included in the complex

so named. Like an algebraic symbol it may be operated on without

conveying other significance than an abstract relation: it is a sign

of Danger, related to fear with all its motor sequences. Its logical

position suffices.... Ideas are _substitutions_ which require a

secondary process when what is symbolized by them is translated into

the images and experiences it replaces; and this secondary process is

frequently not performed at all, generally only performed to a very

small extent. Let anyone closely examine what has passed in his mind

when he has constructed a chain of reasoning, and he will be surprised

at the fewness and faintness of the images which have accompanied the

ideas. Suppose you inform me that 'the blood rushed violently from

the man's heart, quickening his pulse at the sight of his enemy.'

Of the many latent images in this phrase, how many were salient in

your mind and in mine? Probably two--the man and his enemy--and these

images were faint. Images of blood, heart, violent rushing, pulse,

quickening, and sight, were either not revived at all, or were passing

shadows. Had any such images arisen, they would have hampered thought,

retarding the logical process of judgment by irrelevant connections.

The symbols had substituted _relations_ for these _values_.... There

are no images of two things and three things, when I say 'two and

three equal five;' there are simply familiar symbols having precise

relations.... The verbal symbol 'horse,' which stands for all our

experiences of horses, serves all the purposes of Thought, without

recalling one of the images clustered in the perception of horses,

just as the sight of a horse's form serves all the purposes of

_recognition_ without recalling the sound of its neighing or its

tramp, its qualities as an animal of draught, and so forth."[241]

It need only be added that as the Algebrist, though the sequence of his

terms is fixed by their relations rather than by their several values,

must give a real value to the _final_ one he reaches; so the thinker

in words must let his concluding word or phrase be translated into its

full sensible-image-value, under penalty of the thought being left

unrealized and pale.

This is all I have to say about the sensible continuity and unity of

our thought as contrasted with the apparent discreteness of the words,

images, and other means by which it seems to be carried on. Between all

their substantive elements there is 'transitive' consciousness, and the

words and images are 'fringed,' and not as discrete as to a careless

view they seem. Let us advance now to the next head in our description

of Thought's stream.

4. _Human thought appears to deal with objects independent of itself;

that is, it is cognitive, or possesses the function of knowing._

For Absolute Idealism, the infinite Thought and its objects are one.

The Objects are, through being thought; the eternal Mind is, through

thinking them. Were a human thought alone in the world there would be

no reason for any other assumption regarding it. Whatever it might

have before it would be its vision, would be there, in _its_ 'there,'

or then, in _its_ 'then'; and the question would never arise whether

an extra-mental duplicate of it existed or not. The reason why we all

believe that the objects of our thoughts have a duplicate existence

outside, is that there are _many_ human thoughts, each with the _same_

objects, as we cannot help supposing. The judgment that _my_ thought

has the same object as _his_ thought is what makes the psychologist

call my thought cognitive of an outer reality. The judgment that my own

past thought and my own present thought are of the same object is what

makes _me_ take the object out of either and project it by a sort of

triangulation into an independent position, from which it may _appear_

to both. _Sameness_ in a multiplicity of objective appearances is

thus the basis of our belief in realities outside of thought.[242] In

Chapter XII we shall have to take up the judgment of sameness again.

To show that the question of reality being extra-mental or not is not

likely to arise in the absence of repeated experiences of the _same_,

take the example of an altogether unprecedented experience, such as

a new taste in the throat. Is it a subjective quality of feeling, or

an objective quality felt? You do not even ask the question at this

point. It is simply _that taste_. But if a doctor hears you describe

it, and says: "Ha! Now you know what _heartburn_ is," then it becomes

a quality already existent _extra mentem tuam_, which you in turn have

come upon and learned. The first spaces, times, things, qualities,

experienced by the child probably appear, like the first heartburn, in

this absolute way, as simple _beings_, neither in nor out of thought.

But later, by having other thoughts than this present one, and making

repeated judgments of sameness among their objects, he corroborates in

himself the notion of realities, past and distant as well as present,

which realities no one single thought either possesses or engenders,

but which all may contemplate and know. This, as was stated in the

last chapter, is the _psychological_ point of view, the relatively

uncritical non-idealistic point of view of all natural science, beyond

which this book cannot go. A mind which has become conscious of its own

cognitive function, plays what we have called 'the psychologist' upon

itself. It not only knows the things that appear before it; it knows

that it knows them. This stage of reflective condition is, more or

less explicitly, our habitual adult state of mind.

It cannot, however, be regarded as primitive. The consciousness

of objects must come first. We seem to lapse into this primordial

condition when consciousness is reduced to a minimum by the inhalation

of anæsthetics or during a faint. Many persons testify that at a

certain stage of the anæsthetic process objects are still cognized

whilst the thought of self is lost. Professor Herzen says:[243]

"During the syncope there is absolute psychic annihilation, the

absence of all consciousness; then at the beginning of coming to,

one has at a certain moment a vague, limitless, infinite feeling--a

sense of _existence in general_ without the least trace of distinction

between the me and the not-me."

Dr. Shoemaker of Philadelphia describes during the deepest conscious

stage of ether-intoxication a vision of

"two endless parallel lines in swift longitudinal motion ... on a

uniform misty background ... together with a constant sound or whirr,

not loud but distinct ... which seemed to be connected with the

parallel lines.... These phenomena occupied the whole field. There

were present no dreams or visions in any way connected with human

affairs, no ideas or impressions akin to anything in past experience,

no emotions, of course no idea of personality. There was no conception

as to what being it was that was regarding the two lines, or that

there existed any such thing as such a being; the lines and waves were

all."[244]

Similarly a friend of Mr. Herbert Spencer, quoted by him in 'Mind' (vol

iii, p. 556), speaks of "an undisturbed empty quiet everywhere except

that a stupid presence lay like a heavy intrusion _somewhere_--a blotch

on the calm." This sense of objectivity and lapse of subjectivity, even

when the object is almost indefinable, is, it seems to me, a somewhat

familiar phase in chloroformization, though in my own case it is too

deep a phase for any articulate after-memory to remain. I only know

that as it vanishes I seem to wake to a sense of my own existence as

something additional to what had previously been there.[245]

Many philosophers, however, hold that the reflective consciousness

of the self is essential to the cognitive function of thought. They

hold that a thought, in order to know a thing at all, must expressly

distinguish between the thing and its own self.[246] This is a

perfectly wanton assumption, and not the faintest shadow of reason

exists for supposing it true. As well might I contend that I cannot

dream without dreaming that I dream, swear without swearing that I

swear, deny without denying that I deny, as maintain that I cannot

know without knowing that I know. I may have either acquaintance-with,

or knowledge-about, an object O without think about myself at all. It

suffices for this that I think O, and that it exist. If, in addition

to thinking O, I also think that I exist and that I know O, well and

good; I then know one more thing, a fact about O, of which I previously

was unmindful. That, however, does not prevent me from having already

known O a good deal. O _per se_, or O _plus_ P, are as good objects

of knowledge as O _plus me_ is. The philosophers in question simply

substitute one particular object for all others, and call it _the_

object _par excellence_. It is a case of the 'psychologist's fallacy'

(see p. 197). _They_ know the object to be one thing and the thought

another; and they forthwith foist their own knowledge into that of the

thought of which they pretend to give a true account. To conclude,

then, _thought may, but need not, in knowing, discriminate between its

object and itself._

We have been using the word Object. _Something must now be said about

the proper use of the term Object in Psychology._

In popular parlance the word object is commonly taken without reference

to the act of knowledge, and treated as synonymous with individual

subject of existence. Thus if anyone ask what is the mind's object when

you say 'Columbus discovered America in 1492,' most people will reply

'Columbus,' or 'America,' or, at most, 'the discovery of America.' They

will name a substantive kernel or nucleus of the consciousness, and say

the thought is 'about' that,--as indeed it is,--and they will call that

your thought's 'object.' Really that is usually only the grammatical

object, or more likely the grammatical subject, of your sentence. It

is at most your 'fractional object;' or you may call it the 'topic'

of your thought, or the 'subject of your discourse.' But the _Object_

of your thought is really its entire content or deliverance, neither

more nor less. It is a vicious use of speech to take out a substantive

kernel from its content and call that its object; and it is an equally

vicious use of speech to add a substantive kernel not articulately

included in its content, and to call that its object. Yet either

one of these two sins we commit, whenever we content ourselves with

saying that a given thought is simply 'about' a certain topic, or that

that topic is its 'object.' The object of my thought in the previous

sentence, for example, is strictly speaking neither Columbus, nor

America, nor its discovery. It is nothing short of the entire sentence,

'Columbus-discovered-America-in-1492.' And if we wish to speak of it

substantively, we must make a substantive of it by writing it out thus

with hyphens between all its words. Nothing but this can possibly name

its delicate idiosyncrasy. And if we wish to _feel_ that idiosyncrasy

we must reproduce the thought as it was uttered, with every word

fringed and the whole sentence bathed in that original halo of obscure

relations, which, like an horizon, then spread about its meaning.

Our psychological duty is to cling as closely as possible to the actual

constitution of the thought we are studying. We may err as much by

excess as by defect. If the kernel or 'topic,' Columbus, is in one way

less than the thought's object, so in another way it may be more. That

is, when named by the psychologist, it may mean much more than actually

is present to the thought of which he is reporter. Thus, for example,

suppose you should go on to think: 'He was a daring genius!' An

ordinary psychologist would not hesitate to say that the object of your

thought was still 'Columbus.' True, your thought is _about_ Columbus.

It 'terminates' in Columbus, leads from and to the direct idea of

Columbus. But for the moment it is not fully and immediately Columbus,

it is only 'he,' or rather 'he-was-a-daring-genius;' which, though it

may be an unimportant difference for conversational purposes, is, for

introspective psychology, as great a difference as there can be.

The object of every thought, then, is neither more nor less than all

that the thought thinks, exactly as the thought thinks it, however

complicated the matter, and however symbolic the manner of the thinking

may be. It is needless to say that memory can seldom accurately

reproduce such an object, when once it has passed from before the

mind. It either makes too little or too much of it. Its best plan is

to repeat the verbal sentence, if there was one, in which the object

was expressed. But for inarticulate thoughts there is not even this

resource, and introspection must confess that the task exceeds her

powers. The mass of our thinking vanishes for ever, beyond hope of

recovery, and psychology only gathers up a few of the crumbs that fall

from the feast.

* * * * *

The next point to make clear is that, _however complex the object may

be, the thought of it is one undivided state of consciousness_. As

Thomas Brown says:[247]

"I have already spoken too often to require again to caution you

against the mistake into which, I confess, that the terms which the

poverty of our language obliges us to use might of themselves very

naturally lead you; the mistake of supposing that the most complex

states of mind are not truly, in their very essence, as much one and

indivisible as those which we term simple--the complexity and seeming

coexistence which they involve being relative to our feeling[248]

only, not to their own absolute nature. I trust I need not repeat to

you that, in itself, every notion, however seemingly complex, is, and

must be, truly simple--being one state or affection, of one simple

substance, mind. Our conception of a whole army, for example, is as

truly this one mind existing in this one state, as our conception

of any of the individuals that compose an army. Our notion of the

abstract numbers, eight, four, two, is as truly one feeling of the

mind as our notion of simple unity."

The ordinary associationist-psychology supposes, in contrast with

this, that whenever an object of thought contains many elements,

the thought itself must be made up of just as many ideas, one idea

for each element, and all fused together in appearance, but really

separate.[249] The enemies of this psychology find (as we have already

seen) little trouble in showing that such a bundle of separate ideas

would never form one thought at all, and they contend that an Ego

must be added to the bundle to give it unity, and bring the various

ideas into relation with each other.[250] We will not discuss the

ego just yet, but it is obvious that if things are to be thought in

relation, they must be thought together, and in one _something_, be

that something ego, psychosis, state of consciousness, or whatever

you please. If not thought with each other, things are not thought in

relation at all. Now most believers in the ego make the same mistake as

the associationists and sensationists whom they oppose. Both agree that

the elements of the subjective stream are discrete and separate and

constitute what Kant calls a 'manifold.' But while the associationists

think that a 'manifold' can form a single knowledge, the egoists

deny this, and say that the knowledge comes only when the manifold

is subjected to the synthetizing activity of an ego. Both make an

identical initial hypothesis; but the egoist, finding it won't express

the facts, adds another hypothesis to correct it. Now I do not wish

just yet to 'commit myself' about the existence or non-existence of the

ego, but I do contend that we need not invoke it for this particular

reason--namely, because the manifold of ideas has to be reduced to

unity. _There is no manifold of coexisting ideas;_ the notion of such

a thing is a chimera. _Whatever things are thought in relation are

thought from the outset in a unity, in a single pulse of subjectivity,

a single psychosis, feeling, or state of mind._

The reason why this fact is so strangely garbled in the books seems to

be what on an earlier page (see p. 196 ff.) I called the psychologist's

fallacy. We have the inveterate habit, whenever we try introspectively

to describe one of our thoughts, of dropping the thought as it is in

itself and talking of something else. We describe the things that

appear to the thought, and we describe other thoughts _about_ those

things--as if these and the original thought were the same. If, for

example, the thought be 'the pack of cards is on the table,' we say,

"Well, isn't it a thought of the pack of cards? Isn't it of the cards

as included in the pack? Isn't it of the table? And of the legs of

the table as well? The table has legs--how can you think the table

without virtually thinking its legs? Hasn't our thought then, all these

parts--one part for the pack and another for the table? And within the

pack-part a part for each card, as within the table-part a part for

each leg? And isn't each of these parts an idea? And can our thought,

then, be anything but an assemblage or pack of ideas, each answering to

some element of what it knows?"

Now not one of these assumptions is true. The thought taken as an

example is, in the first place, not of 'a pack of cards.' It is of

'the-pack-of-cards-is-on-the-table,' an entirely different subjective

phenomenon, whose Object implies the pack, and every one of the cards

in it, but whose conscious constitution bears very little resemblance

to that of the thought of the pack _per se_. What a thought _is_,

and what it may be developed into, or explained to stand for, and be

equivalent to, are two things, not one.[251]

An analysis of what passes through the mind as we utter the phrase _the

pack of cards is on the table_ will, I hope, make this clear, and may

at the same time condense into a concrete example a good deal of what

has gone before.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--The Stream of Consciousness.]

It takes time to utter the phrase. Let the horizontal line in Fig.

29 represent time. Every part of it will then stand for a fraction,

every point for an instant, of the time. Of course the thought has

_time-parts_. The part 2-3 of it, though continuous with 1-2, is yet a

different part from 1-2. Now I say of these time-parts that we cannot

take any one of them so short that it will not after some fashion or

other be a thought of the whole object 'the pack of cards is on the

table.' They melt into each other like dissolving views, and no two of

them feel the object just alike, but each feels the total object in

a unitary undivided way. This is what I mean by denying that in the

thought any parts can be found corresponding to the object's parts.

Time-parts are not such parts.

Now let the vertical dimensions of the figure stand for the objects

or contents of the thoughts. A line vertical to any point of the

horizontal, as _1-1'_, will then symbolize the object in the mind

at the instant 1; a space above the horizontal, as 1-1'-2'-2, will

symbolize all that passes through the mind during the time 1-2 whose

line it covers. The entire diagram from 0 to 0' represents a finite

length of thought's stream.

Can we now define the psychic constitution of each vertical section of

this segment? We can, though in a very rough way. Immediately after

0, even before we have opened our mouths to speak, the entire thought

is present to our mind in the form of an intention to utter that

sentence. This intention, though it has no simple name, and though it

is a transitive state immediately displaced by the first word, is yet

a perfectly determinate phase of thought, unlike anything else (see p.

253). Again, immediately before 0', after the last word of the sentence

is spoken, all will admit that we again think its entire content as

we inwardly realize its completed deliverance. All vertical sections

made through any other parts of the diagram will be respectively filled

with other ways of feeling the sentence's meaning. Through 2, for

example, the cards will be the part of the object most emphatically

present to the mind; through 4, the table. The stream is made higher

in the drawing at its end than at its beginning, because the final way

of feeling the content is fuller and richer than the initial way. As

Joubert says, "we only know just what we meant to say, after we have

said it." And as M. V. Egger remarks, "before speaking, one barely

knows what one intends to say, but afterwards one is filled with

admiration and surprise at having said and thought it so well."

This latter author seems to me to have kept at much closer quarters

with the facts than any other analyst of consciousness.[252] But even

he does not quite hit the mark, for, as I understand him, he thinks

that each word as it occupies the mind _displaces_ the rest of the

thought's content. He distinguishes the 'idea' (what I have called

the total _object_ or meaning) from the consciousness of the words,

calling the former a very feeble state, and contrasting it with the

liveliness of the words, even when these are only silently rehearsed.

"The feeling," he says, "of the words makes ten or twenty times more

noise in our consciousness than the sense of the phrase, which for

consciousness is a very slight matter."[253] And having distinguished

these two things, he goes on to separate them in time, saying that

the idea may either precede or follow the words, but that it is a

'pure illusion' to suppose them simultaneous.[254] Now I believe

that in all cases where the words are _understood_, the total idea

may be and usually is present not only before and after the phrase

has been spoken, but also whilst each separate word is uttered.[255]

It is the overtone, halo, or fringe of the word, _as spoken in that

sentence_. It is never absent; no word in an understood sentence comes

to consciousness as a mere noise. We feel its meaning as it passes;

and although our object differs from one moment to another as to its

verbal kernel or nucleus, yet it is _similar_ throughout the entire

segment of the stream. The same object is known everywhere, now from

the point of view, if we may so call it, of this word, now from the

point of view of that. And in our feeling of each word there chimes an

echo or foretaste of every other. The consciousness of the 'Idea' and

that of the words are thus consubstantial. They are made of the same

'mind-stuff,' and form an unbroken stream. Annihilate a mind at any

instant, cut its thought through whilst yet uncompleted, and examine

the object present to the cross-section thus suddenly made; you will

find, not the bald word in process of utterance, but that word suffused

with the whole idea. The word may be so loud, as M. Egger would say,

that we cannot _tell_ just how its suffusion, as such, feels, or how it

differs from the suffusion of the next word. But it does differ; and we

maybe sure that, could we see into the brain, we should find the same

processes active through the entire sentence in different degrees, each

one in turn becoming maximally excited and then yielding the momentary

verbal 'kernel,' to the thought's content, at other times being only

sub-excited, and then combining with the other sub-excited processes to

give the overtone or fringe.[256]

[Illustration: FIG. 30.]

[Illustration: FIG. 31.]

[Illustration: FIG. 32.]

We may illustrate this by a farther development of the diagram on p.

279. Let the objective content of any vertical section through the

stream be represented no longer by a line, but by a plane figure,

highest opposite whatever part of the object is most prominent in

consciousness at the moment when the section is made. This part, in

verbal thought, will usually be some word. A series of sections 1-1',

taken at the moments 1, 2, 3, would then look like this: horizontal

breadth stands for the entire object in each of the figures; the

height of the curve above each part of that object marks the relative

prominence of that part in the thought. At the moment symbolized by the

first figure _pack_ is the prominent part; in the third figure it is

_table_, etc.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.]

We can easily add all these plane sections together to make a solid,

one of whose solid dimensions will represent time, whilst a cut across

this at right angles will give the thought's content at the moment when

the cut is made. Let it be the thought, 'I am the same I that I was

yesterday.' If at the fourth moment of time we annihilate the thinker

and examine how the last pulsation of his consciousness was made, we

find that it was an awareness of the whole content with _same_ most

prominent, and the other parts of the thing known relatively less

distinct. With each prolongation of the scheme in the time-direction,

the summit of the curve of section would come further towards the end

of the sentence. If we make a solid wooden frame with the sentence

written on its front, and the time-scale on one of its sides, if

we spread flatly a sheet of India rubber over its top, on which

rectangular co-ordinates are painted, and slide a smooth ball under

the rubber in the direction from 0 to 'yesterday,' the bulging of the

membrane along this diagonal at successive moments will symbolize the

changing of the thought's content in a way plain enough, after what

has been said, to call for no more explanation. Or to express it in

cerebral terms, it will show the relative intensities, at successive

moments, of the several nerve-processes to which the various parts of

the thought-object correspond.

* * * * *

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn

in this first rough description of its stream is that

5) _It is always interested more in one part of its object than in

another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks._

The phenomena of selective attention and of deliberative will are

of course patent examples of this choosing activity. But few of us

are aware how incessantly it is at work in operations not ordinarily

called by these names. Accentuation and Emphasis are present in

every perception we have. We find it quite impossible to disperse

our attention impartially over a number of impressions. A monotonous

succession of sonorous strokes is broken up into rhythms, now of

one sort, now of another, by the different accent which we place on

different strokes. The simplest of these rhythms is the double one,

tick-tóck, tick-tóck, tick-tóck. Dots dispersed on a surface are

perceived in rows and groups. Lines separate into diverse figures. The

ubiquity of the distinctions, _this_ and _that, here_ and _there, now_

and _then_, in our minds is the result of our laying the same selective

emphasis on parts of place and time.

But we do far more than emphasize things, and unite some, and keep

others apart. We actually _ignore_ most of the things before us. Let me

briefly show how this goes on.

To begin at the bottom, what are our very senses themselves but

organs of selection? Out of the infinite chaos of movements, of which

physics teaches us that the outer world consists, each sense-organ

picks out those which fall within certain limits of velocity. To

these it responds, but ignores the rest as completely as if they did

not exist. It thus accentuates particular movements in a manner for

which objectively there seems no valid ground; for, as Lange says,

there is no reason whatever to think that the gap in Nature between

the highest sound-waves and the lowest heat-waves is an abrupt break

like that of our sensations; or that the difference between violet

and ultra-violet rays has anything like the objective importance

subjectively represented by that between light and darkness. Out of

what is in itself an undistinguishable, swarming _continuum_, devoid of

distinction or emphasis, our senses make for us, by attending to this

motion and ignoring that, a world full of contrasts, of sharp accents,

of abrupt changes, of picturesque light and shade.

If the sensations we receive from a given organ have their causes thus

picked out for us by the conformation of the organ's termination,

Attention, on the other hand, out of all the sensations yielded,

picks out certain ones as worthy of its notice and suppresses all the

rest. Helmholtz's work on Optics is little more than a study of those

visual sensations of which common men never become aware--blind spots,

_muscæ volitantes_, after-images, irradiation, chromatic fringes,

marginal changes of color, double images, astigmatism, movements of

accommodation and convergence, retinal rivalry, and more besides. We do

not even know without special training on which of our eyes an image

falls. So habitually ignorant are most men of this that one may be

blind for years of a single eye and never know the fact.

Helmholtz says that we notice only those sensations which are signs to

us of _things_. But what are things? Nothing, as we shall abundantly

see, but special groups of sensible qualities, which happen practically

or æsthetically to interest us, to which we therefore give substantive

names, and which we exalt to this exclusive status of independence

and dignity. But in itself, apart from my interest, a particular

dust-wreath on a windy day is just as much of an individual thing, and

just as much or as little deserves an individual name, as my own body

does.

And then, among the sensations we get from each separate thing,

what happens? The mind selects again. It chooses certain of the

sensations to represent the thing most _truly_, and considers the

rest as its appearances, modified by the conditions of the moment.

Thus my table-top is named _square_, after but one of an infinite

number of retinal sensations which it yields, the rest of them being

sensations of two acute and two obtuse angles; but I call the latter

_perspective_ views, and the four right angles the _true_ form of the

table, and erect the attribute squareness; into the table's essence,

for æsthetic reasons of my own. In like manner, the real form of the

circle is deemed to be the sensation it gives when the line of vision

is perpendicular to its centre--all its other sensations are signs of

this sensation. The real sound of the cannon is the sensation it makes

when the ear is close by. The real color of the brick is the sensation

it gives when the eye looks squarely at it from a near point, out of

the sunshine and yet not in the gloom; under other circumstances it

gives us other color-sensations which are but signs of this--we then

see it looks pinker or blacker than it really is. The reader knows

no object which he does not represent to himself by preference as in

some typical attitude, of some normal size, at some characteristic

distance, of some standard tint, etc., etc. But all these essential

characteristics, which together form for us the genuine objectivity

of the thing and are contrasted with what we call the subjective

sensations it may yield us at a given moment, are mere sensations

like the latter. The mind chooses to suit itself, and decides what

particular sensation shall be held more real and valid than all the

rest.

Thus perception involves a twofold choice. Out of all present

sensations, we notice mainly such as are significant of absent ones;

and out of all the absent associates which these suggest, we again pick

out a very few to stand for the objective reality _par excellence_. We

could have no more exquisite example of selective industry.

That industry goes on to deal with the things thus given in perception.

A man's empirical thought depends on the things he has experienced,

but what these shall be is to a large extent determined by his habits

of attention. A thing may be present to him a thousand times, but if

he persistently fails to notice it, it cannot be said to enter into

his experience. We are all seeing flies, moths, and beetles by the

thousand, but to whom, save an entomologist, do they say anything

distinct? On the other hand, a thing met only once in a lifetime may

leave an indelible experience in the memory. Let four men make a tour

in Europe. One will bring home only picturesque impressions--costumes

and colors, parks and views and works of architecture, pictures and

statues. To another all this will be non-existent; and distances

and prices, populations and drainage-arrangements, door- and

window-fastenings, and other useful statistics will take their place.

A third will give a rich account of the theatres, restaurants, and

public balls, and naught beside; whilst the fourth will perhaps have

been so wrapped in his own subjective broodings as to tell little more

than a few names of places through which he passed. Each has selected,

out of the same mass of presented objects, those which suited his

private interest and has made his experience thereby.

If, now, leaving the empirical combination of objects, we ask how the

mind proceeds _rationally_ to connect them, we find selection again

to be omnipotent. In a future chapter we shall see that all Reasoning

depends on the ability of the mind to break up the totality of the

phenomenon reasoned about, into parts, and to pick out from among these

the particular one which, in our given emergency, may lead to the

proper conclusion. Another predicament will need another conclusion,

and require another element to be picked out. The man of genius is he

who will always stick in his bill at the right point, and bring it

out with the right element--'reason' if the emergency be theoretical,

'means' if it be practical--transfixed upon it. I here confine myself

to this brief statement, but it may suffice to show that Reasoning is

but another form of the selective activity of the mind.

If now we pass to its æsthetic department, our law is still more

obvious. The artist notoriously selects his items, rejecting all

tones, colors, shapes, which do not harmonize with each other and with

the main purpose of his work. That unity, harmony, 'convergence of

characters,' as M. Taine calls it, which gives to works of art their

superiority over works of nature, is wholly due to _elimination_. Any

natural subject will do, if the artist has wit enough to pounce upon

some one feature of it as characteristic, and suppress all merely

accidental items which do not harmonize with this.

Ascending still higher, we reach the plane of Ethics, where choice

reigns notoriously supreme. An act has no ethical quality whatever

unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. To sustain the

arguments for the good course and keep them ever before us, to stifle

our longing for more flowery ways, to keep the foot unflinchingly

on the arduous path, these are characteristic ethical energies. But

more than these; for these but deal with the means of compassing

interests already felt by the man to be supreme. The ethical energy

_par excellence_ has to go farther and choose which _interest_ out of

several, equally coercive, shall become supreme. The issue here is of

the utmost pregnancy, for it decides a man's entire career. When he

debates, Shall I commit this crime? choose that profession? accept that

office, or marry this fortune?--his choice really lies between one of

several equally possible future Characters. What he shall _become_ is

fixed by the conduct of this moment. Schopenhauer, who enforces his

determinism by the argument that with a given fixed character only one

reaction is possible under given circumstances, forgets that, in these

critical ethical moments, what consciously _seems_ to be in question

is the complexion of the character itself. The problem with the man is

less what act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall now

resolve to become.

Looking back, then, over this review, we see that the mind is at every

stage a theatre of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists

in the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and

the suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of

attention. The highest and most elaborated mental products are filtered

from the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of the mass

offered by the faculty below that, which mass in turn was sifted from

a still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so on. The mind, in

short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on

his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity.

But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor

alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so

the world of each of us, howsoever different our several views of it

may be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which

gave the mere _matter_ to the thought of all of us indifferently. We

may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black

and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms

which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world

_we_ feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by

slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like

sculptors, by simply rejecting certain portions of the given stuff.

Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other

worlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos! My world is but

one in a million alike embedded, alike real to those who may abstract

them. How different must be the worlds in the consciousness of ant,

cuttle-fish, or crab!

* * * * *

But in my mind and your mind the rejected portions and the selected

portions of the original world-stuff are to a great extent the same.

The human race as a whole largely agrees as to what it shall notice and

name, and what not. And among the noticed parts we select in much the

same way for accentuation and preference or subordination and dislike.

There is, however, one entirely extraordinary case in which no two

men ever are known to choose alike. One great splitting of the whole

universe into two halves is made by each of us; and for each of us

almost all of the interest attaches to one of the halves; but we all

draw the line of division between them in a different place. When I

say that we all call the two halves by the same; names, and that those

names are '_me_' and '_not-me_' respectively, it will at once be seen

what I mean. The altogether unique kind of interest which each human

mind feels in those parts of creation which it can call _me_ or _mine_

may be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychological fact.

No mind can take the same interest in his neighbor's _me_ as in his

own. The neighbor's me falls together with all the rest of things in

one foreign mass, against which his own _me_ stands out in startling

relief. Even the trodden worm, as Lotze somewhere says, contrasts his

own suffering self with the whole remaining universe, though he have no

clear conception either of himself or of what the universe may be. He

is for me a mere part of the world; for him it is I who am the mere

part. Each of us dichotomizes the Kosmos in a different place.

Descending now to finer work than this first general sketch, let

us in the next chapter try to trace the psychology of this fact of

self-consciousness to which we have thus once more been led.

FOOTNOTES:

[215] A good deal of this chapter is reprinted from an article 'On some

Omissions of Introspective Psychology' which appeared in 'Mind' for

January 1884.

[216] B. P. Bowne: Metaphysics, p. 362.

[217] L'Automatisme Psychologique, p. 318.

[218] Cf. A. Constans: Relation sur une Épidémie d'hystéro-démonopathie

en 1861. 2me ed. Paris, 1863.--Chiap e Franzolin: L'Epidemia

d'istero-demonopatie in Verzegnis. Reggio, 1879.--See also J. Kerner's

little work: Nachricht von dem Vorkommen des Besessenseins. 1836.

[219] For the Physiology of this compare the chapter on the Will.

[220] _Loc. cit._ p. 316.

[221] The Philosophy of Reflection, i, 248, 290.

[222] Populäre Wissenschaftliche Vorträge, Drittes Heft (1876). p. 72.

[223] Fick, in L. Hermann's Handb. d. Physiol., Bd. iii, Th. i, p. 225.

[224] It need of course not follow, because a total brain-state does

not recur, that no _point_ of the brain can ever be twice in the same

condition. That would be as improbable a consequence as that in the sea

a wave-crest should never come twice at the same point of space. What

can hardly come twice is an identical _combination_ of wave-forms all

with their crests and hollows reoccupying identical places. For such a

total combination as this is the analogue of the brain-state to which

our actual consciousness at any moment is due.

[225] The accurate registration of the 'how long' is still a little

mysterious.

[226] Cf. Brentano; Psychologie, vol. i, pp. 219-20. Altogether this

chapter of Brentano's on the Unity of Consciousness is as good as

anything with which I am acquainted.

[227] Honor to whom honor is due! The most explicit acknowledgment I

have anywhere found of all this is in a buried and forgotten paper by

the Rev. Jas. Wills, on 'Accidental Association,' in the Transactions

of the Royal Irish Academy, vol xxi, part i (1846). Mr. Wills writes:

"At every instant of conscious thought there is a certain sum of

perceptions, or reflections, or both together, present, and together

constituting one whole state of apprehension. Of this some definite

portion may be far more distinct than all the rest; and the rest be in

consequence proportionally vague, even to the limit of obliteration.

But still, within this limit, the most dim shade of perception enters

into, and in some infinitesimal degree modifies, the whole existing

state. This state will thus be in some way modified by any sensation

or emotion, or act of distinct attention, that may give prominence to

any part of it; so that the actual result is capable of the utmost

variation, according to the person or the occasion.... To any portion

of the entire scope here described there may be a special direction of

the attention, and this special direction is recognized as strictly

what is _recognized_ as the idea present to the mind. This idea is

evidently not commensurate with the entire state of apprehension,

and much perplexity has arisen from not observing this fact. However

deeply we may suppose the attention to be engaged by any thought,

any considerable alteration of the surrounding phenomena would still

be perceived; the most abstruse demonstration in this room would

not prevent a listener, however absorbed, from noticing the sudden

extinction of the lights. Our mental states have always an _essential

unity_, such that each state of apprehension, however variously

compounded, is a single whole, of which every component is, therefore,

strictly apprehended (so far as it is apprehended) as a part. Such

is the elementary basis from which all our intellectual operations

commence."

[228] Compare the charming passage in Taine on Intelligence (N. Y.

ed.), i, 83-4.

[229] E.g.: "The stream of thought is not a continuous current, but a

series of distinct ideas, more or less rapid in their succession; the

rapidity being measurable by the number that pass through the mind in a

given time." (Bain: E. and W., p. 29.)

[230] Few writers have admitted that we cognize relations through

feeling. The intellectualists have explicitly denied the possibility of

such a thing--e.g., Prof. T. H. Green ('Mind,' vol. vii, p. 28): "No

feeling, as such or as felt, is [of?] a relation.... Even a relation

between feelings is not itself a feeling or felt." On the other hand,

the sensationists have either smuggled in the cognition without giving

any account of it, or have denied the relations to be cognized, or

even to exist, at all. A few honorable exceptions, however, deserve

to be named among the sensationists. Destutt de Tracy, Laromiguière,

Cardaillac, Brown, and finally Spencer, have explicitly contended for

feelings of relation, consubstantial with our feelings or thoughts

of the terms 'between' which they obtain. Thus Destutt de Tracy says

(Éléments d'Idéologie, T. Ier, chap. iv): "The faculty of judgment

is itself a sort of sensibility, for it is the faculty of feeling

the relations among our ideas; and to feel relations is to feel."

Laromiguière writes (Leçons de Philosophie, IIme Partie, 3me Leçon):

"There is no one whose intelligence does not embrace simultaneously

many ideas, more or less distinct, more or less confused. Now, when

we have many ideas at once, a peculiar feeling arises in us: we feel,

among these ideas, resemblances, differences, relations. Let us call

this mode of feeling, common to us all, the feeling of relation,

or relation-feeling (_sentiment-rapport_). One sees immediately

that these relation-feelings, resulting from the propinquity of

ideas, must be infinitely more numerous than the sensation-feelings

(_sentiments-sensations_) or the feelings we have of the action of

our faculties. The slightest knowledge of the mathematical theory of

combinations will prove this.... _Ideas_ of relation originate in

feelings of relation. They are the effect of our comparing them and

reasoning about them."

Similarly, de Cardaillac (Études Élémentaires de Philosophie, Section

i, chap. vii):

"By a natural consequence, we are led to suppose that at the same time

that we have several sensations or several ideas in the mind, we feel

the relations which exist between these sensations, and the relations

which exist between these ideas.... If the feeling of relations exists

in us,... it is necessarily the most varied and the most fertile of

all human feelings: 1°, the most varied, because, relations being more

numerous than beings, the feelings of relation must be in the same

proportion more numerous than the sensations whose presence gives rise

to their formation; 2°, the most fertile, for the relative ideas of

which the feeling-of-relation is the source ... are more important

than absolute ideas, if such exist.... If we interrogate common

speech, we find the feeling of relation expressed there in a thousand

different ways. If it is easy to seize a relation, we say that it is

_sensible_, to distinguish it from one which, because its terms are

too remote, cannot be as quickly perceived. A sensible difference,

or resemblance.... What is taste in the arts, in intellectual

productions? What but the feeling of those relations among the parts

which constitutes their merit?... Did we not feel relations we should

never attain to true knowledge,... for almost all our knowledge is of

relations.... We never have an isolated sensation;... we are therefore

never without the feeling of relation.... An _object_ strikes our

senses; we see in it only a sensation.... The relative is so near the

absolute, the relation-feeling so near the sensation-feeling, the two

are so intimately fused in the composition of the object, that the

relation appears to us as part of the sensation itself. It is doubtless

to this sort of fusion between sensations and feelings of relation that

the silence of metaphysicians as to the latter is due; and it is for

the same reason that they have obstinately persisted in asking from

sensation alone those ideas of relation which it was powerless to give."

Dr. Thomas Brown writes (Lectures, xlv, _init._): "There is an

extensive order of our feelings which involve this notion of relation,

and which consist indeed in the mere perception of a relation of some

sort.... Whether the relation be of two or of many external objects, or

of two or many affections of the mind, the feeling of this relation ...

is what I term a relative suggestion; that phrase being the simplest

which it is possible to employ, for expressing, without any theory, the

mere fact of the rise of certain feelings of relation, after certain

other feelings which precede them; and therefore, as involving no

particular theory, and simply expressive of an undoubted fact.... That

the feelings of relation are states of the mind essentially different

from our simple perceptions, or conceptions of the objects,... that

they are not what Condillac terms _transformed sensations_, I proved

in a former lecture, when I combated the excessive simplification of

that ingenious but not very accurate philosopher. There is an original

tendency or susceptibility of the mind, by which, on perceiving

together different objects, we are instantly, without the intervention

of any other mental process, sensible of their relation in certain

respects, as truly as there is an original tendency or susceptibility

by which, when external objects are present and have produced a certain

affection of our sensorial organ, we are instantly affected with the

primary elementary feelings of perception; and, I may add, that as

our sensations or perceptions are of various species, so are there

various species of relations;--the number of relations, indeed, even of

external things, being almost infinite, while the number of perceptions

is, necessarily, limited by that of the objects which have the power of

producing some affection of our organs of sensation.... Without that

susceptibility of the mind by which it has the feeling of relation, our

consciousness would be as truly limited to a single point, as our body

would become, were it possible to fetter it to a single atom."

Mr. Spencer is even more explicit. His philosophy is crude in that he

seems to suppose that it is only in transitive states that outward

relations are known; whereas in truth space-relations, relations

of contrast, etc., are felt along with their terms, in substantive

states as well as in transitive states, as we shall abundantly see.

Nevertheless Mr. Spencer's passage is so clear that it also deserves to

be quoted in full (Principles of Psychology, § 65):

"The proximate components of Mind are of two broadly-contrasted

kinds--Feelings and the relations between feelings. Among the members

of each group there exist multitudinous unlikenesses, many of which are

extremely strong; but such unlikenesses are small compared with those

which distinguish members of the one group from members of the other.

Let us, in the first place, consider what are the characters which

all Feelings have in common, and what are the characters which all

Relations between feelings have in common.

"Each feeling, as we here define it, is any portion of consciousness

which occupies a place sufficiently large to give it a perceivable

individuality; which has its individuality marked off from adjacent

portions of consciousness by qualitative contrasts; and which, when

introspectively contemplated, appears to be homogeneous. These are the

essentials. Obviously if, under introspection, a state of consciousness

is decomposable into unlike parts that exist either simultaneously or

successively, it is not one feeling but two or more. Obviously if it is

indistinguishable from an adjacent portion of consciousness, it forms

one with that portion--is not an individual feeling, but part of one.

And obviously if it does not occupy in consciousness an appreciable

area, or an appreciable duration, it cannot be known as a feeling.

"A Relation between feelings is, on the contrary, characterized by

occupying no appreciable part of consciousness. Take away the terms

it unites, and it disappears along with them; having no independent

place, no individuality of its own. It is true that, under an ultimate

analysis, what we call a relation proves to be itself a kind of

feeling--the momentary feeling accompanying the transition from

one conspicuous feeling to an adjacent conspicuous feeling. And it

is true that, notwithstanding its extreme brevity, its qualitative

character is appreciable; for relations are (as we shall hereafter

see) distinguishable from one another only by the unlikenesses of the

feelings which accompany the momentary transitions. Each relational

feeling may, in fact, be regarded as one of those nervous shocks

which we suspect to be the units of composition of feelings; and,

though instantaneous, it is known as of greater or less strength,

and as taking place with greater or less facility. But the contrast

between these relational feelings and what we ordinarily call feelings

is so strong that we must class them apart. Their extreme brevity,

their small variety, and their dependence on the terms they unite,

differentiate them in an unmistakable way.

"Perhaps it will be well to recognize more fully the truth that this

distinction cannot be absolute. Besides admitting that, as an element

of consciousness, a relation is a momentary feeling, we must also

admit that just as a relation can have no existence apart from the

feelings which form its terms, so a feeling can exist only by relations

to other feelings which limit it in space or time or both. Strictly

speaking, neither a feeling nor a relation is an independent element

of consciousness: there is throughout a dependence such that the

appreciable areas of consciousness occupied by feelings can no more

possess individualities apart from the relations which link them, than

these relations can possess individualities apart from the feelings

they link. The essential distinction between the two, then, appears

to be that whereas a relational feeling is a portion of consciousness

inseparable into parts, a feeling, ordinarily so called, is a portion

of consciousness that admits imaginary division into like parts which

are related to one another in sequence or coexistence. A feeling proper

is either made up of like parts that occupy time, or it is made up of

like parts that occupy space, or both. In any case, a feeling proper

is an aggregate of related like parts, while a relational feeling is

undecomposable. And this is exactly the contrast between the two which

must result if, as we have inferred, feelings are composed of units of

feelings, or shocks."

[231] M. Paulhan (Revue Philosophique, xx, 455-6), after speaking

of the faint mental images of objects and emotions, says: "We find

other vaguer states still, upon which attention seldom rests, except

in persons who by nature or profession are addicted to internal

observation. It is even difficult to name them precisely, for they

are little known and not classed; but we may cite as an example of

them that peculiar impression which we feel when, strongly preoccupied

by a certain subject, we nevertheless are engaged with, and have our

attention almost completely absorbed by, matters quite disconnected

therewithal. We do not then exactly think of the object of our

preoccupation; we do not represent it in a clear manner; and yet our

mind is not as it would be without this preoccupation. Its object,

absent from consciousness, is nevertheless represented there by a

peculiar unmistakable impression, which often persists long and is a

strong feeling, although so obscure for our intelligence." "A mental

sign of the kind is the unfavorable disposition left in our mind

towards an individual by painful incidents erewhile experienced and

now perhaps forgotten. The sign remains, but is not understood; its

definite meaning is lost." (P. 458.)

[232] Mozart describes thus his manner of composing: First bits and

crumbs of the piece come and gradually join together in his mind;

then the soul getting warmed to the work, the thing grows more and

more, "and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets

almost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I

can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were

a beautiful painting or a handsome human being; in which way I do not

hear it in my imagination at all as a succession--the way it must

come later--but all at once, as it were. If is a rare feast! All the

inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong dream. But

the best of all is the _hearing of it all at once_."

[233] Mental Physiology, § 236. Dr. Carpenter's explanation differs

materially from that given in the text.

[234] Cf. also S. Stricker: Vorlesungen über allg. u. exp. Pathologie

(1879), pp. 462-3, 501, 547; Romanes: Origin of Human Faculty, p.

82. It is so hard to make one's self clear that I may advert to a

misunderstanding of my views by the late Prof. Thos. Maguire of Dublin

(Lectures on Philosophy, 1885). This author considers that by the

'fringe' I mean some sort of psychic material by which sensations in

themselves separate are made to cohere together, and wittily says that

I ought to "see that uniting sensations by their 'fringes' is more

vague than to construct the universe out of oysters by platting their

beards" (p. 211). But the fringe, as I use the word, means nothing like

this; it is part of the _object cognized_,--substantive _qualities_

and _things_ appearing to the mind in a _fringe of relations_.

Some parts--the transitive parts--of our stream of thought cognize

the relations rather than the things; but both the transitive and

the substantive parts form one continuous stream, with no discrete

'sensations' in it such as Prof. Maguire supposes, and supposes me to

suppose, to be there.

[235] George Campbell: Philosophy of Rhetoric, book ii, chap. vii.

[236] Substantialism or Philosophy of Knowledge, by 'Jean Story' (1879).

[237] M. G. Tarde, quoting (in Delbœuf, Le Sommeil et les Rêves (1885),

p. 226) some nonsense-verses from a dream, says they show "how prosodic

forms may subsist in a mind from which logical rules are effaced....

I was able, in dreaming, to preserve the faculty of finding two words

which rhymed, to appreciate the rhyme, to fill up the verse as it first

presented itself with other words which, added, gave the right number

of syllables, and yet I was ignorant of the sense of the words....

Thus we have the extraordinary fact that the words called each other

up, without calling up their sense.... Even when awake, it is more

difficult to ascend to the meaning of a word than to pass from one word

to another; or to put it otherwise, _it is harder to be a thinker than

to be a rhetorician_, and on the whole nothing is commoner than trains

of words not understood."

[238] We think it odd that young children should listen with such rapt

attention to the reading of stories expressed in words half of which

they do not understand, and of none of which they ask the meaning. But

their thinking is in form just what ours is when it is rapid. Both

of us make flying leaps over large portions of the sentences uttered

and we give attention only to substantive starting points, turning

points, and conclusions here and there. All the rest, 'substantive' and

separately intelligible as it may _potentially_ be, actually serves

only as so much transitive material. It is _internodal_ consciousness,

giving us the sense of continuity, but having no significance apart

from its mere gap-filling function. The children probably feel no gap

when through a lot of unintelligible words they are swiftly carried to

a familiar and intelligible terminus.

[239] Not literally _heard_, of course. Deaf mutes are quick to

perceive shocks and jars that can be felt, even when so slight as to be

unnoticed by those who can hear.

[240] Quoted by Samuel Porter: 'Is Thought possible without Language?'

in Princeton Review, 57th year, pp. 108-12 (Jan. 1881?). Cf. also

W. W. Ireland: The Blot upon the Brain (1886), Paper x, part ii;

G. J. Romanes: Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 81-83, and references

therein made. Prof. Max Müller gives a very complete history of this

controversy in pp. 30-64 of his 'Science of Thought' (1887). His own

view is that Thought and Speech are inseparable; but under speech he

includes any conceivable sort of symbolism or even mental imagery, and

he makes no allowance for the wordless summary glimpses which we have

of systems of relation and direction.

[241] Problems of Life and Mind, 3d Series, Problem iv, chapter 5.

Compare also Victor Egger: La Parole Intérieure (Paris, 1881), chap. vi.

[242] If but one person sees an apparition we consider it his private

hallucination. If more than one, we begin to think it may be a real

external presence.

[243] Revue Philosophique, vol. xxi, p. 671.

[244] Quoted from the Therapeutic Gazette, by the N. Y. Semi-weekly

Evening Post for Nov. 2, 1886.

[245] In half-stunned states self-consciousness may lapse. A friend

writes me: "We were driving back from ---- in a wagonette. The door

flew open and X., alias 'Baldy,' fell out on the road. We pulled up at

once, and then he said, 'Did anybody fall out?' or 'Who fell out?'--I

don't exactly remember the words. When told that Baldy fell out, he

said, 'Did Baldy fall out? Poor Baldy!'"

[246] Kant originated this view. I subjoin a few English statements of

it. J. Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic, Proposition i: "Along with

whatever any intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condition

of its knowledge, have some knowledge of itself." Sir Wm. Hamilton,

Discussions, p. 47: "We know, and we know that we know,--these

propositions, logically distinct, are really identical; each implies

the other.... So true is the scholastic brocard: _non sentimus nisi

sentiamus nos sentire_." H. L. Mansel, Metaphysics, p. 58: "Whatever

variety of materials may exist within reach of my mind, I can become

conscious of them only by recognizing them as mine.... Relation to

the conscious self is thus the permanent and universal feature which

every state of consciousness as such must exhibit." T. H. Green,

Introduction to Hume, p. 12: "A consciousness by the man ... of

himself, in negative relation to the thing that is his object, and this

consciousness must be taken to go along with the perceptive act itself.

Not less than this indeed can be involved in any act that is to be the

beginning of knowledge at all. It is the minimum of possible thought or

intelligence."

[247] Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Lecture 45.

[248] Instead of saying _to our feeling only_, he should have said, to

the _object_ only.

[249] "There can be no difficulty in admitting that association does

form the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals into one complex

idea; because it is an acknowledged fact. Have we not the idea of an

army? And is not that precisely the ideas of an indefinite number of

men formed into one idea?" (Jas. Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind (J.

S. Mill's Edition), vol. i, p. 264.)

[250] For their arguments, see above.

[251] I know there are readers whom nothing can convince that the

thought of a complex object has not as many parts as are discriminated

in the object itself. Well, then, let the word parts pass. Only

observe that these parts are not the separate 'ideas' of traditional

psychology. No one of them can live out of that particular thought, any

more than my head can live off of my particular shoulders. In a sense a

soap-bubble has parts; it is a sum of juxtaposed spherical triangles.

But these triangles are not separate realities; neither are the 'parts'

of the thought separate realities. Touch the bubble and the triangles

are no more. Dismiss the thought and out go its parts. You can no more

make a new thought out of 'ideas' that have once served than you can

make a new bubble out of old triangles Each bubble, each thought, is a

fresh organic unity, _sui generis_.

[252] In his work, La Parole Intérieure (Paris, 1881), especially

chapters vi and vii.

[253] Page 301.

[254] Page 218. To prove this point, M. Egger appeals to the fact that

we often hear some one speak whilst our mind is preoccupied, but do

not understand him until some moments afterwards, when we suddenly

'realize' what he meant. Also to our digging out the meaning of a

sentence in an unfamiliar tongue, where the words are present to us

long before the idea is taken in. In these special cases the word

does indeed precede the idea. The idea, on the contrary, precedes

the word whenever we try to express ourselves with effort, as in a

foreign tongue, or in an unusual field of intellectual invention. Both

sets of cases, however, are exceptional, and M. Egger would probably

himself admit, on reflection, that in the former class there is some

sort of a verbal suffusion, however evanescent, of the idea, when it

is grasped--we hear the echo of the words as we catch their meaning.

And he would probably admit that in the second class of cases the idea

persists after the words that came with so much effort are found. In

normal cases the simultaneity, as he admits, is obviously there.

[255] A good way to get the words and the sense separately is to

inwardly articulate word for word the discourse of another. One then

finds that the meaning will often come to the mind in pulses, after

clauses or sentences are finished.

[256] The nearest approach (with which I am acquainted) to the doctrine

set forth here is in O. Liebmaun's Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, pp.

427-438.

CHAPTER X.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF.

Let us begin with the Self in its widest acceptation, and follow it up

to its most delicate and subtle form, advancing from the study of the

empirical, as the Germans call it, to that of the pure, Ego.

THE EMPIRICAL SELF OR ME.

The Empirical Self of each of us is all that he is tempted to call by

the name of _me_. But it is clear that between what a man calls _me_

and what he simply calls _mine_ the line is difficult to draw. We feel

and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act

about ourselves. Our fame, our children, the work of our hands, may

be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feelings and

the same acts of reprisal if attacked. And our bodies themselves, are

they simply ours, or are they _us_? Certainly men have been ready to

disown their very bodies and to regard them as mere vestures, or even

as prisons of clay from which they should some day be glad to escape.

We see then that we are dealing with a fluctuating material. The

same object being sometimes treated as a part of me, at other times

as simply mine, and then again as if I had nothing to do with it at

all. _In its widest possible sense_, however, _a man's Self is the

sum total of all that he_ CAN _call his_, not only his body and his

psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children,

his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and

horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same

emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle

and die away, he feels cast down,--not necessarily in the same degree

for each thing, but in much the same way for all. Understanding the

Self in this widest sense, we may begin by dividing the history of it

into three parts, relating respectively to--

1. Its constituents;

2. The feelings and emotions they arouse,--_Self-feelings;_

3. The actions to which they prompt,--_Self-seeking and

Self-preservation._

* * * * *

1. _The constituents of the Self_ may be divided into two classes,

those which make up respectively--

(_a_) The material Self;

(_b_) The social Self;

(_c_) The spiritual Self; and

(_d_) The pure Ego.

(_a_) The body is the innermost part of _the material Self_ in each of

us; and certain parts of the body seem more intimately ours than the

rest. The clothes come next. The old saying that the human person is

composed of three parts--soul, body and clothes--is more than a joke.

We so appropriate our clothes and identify ourselves with them that

there are few of us who, if asked to choose between having a beautiful

body clad in raiment perpetually shabby and unclean, and having an ugly

and blemished form always spotlessly attired, would not hesitate a

moment before making a decisive reply.[257] Next, our immediate family

is a part of ourselves. Our father and mother, our wife and babes, are

bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our

very selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If

they are insulted, our anger flashes forth as readily as if we stood

in their place. Our home comes next. Its scenes are part of our life;

its aspects awaken the tenderest feelings of affection; and we do not

easily forgive the stranger who, in visiting it, finds fault with its

arrangements or treats it with contempt. All these different things are

the objects of instinctive preferences coupled with the most important

practical interests of life. We all have a blind impulse to watch over

our body, to deck it with clothing of an ornamental sort, to cherish

parents, wife and babes, and to find for ourselves a home of our own

which we may live in and 'improve.'

An equally instinctive impulse drives us to collect property; and the

collections thus made become, with different degrees of intimacy, parts

of our empirical selves. The parts of our wealth most intimately ours

are those which are saturated with our labor. There are few men who

would not feel personally annihilated if a life-long construction of

their hands or brains--say an entomological collection or an extensive

work in manuscript--were suddenly swept away. The miser feels similarly

towards his gold, and although it is true that a part of our depression

at the loss of possessions is due to our feeling that we must now go

without certain goods that we expected the possessions to bring in

their train, yet in every case there remains, over and above this,

a sense of the shrinkage of our personality, a partial conversion

of ourselves to nothingness, which is a psychological phenomenon by

itself. We are all at once assimilated to the tramps and poor devils

whom we so despise, and at the same time removed farther than ever away

from the happy sons of earth who lord it over land and sea and men in

the full-blown lustihood that wealth and power can give, and before

whom, stiffen ourselves as we will by appealing to anti-snobbish first

principles, we cannot escape an emotion, open or sneaking, of respect

and dread.

* * * * *

(_b_) _A man's Social Self_ is the recognition which he gets from his

mates. We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our

fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and

noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be

devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should

be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the

members thereof. If no one turned round when we entered, answered when

we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met 'cut us

dead,' and acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage

and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the

cruellest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us

feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a

depth as to be unworthy of attention at all.

Properly speaking, _a man has as many social selves as there are

individuals who recognize him_ and carry an image of him in their

mind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound him.[258] But

as the individuals who carry the images fall naturally into classes,

we may practically say that he has as many different social selves

as there are distinct _groups_ of persons about whose opinion he

cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these

different groups. Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents

and teachers, swears and swaggers like a pirate among his 'tough'

young friends. We do not show ourselves to our children as to our

club-companions, to our customers as to the laborers we employ, to our

own masters and employers as to our intimate friends. From this there

results what practically is a division of the man into several selves;

and this may be a discordant splitting, as where one is afraid to let

one set of his acquaintances know him as he is elsewhere; or it may be

a perfectly harmonious division of labor, as where one tender to his

children is stern to the soldiers or prisoners under his command.

The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind

of the person one is in love with. The good or bad fortunes of this

self cause the most intense elation and dejection--unreasonable enough

as measured by every other standard than that of the organic feeling

of the individual. To his own consciousness he _is_ not, so long as

this particular social self fails to get recognition, and when it is

recognized his contentment passes all bounds.

A man's _fame_, good or bad, and his _honor_ or dishonor, are names for

one of his social selves. The particular social self of a man called

his honor is usually the result of one of those splittings of which

we have spoken. It is his image in the eyes of his own 'set,' which

exalts or condemns him as he conforms or not to certain requirements

that may not be made of one in another walk of life. Thus a layman

may abandon a city infected with cholera; but a priest or a doctor

would think such an act incompatible with his honor. A soldier's honor

requires him to fight or to die under circumstances where another man

can apologize or run away with no stain upon his social self. A judge,

a statesman, are in like manner debarred by the honor of their cloth

from entering into pecuniary relations perfectly honorable to persons

in private life. Nothing is commoner than to hear people discriminate

between their different selves of this sort: "As a man I pity you, but

as an official I must show you no mercy; as a politician I regard him

as an ally, but as a moralist I loathe him;" etc., etc. What may be

called 'club-opinion' is one of the very strongest forces in life.[259]

The thief must not steal from other thieves; the gambler must pay his

gambling-debts, though he pay no other debts in the world. The code

of honor of fashionable society has throughout history been full of

permissions as well as of vetoes, the only reason for following either

of which is that so we best serve one of our social selves. You must

not lie in general, but you may lie as much as you please if asked

about your relations with a lady; you must accept a challenge from an

equal, but if challenged by an inferior you may laugh him to scorn:

these are examples of what is meant.

* * * * *

(_c_) By the Spiritual Self, so far as it belongs to the Empirical

Me, I mean a man's inner or subjective being, his psychic faculties

or dispositions, taken concretely; not the bare principle of

personal Unity, or 'pure' Ego, which remains still to be discussed.

These psychic dispositions are the most enduring and intimate

part of the self, that which we most verily seem to be. We take

a purer self-satisfaction when we think of our ability to argue

and discriminate, of our moral sensibility and conscience, of our

indomitable will, than when we survey any of our other possessions.

Only when these are altered is a man said to be _alienatus a se_.

Now this spiritual self may be considered in various ways. We may

divide it into faculties, as just instanced, isolating them one from

another, and identifying ourselves with either in turn. This is an

_abstract_ way of dealing with consciousness, in which, as it actually

presents itself, a plurality of such faculties are always to be

simultaneously found; or we may insist on a concrete view, and then the

spiritual self in us will be either the entire stream of our personal

consciousness, or the present 'segment' or 'section' of that stream,

according as we take a broader or a narrower view--both the stream and

the section being concrete existences in time, and each being a unity

after its own peculiar kind. But whether we take it abstractly or

concretely, our considering the spiritual self at all is a reflective

process, is the result of our abandoning the outward-looking point of

view, and of our having become able to think of subjectivity as such,

_to think ourselves as thinkers_.

This attention to thought as such, and the identification of ourselves

with it rather than with any of the objects which it reveals, is a

momentous and in some respects a rather mysterious operation, of which

we need here only say that as a matter of fact it exists; and that in

everyone, at an early age, the distinction between thought as such,

and what it is 'of' or 'about,' has become familiar to the mind. The

deeper grounds for this discrimination may possibly be hard to find;

but superficial grounds are plenty and near at hand. Almost anyone will

tell us that thought is a different sort of existence from things,

because many sorts of thought are of no things--e.g., pleasures, pains,

and emotions; others are of non-existent things--errors and fictions;

others again of existent things, but in a form that is symbolic

and does not resemble them--abstract ideas and concepts; whilst in

the thoughts that do resemble the things they are 'of' (percepts,

sensations), we can feel, alongside of the thing known, the thought of

it going on as an altogether separate act and operation in the mind.

Now this subjective life of ours, distinguished as such so clearly

from the objects known by its means, may, as aforesaid, be taken by

us in a concrete or in an abstract way. Of the concrete way I will

say nothing just now, except that the actual 'section' of the stream

will ere long, in our discussion of the nature of the principle of

_unity_ in consciousness, play a very important part. The abstract way

claims our attention first. If the stream as a whole is identified

with the Self far more than any outward thing, a _certain portion of

the stream abstracted from the rest_ is so identified in an altogether

peculiar degree, and is felt by all men as a sort of innermost centre

within the circle, of sanctuary within the citadel, constituted by the

subjective life as a whole. Compared with this element of the stream,

the other parts, even of the subjective life, seem transient external

possessions, of which each in turn can be disowned, whilst that which

disowns them remains. Now, _what is this self of all the other selves?_

Probably all men would describe it in much the same way up to a certain

point. They would call it the _active_ element in all consciousness;

saying that whatever qualities a man's feelings may possess, or

whatever content his thought may include, there is a spiritual

something in him which seems to _go out_ to meet these qualities

and contents, whilst they seem to _come in_ to be received by it.

It is what welcomes or rejects. It presides over the perception of

sensations, and by giving or withholding its assent it influences the

movements they tend to arouse. It is the home of interest,--not the

pleasant or the painful, not even pleasure or pain, as such, but that

within us to which pleasure and pain, the pleasant and the painful,

speak. It is the source of effort and attention, and the place from

which appear to emanate the fiats of the will. A physiologist who

should reflect upon it in his own person could hardly help, I should

think, connecting it more or less vaguely with the process by which

ideas or incoming sensations are 'reflected' or pass over into outward

acts. Not necessarily that it should _be_ this process or the mere

feeling of this process, but that it should be in some close way

_related_ to this process; for it plays a part analogous to it in the

psychic life, being a sort of junction at which sensory ideas terminate

and from which motor ideas proceed, and forming a kind of link between

the two. Being more incessantly there than any other single element of

the mental life, the other elements end by seeming to accrete round

it and to belong to it. It become opposed to them as the permanent is

opposed to the changing and inconstant.

One may, I think, without fear of being upset by any future Galtonian

circulars, believe that all men must single out from the rest of

what they call themselves some central principle of which each would

recognize the foregoing to be a fair general description,--accurate

enough, at any rate, to denote what is meant, and keep it unconfused

with other things. The moment, however, they came to closer quarters

with it, trying to define more accurately its precise nature, we

should find opinions beginning to diverge. Some would say that it is a

simple active substance, the soul, of which they are thus conscious;

others, that it is nothing but a fiction, the imaginary being denoted

by the pronoun I; and between these extremes of opinion all sorts of

intermediaries would be found.

Later we must ourselves discuss them all, and sufficient to that day

will be the evil thereof. _Now_, let us try to settle for ourselves

as definitely as we can, just how this central nucleus of the Self

may _feel_, no matter whether it be a spiritual substance or only a

delusive word.

For this central part of the Self is _felt_. It may be all that

Transcendentalists say it is, and all that Empiricists say it is into

the bargain, but it is at any rate no _mere ens rationis_, cognized

only in an intellectual way, and no _mere_ summation of memories or

_mere_ sound of a word in our ears. It is something with which we also

have direct sensible acquaintance, and which is as fully present at

any moment of consciousness in which it _is_ present, as in a whole

lifetime of such moments. When, just now, it was called an abstraction,

that did not mean that, like some general notion, it could not be

presented in a particular experience. It only meant that in the stream

of consciousness it never was found all alone. But when it is found,

it is _felt_; just as the body is felt, the feeling of which is also

an abstraction, because never is the body felt all alone, but always

together with other things. _Now can we tell more precisely in what the

feeling of this central active self consists,_--not necessarily as yet

what the active self _is_, as a being or principle, but what we _feel_

when we become aware of its existence?

I think I can in my own case; and as what I say will be likely to

meet with opposition if generalized (as indeed it may be in part

inapplicable to other individuals), I had better continue in the

first person, leaving my description, to be accepted by those to

whose introspection it may commend itself as true, and confessing my

inability to meet the demands of others, if others there be.

First of all, I am aware of a constant play of furtherances and

hindrances in my thinking, of checks and releases, tendencies which

run with desire, and tendencies which run the other way. Among the

matters I think of, some range themselves on the side of the thought's

interests, whilst others play an unfriendly part thereto. The mutual

inconsistencies and agreements, reinforcements and obstructions, which

obtain amongst these objective matters reverberate backwards and

produce what seem to be incessant reactions of my spontaneity upon

them, welcoming or opposing, appropriating or disowning, striving with

or against, saying yes or no. This palpitating inward life is, in me,

that central nucleus which I just tried to describe in terms that all

men might use.

But when I forsake such general descriptions and grapple with

particulars, coming to the closest possible quarters with the

facts, _it is difficult for me to detect in the activity any purely

spiritual element at all. Whenever my introspective glance succeeds in

turning round quickly enough to catch one of these manifestations of

spontaneity in the act, all it can ever feel distinctly is some bodily

process, for the most part taking place within the head._ Omitting for

a moment what is obscure in these introspective results, let me try to

state those particulars which to my own consciousness seem indubitable

and distinct.

In the first place, the acts of attending, assenting, negating, making

an effort, are felt as movements of something in the head. In many

cases it is possible to describe these movements quite exactly. In

attending to either an idea or a sensation belonging to a particular

sense-sphere, the movement is the adjustment of the sense-organ, felt

as it occurs. I cannot think in visual terms, for example, without

feeling a fluctuating play of pressures, convergences, divergences,

and accommodations in my eyeballs. The direction in which the object

is conceived to lie determines the character of these movements, the

feeling of which becomes, for my consciousness, identified with the

manner in which I make myself ready to receive the visible thing. My

brain appears to me as if all shot across with lines of direction, of

which I have become conscious as my attention has shifted from one

sense-organ to another, in passing to successive outer things, or in

following trains of varying sense-ideas.

When I try to remember or reflect, the movements in question, instead

of being directed towards the periphery, seem to come from the

periphery inwards and feel like a sort of _withdrawal_ from the outer

world. As far as I can detect, these feelings are due to an actual

rolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs, such as I believe occurs

in me in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their action in fixating

a physical thing. In reasoning, I find that I am apt to have a kind

of vaguely localized diagram in my mind, with the various fractional

objects of the thought disposed at particular points thereof; and the

oscillations of my attention from one of them to another are most

distinctly felt as alternations of direction in movements occurring

inside the head.[260]

In consenting and negating, and in making a mental effort, the

movements seem more complex, and I find them harder to describe.

The opening and closing of the glottis play a great part in these

operations, and, less distinctly, the movements of the soft palate,

etc., shutting off the posterior nares from the mouth. My glottis

is like a sensitive valve, intercepting my breath instantaneously

at every mental hesitation or felt aversion to the objects of my

thought, and as quickly opening, to let the air pass through my throat

and nose, the moment the repugnance is overcome. The feeling of the

movement of this air is, in me, one strong ingredient of the feeling

of assent. The movements of the muscles of the brow and eyelids also

respond very sensitively to every fluctuation in the agreeableness or

disagreeableness of what comes before my mind.

In _effort_ of any sort, contractions of the jaw-muscles and of those

of respiration are added to those of the brow and glottis, and thus the

feeling passes out of the head properly so called. It passes out of the

head whenever the welcoming or rejecting of the object is _strongly_

felt. Then a set of feelings pour in from many bodily parts, all

'expressive' of my emotion, and the head-feelings proper are swallowed

up in this larger mass.

In a sense, then, it may be truly said that, in one person at least,

_the 'Self of selves,' when carefully examined, is found to consist

mainly of the collection of these peculiar motions in the head or

between the head and throat_. I do not for a moment say that this is

_all_ it consists of, for I fully realize how desperately hard is

introspection in this field. But I feel quite sure that these cephalic

motions are the portions of my innermost activity of which I am _most

distinctly aware_. If the dim portions which I cannot yet define should

prove to be like unto these distinct portions in me, and I like other

men, _it would follow that our entire feeling of spiritual activity,

or what commonly passes by that name, is really a feeling of bodily

activities whose exact nature is by most men overlooked._

* * * * *

Now, without pledging ourselves in any way to adopt this hypothesis,

let us dally with it for a while to see to what consequences it might

lead if it were true.

In the first place, the nuclear part of the Self, intermediary

between ideas and overt acts, would be a collection of activities

physiologically in no essential way different from the overt acts

themselves. If we divide all possible physiological acts into

_adjustments_ and _executions_, the nuclear self would be the

adjustments collectively considered; and the less intimate, more

shifting self, so far as it was active, would be the executions. But

both adjustments and executions would obey the reflex type. Both

would be the result of sensorial and ideational processes discharging

either into each other within the brain, or into muscles and other

parts outside. The peculiarity of the adjustments would be that they

are minimal reflexes, few in number, incessantly repeated, constant

amid great fluctuations in the rest of the mind's content, and

entirely unimportant and uninteresting except through their uses in

furthering or inhibiting the presence of various things, and actions

before consciousness. These characters would naturally keep us from

introspectively paying much attention to them in detail, whilst they

would at the same time make us aware of them as a coherent group of

processes, strongly contrasted with all the other things consciousness

contained,--even with the other constituents of the 'Self,' material,

social, or spiritual, as the case might be. They are reactions, and

they are _primary_ reactions. Everything arouses them; for objects

which have no other effects will for a moment contract the brow and

make the glottis close. It is as if all that visited the mind had to

stand an entrance-examination, and just show its face so as to be

either approved or sent back. These primary reactions are like the

opening or the closing of the door. In the midst of psychic change

they are the permanent core of turnings-towards and turnings-from,

of yieldings and arrests, which naturally seem central and interior

in comparison with the foreign matters, _a propos_ to which they

occur, and hold a sort of arbitrating, decisive position, quite unlike

that held by any of the other constituents of the Me. It would not

be surprising, then, if we were to feel them as the birthplace of

conclusions and the starting point of acts, or if they came to appear

as what we called a while back the 'sanctuary within the citadel' of

our personal life.[261]

If they really were the innermost sanctuary, the _ultimate_ one of all

the selves whose being we can ever directly experience, it would follow

that _all_ that is experienced is, strictly considered, _objective_;

that this Objective falls asunder into two contrasted parts, one

realized as 'Self,' the other as 'not-Self; 'and that over and above

these parts there _is_ nothing save the fact that they are known,

the fact of the stream of thought being there as the indispensable

subjective condition of their being experienced at all. But this

_condition_ of the experience is not one of the _things experienced_

at the moment; this knowing is not immediately _known_. It is only

known in subsequent reflection. Instead, then, of the stream of thought

being one of _con_-sciousness, "thinking its own existence along with

whatever else it thinks," (as Ferrier says) it might be better called

a stream of _Scious_ness pure and simple, thinking objects of some of

which it makes what it calls a 'Me,' and only aware of its 'pure' Self

in an abstract, hypothetic or conceptual way. Each 'section' of the

stream would then be a bit of sciousness or knowledge of this sort,

including and contemplating its 'me' and its 'not-me' as objects which

work out their drama together, but not yet including or contemplating

its own subjective being. The sciousness in question would be the

_Thinker_, and the existence of this thinker would be given to us

rather as a logical postulate than as that direct inner perception

of spiritual activity which we naturally believe ourselves to have.

'Matter,' as something behind physical phenomena, is a postulate of

this sort. Between the postulated Matter and the postulated Thinker,

the sheet of phenomena would then swing, some of them (the 'realities')

pertaining more to the matter, others (the fictions, opinions, and

errors) pertaining more to the Thinker. But _who_ the Thinker would

be, or how many distinct Thinkers we ought to suppose in the universe,

would all be subjects for an ulterior metaphysical inquiry.

Speculations like this traverse common-sense; and not only do they

traverse common sense (which in philosophy is no insuperable objection)

but they contradict the fundamental assumption of _every_ philosophic

school. Spiritualists, transcendentalists, and empiricists alike admit

in us a continual direct perception of the thinking activity in the

concrete. However they may otherwise disagree, they vie with each other

in the cordiality of their recognition of our _thoughts_ as the one

sort of existent which skepticism cannot touch.[262] I will therefore

treat the last few pages as a parenthetical digression, and from now to

the end of the volume revert to the path of common-sense again. I mean

by this that I will continue to assume (as I have assumed all along,

especially in the last chapter) a direct awareness of the process of

our thinking as such, simply insisting on the fact that it is an even

more inward and subtle phenomenon than most of us suppose. At the

conclusion of the volume, however, I may permit myself to revert again

to the doubts here provisionally mooted, and will indulge in some

metaphysical reflections suggested by them.

* * * * *

At present, then, the only conclusion I come to is the following:

That (in some persons at least) the part of the innermost Self which

is most vividly felt turns out to consist for the most part of a

collection of cephalic movements of 'adjustments' which, for want of

attention and reflection, usually fail to be perceived and classed

as what they are; that over and above these there is an obscurer

feeling of something more; but whether it be of fainter physiological

processes, or of nothing objective at all, but rather of subjectivity

as such, of thought become 'its own object,' must at present remain an

open question,--like the question whether it be an indivisible active

soul-substance, or the question whether it be a personification of the

pronoun I, or any other of the guesses as to what its nature may be.

Farther than this we cannot as yet go clearly in our analysis of the

Self's constituents. So let us proceed to the emotions of Self which

they arouse.

2. SELF-FEELING.

These are primarily _self-complacency_ and _self-dissatisfaction_. Of

what is called 'self-love,' I will treat a little farther on. Language

has synonyms enough for both primary feelings. Thus pride, conceit,

vanity, self-esteem, arrogance, vainglory, on the one hand; and on the

other modesty, humility, confusion, diffidence, shame, mortification,

contrition, the sense of obloquy and personal despair. These two

opposite classes of affection seem to be direct and elementary

endowments of our nature. Associationists would have it that they are,

on the other hand, secondary phenomena arising from a rapid computation

of the sensible pleasures or pains to which our prosperous or debased

personal predicament is likely to lead, the sum of the represented

pleasures forming the self-satisfaction, and the sum of the represented

pains forming the opposite feeling of shame. No doubt, when we are

self-satisfied, we do fondly rehearse all possible rewards for our

desert, and when in a fit of self-despair we forebode evil. But the

mere expectation of reward _is_ not the self-satisfaction, and the mere

apprehension of the evil _is_ not the self-despair, for there is a

certain average tone of self-feeling which each one of us carries about

with him, and which is independent of the objective reasons we may have

for satisfaction or discontent. That is, a very meanly-conditioned man

may abound in unfaltering conceit, and one whose success in life is

secure and who is esteemed by all may remain diffident of his powers to

the end.

One may say, however, that the normal _provocative_ of self-feeling is

one's actual success or failure, and the good or bad actual position

one holds in the world. "He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and

said what a good boy am I." A man with a broadly extended empirical

Ego, with powers that have uniformly brought him success, with place

and wealth and friends and fame, is not likely to be visited by the

morbid diffidences and doubts about himself which he had when he was a

boy. "Is not this great Babylon, which I have planted?"[263] Whereas

he who has made one blunder after another, and still lies in middle

life among the failures at the foot of the hill, is liable to grow all

sicklied o'er with self-distrust, and to shrink from trials with which

his powers can really cope.

The emotions themselves of self-satisfaction and abasement are of a

unique sort, each as worthy to be classed as a primitive emotional

species as are, for example, rage or pain. Each has its own peculiar

physiognomical expression. In self-satisfaction the extensor muscles

are innervated, the eye is strong and glorious, the gait rolling and

elastic, the nostril dilated, and a peculiar smile plays upon the lips.

This whole complex of symptoms is seen in an exquisite way in lunatic

asylums, which always contain some patients who are literally mad

with conceit, and whose fatuous expression and absurdly strutting or

swaggering gait is in tragic contrast with their lack of any valuable

personal quality. It is in these same castles of despair that we find

the strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who

think they have committed 'the unpardonable sin' and are lost forever,

who crouch and cringe and slink from notice, and are unable to speak

aloud or look us in the eye. Like fear and like anger, in similar

morbid conditions, these opposite feelings of Self may be aroused with

no adequate exciting cause. And in fact we ourselves know how the

barometer of our self-esteem and confidence rises and falls from one

day to another through causes that seem to be visceral and organic

rather than rational, and which certainly answer to no corresponding

variations in the esteem in which we are held by our friends. Of the

origin of these emotions in the race, we can speak better when we have

treated of--

3. SELF-SEEKING AND SELF-PRESERVATION.

These words cover a large number of our fundamental instinctive

impulses. We have those of _bodily self-seeking_, those of _social

self-seeking_, and those of _spiritual self-seeking_.

All the ordinary useful reflex actions and movements of alimentation

and defence are acts of bodily self-preservation. Fear and anger prompt

to acts that are useful in the same way. Whilst if by self-seeking we

mean the providing for the future as distinguished from maintaining

the present, we must class both anger and fear with the hunting, the

acquisitive, the home-constructing and the tool-constructing instincts,

as impulses to self-seeking of the bodily kind. Really, however, these

latter instincts, with amativeness, parental fondness, curiosity and

emulation, seek not only the development of the bodily Self, but that

of the material Self in the widest possible sense of the word.

Our _social self-seeking_, in turn, is carried on directly through

our amativeness and friendliness, our desire to please and attract

notice and admiration, our emulation and jealousy, our love of glory,

influence, and power, and indirectly through whichever of the material

self-seeking impulses prove serviceable as means to social ends. That

the direct social self-seeking impulses are probably pure instincts is

easily seen. The noteworthy thing about the desire to be 'recognized'

by others is that its strength has so little to do with the worth of

the recognition computed in sensational or rational terms. We are

crazy to get a visiting-list which shall be large, to be able to say

when any one is mentioned, "Oh! I know him well," and to be bowed to

in the street by half the people we meet. Of course distinguished

friends and admiring recognition are the most desirable--Thackeray

somewhere asks his readers to confess whether it would not give each

of _them_ an exquisite pleasure to be met walking down Pall Mall with

a duke on either arm. But in default of dukes and envious salutations

almost anything will do for some of us; and there is a whole race of

beings to-day whose passion is to keep their names in the newspapers,

no matter under what heading, 'arrivals and departures,' 'personal

paragraphs,' 'interviews,'--gossip, even scandal, will suit them

if nothing better is to be had. Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, is

an example of the extremity to which this sort of craving for the

notoriety of print may go in a pathological case. The newspapers

bounded his mental horizon; and in the poor wretch's prayer on the

scaffold, one of the most heartfelt expressions was: "The newspaper

press of this land has a big bill to settle with thee, O Lord!"

Not only the people but the places and things I know enlarge my Self

in a sort of metaphoric social way. "_Ça me connaît_," as the French

workman says of the implement he can use well. So that it comes about

that persons for whose _opinion_ we care nothing are nevertheless

persons whose notice we woo; and that many a man truly great, many a

woman truly fastidious in most respects, will take a deal of trouble

to dazzle some insignificant cad whose whole personality they heartily

despise.

Under the head of _spiritual self-seeking_ ought to be included

every impulse towards psychic progress, whether intellectual, moral,

or spiritual in the narrow sense of the term. It must be admitted,

however, that much that commonly passes for spiritual self-seeking

in this narrow sense is only material and social self-seeking beyond

the grave. In the Mohammedan desire for paradise and the Christian

aspiration not to be damned in hell, the materiality of the goods

sought is undisguised. In the more positive and refined view of heaven

many of its goods, the fellowship of the saints and of our dead ones,

and the presence of God, are but social goods of the most exalted kind.

It is only the search of the redeemed inward nature, the spotlessness

from sin, whether here or hereafter, that can count as spiritual

self-seeking pure and undefined.

But this broad external review of the facts of the life of the Self

will be incomplete without some account of the

RIVALRY AND CONFLICT OF THE DIFFERENT SELVES.

With most objects of desire, physical nature restricts our choice to

but one of many represented goods, and even so it is here. I am often

confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical selves

and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I could, be both

handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a

million a year, be a wit, a _bon-vivant_, and a lady-killer, as well

as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African

explorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is simply

impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's;

the _bon-vivant_ and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the

philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same

tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably at the

outset of life be alike _possible_ to a man. But to make any one of

them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker

of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully,

and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves

thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its

failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame

and gladness with them. This is as strong an example as there is of

that selective industry of the mind on which I insisted some pages back

(p. 284 ff.). Our thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of

a kind, which ones for it shall be realities, here chooses one of many

possible selves or characters, and forthwith reckons it no shame to

fail in any of those not adopted expressly as its own.

I, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist,

am mortified if others know much more psychology than I. But I am

contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My deficiencies

there give me no sense of personal humiliation at all. Had I

'pretensions' to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse.

So we have the paradox of a man shamed to death because he is only the

second pugilist or the second oarsman in the world. That he is able to

beat the whole population of the globe minus one is nothing; he has

'pitted' himself to beat that one; and as long as he doesn't do that

nothing else counts. He is to his own regard as if he were not, indeed

he _is_ not.

Yonder puny fellow, however, whom every one can beat, suffers no

chagrin about it, for he has long ago abandoned the attempt to 'carry

that line,' as the merchants say, of self at all. With no attempt

there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation. So our

self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we _back_ ourselves

to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our

supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the

denominator and the numerator our success: thus, Self-esteem = Success/

Pretensions. Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing

the denominator as by increasing the numerator.[264] To give up

pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where

disappointment is incessant, and the struggle unending, this is what

men will always do. The history of evangelical theology, with its

conviction of sin, its self-despair, and its abandonment of salvation

by works, is the deepest of possible examples, but we meet others in

every walk of life. There is the strangest lightness about the heart

when one's nothingness in a particular line is once accepted in good

faith. _All_ is not bitterness in the lot of the lover sent away by

the final inexorable 'No.' Many Bostonians, _crede experto_ (and

inhabitants of other cities, too, I fear), would be happier women and

men to-day, if they could once for all abandon the notion of keeping up

a Musical Self, and without shame let people hear them call a symphony

a nuisance. How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be

young,--or slender! Thank God! we say, _those_ illusions are gone.

Everything added to the Self is a burden as well as a pride. A certain

man who lost every penny during our civil war went and actually rolled

in the dust, saying he had not felt so free and happy since he was born.

Once more, then, our self-feeling is in our power. As Carlyle says:

"Make thy claim of wages a zero, then hast thou the world under

thy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write, it is only with

_renunciation_ that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin."

Neither threats nor pleadings can move a man unless they touch some

one of his potential or actual selves. Only thus can we, as a rule,

get a 'purchase' on another's will. The first care of diplomatists and

monarchs and all who wish to rule or influence is, accordingly, to

find out their victim's strongest principle of self-regard, so as to

make that the fulcrum of all appeals. But if a man has given up those

things which are subject to foreign fate, and ceased to regard them as

parts of himself at all, we are well-nigh powerless over him. The Stoic

receipt for contentment was to dispossess yourself in advance of all

that was out of your own power,--then fortune's shocks might rain down

unfelt. Epictetus exhorts us, by thus narrowing and at the same time

solidifying our Self to make it invulnerable: "I must die; well, but

must I die groaning too? I will speak what appears to be right, and if

the despot says, then I will put you to death, I will reply, 'When did

I ever tell you that I was immortal? You will do your part and I mine;

it is yours to kill and mine to die intrepid; yours to banish, mine to

depart untroubled.' How do we act in a voyage? We choose the pilot, the

sailors, the hour. Afterwards comes a storm. What have I to care for?

My part is performed. This matter belongs to the pilot. But the ship is

sinking; what then have I to do? That which alone I can do--submit to

being drowned without fear, without clamor or accusing of God, but as

one who knows that what is born must likewise die."[265]

This Stoic fashion, though efficacious and heroic enough in its

place and time, is, it must be confessed, only possible as an

habitual mood of the soul to narrow and unsympathetic characters. It

proceeds altogether by exclusion. If I am a Stoic, the goods I cannot

appropriate cease to be _my_ goods, and the temptation lies very near

to deny that they are goods at all. We find this mode of protecting

the Self by exclusion and denial very common among people who are in

other respects not Stoics. All narrow people _intrench_ their Me, they

_retract_ it,--from the region of what they cannot securely possess.

People who don't resemble them, or who treat them with indifference,

people over whom they gain no influence, are people on whose existence,

however meritorious it may intrinsically be, they look with chill

negation, if not with positive hate. Who will not be mine I will

exclude from existence altogether; that is, as far as I can make it

so, such people shall be as if they were not.[266] Thus may a certain

absoluteness and definiteness in the outline of my Me console me for

the smallness of its content.

Sympathetic people, on the contrary, proceed by the entirely opposite

way of expansion and inclusion. The outline of their self often gets

uncertain enough, but for this the spread of its content more than

atones. _Nil humani a me alienum._ Let them despise this little person

of mine, and treat me like a dog, _I_ shall not negate _them_ so long

as I have a soul in my body. They are realities as much as I am. What

positive good is in them shall be mine too, etc., etc. The magnanimity

of these expansive natures is often touching indeed. Such persons

can feel a sort of delicate rapture in thinking that, however sick,

ill-favored, mean-conditioned, and generally forsaken they may be,

they yet are integral parts of the whole of this brave world, have a

fellow's share in the strength of the dray-horses, the happiness of

the young people, the wisdom of the wise ones, and are not altogether

without part or lot in the good fortunes of the Vanderbilts and the

Hohenzollerns themselves. Thus either by negating or by embracing,

the Ego may seek to establish itself in reality. He who, with Marcus

Aurelius, can truly say, "O Universe, I wish all that thou wishest,"

has a self from which every trace of negativeness and obstructiveness

has been removed--no wind can blow except to fill its sails.

* * * * *

A tolerably unanimous opinion ranges the different selves of which a

man may be 'seized and possessed,' and the consequent different orders

of his self-regard, in an _hierarchical scale, with the bodily Self at

the bottom, the spiritual Self at top, and the extracorporeal material

selves and the various social selves between_. Our merely natural

self-seeking would lead us to aggrandize all these selves; we give

up deliberately only those among them which we find we cannot keep.

Our unselfishness is thus apt to be a 'virtue of necessity'; and it

is not without all show of reason that cynics quote the fable of the

fox and the grapes in describing our progress therein. But this is the

moral education of the race; and if we agree in the result that on the

whole the selves we can keep are the intrinsically best, we need not

complain of being led to the knowledge of their superior worth in such

a tortuous way.