THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE "SELF"
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A SENSE OF PERSONAL SELFHOOD.
The expression of individuality in opinion is only one way
men have of expressing their personality, individuality, or
self. From the beginnings of childhood, men experience an
increasing sense of "personal selfhood" which finds various
outlets in action or thought. So familiar, indeed, in the normal
man is his realization that he is a "self," that it seldom
occurs to him that this conception was an attainment gradually
accomplished through long years of experience with the
world about him. The very young baby does not distinguish
between Itself and the Not-Self which constitutes the
remainder of the universe. It is nothing but a stream of
experiences, of moment to moment pulsations of desire, of
hunger and satisfaction, of bodily comfort and bodily pain. As it
grows older, it begins dimly to distinguish between Itself and
Everything-Else; it finds itself to be something different,
more vivid, more personal and interesting than the chairs and
tables, the crib and bottle, the faces and hands, the smiles and
rattles that are its familiar setting. It discovers that "I am
I," and that everything else ministers to or frustrates or remains
indifferent to its desires. It becomes a person rather
than a bundle of reactions. It develops a consciousness of
"self."
In its simplest form this consciousness of self is nothing
more than a continuous stream of inner organic sensations,
and the constant process of the body and limbs "and the
special interest of these as the seat of various pleasures and
pains." This is what James calls the "bodily self." As it
grows older, the baby distinguishes between persons and
things. And as, in setting off his own body from other things,
it discovers its "bodily self," so in setting off its own opinions,
actions, and thoughts from other people, it discovers its "social
self." It is because Nature does in some degree the
"giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us," that we do
discover our "selves" at all. "The normal human being, if it
were possible for him to grow up from birth onward in a purely
physical environment, deprived, that is, to say, of both animal
and human companionship, would develop but a very
crude and rudimentary idea of the self."[1]
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 183.]
THE SOCIAL SELF. A man's social self, that is, his consciousness
of himself as set over against all the other individuals
with whom he comes in contact, develops as his relations
with other people grow more complex and various. A man's
self, apart from his mere physical body, consists in his peculiar
organization of instincts and habits. In common language
this constitutes his personality or character. We can infer
from it what he will, as we say, characteristically do in any
given situation. And a particular organization of instincts
and habits is dependent very largely on the individual's social
experience, on the types and varieties of contact with
other people that he has established. There will be differences,
it goes without saying, that depend on initial differences
in native capacity. But both the consciousness of self and
the overt organization of instinctive and habitual actions are
dependent primarily on the groups with which an individual
comes in contact. In the formation of habits, both of action
and thought, the individual is affected, as we have seen,
largely by praise and blame. He very early comes to detect
signs of approval and disapproval, and both his consciousness
of his individuality and the character of that individuality
are, in the case of most persons, largely determined by these
outward signs of the praise and blame of others. And since,
in normal experience, a man comes into contact with several
distinct groups, with varying codes of conduct, he will really
have a number of distinct personalities. The professor is a
different man in his class and at his club; the judge displays a
different character in the court and in the bosom of his family.
The self that comes to be most characteristic and distinctive
of a man, however, is determined by the group with
which he comes most habitually in contact, or to whose approvals
he has become most sensitive. Thus there develop
certain typical personalities or characters, such as those of
the typical lawyer or soldier or judge. Their bearing, action,
and consciousness of self are determined by the approvals
and disapprovals of the group to which they are most
completely and intimately exposed.
Both the consciousness of self which most men experience
and the overt expression of that selfhood in act are thus seen
to be a more or less direct reflex of the praise and blame of the
groups with which they are in contact. Men learn from
experience with the praise and blame of others to "place"
themselves socially, to discover in the mirror of other men's
opinions the status and locus of their own lives. As we shall
see in a succeeding section, the degree of satisfaction which
men experience in their consciousness of themselves is dependent
intimately on the praise and blame by which their
selfhood is, in the first place, largely determined. In the
chapter on the "Social Nature of Man," we examined in some
detail the way in which praise and blame modified a man's
habits. The total result of this process is to give a man a
certain fixed set of overt habits that constitute his character and
a more or less fixed consciousness of that character.
On the other hand, a man's character and self-consciousness
may develop more or less independently of the immediate
forces of the public opinion to which he is exposed. One
comes in contact in the course of his experience not merely
with his immediate contemporaries, but with a wide variety
of moral traditions. Except in the rigidly custom-bound life
of primitive societies, a man is, even in practical life, exposed
to a diversity of codes, standards, and expectations of behavior.
His family, his professional, his political, and his social
groups expose him to various kinds of emphases and accent
in behavior. And a man of some intelligence, education, and
culture may be determined in his action by standards whose
origin is remote in time, space, and intention from those operative
in the predominant public opinion of his day. He may
come to act habitually on the basis of ideal standards which
he has himself set up through reflection, or which he has
acquired from some moral system or tradition, far in advance of
those which are the staple determinants of character for most
of his contemporaries. He may be one of those rare moral
geniuses, singularly unsusceptible to praise and blame, who
create a new ideal of character by the dominant individuality
of their own. Or, as more frequently happens, he may follow
the ideals set up by such a one, instead of accepting the orthodoxies
which are generally observed. He may follow Christ
instead of the Pharisees, Socrates instead of the habit-crusted
citizens of Athens. We are, indeed, inclined to think of a
man as a peculiarly distinctive personality, when his sense of
selfhood, and the overt actions in which that selfhood finds
expression, are not determined by the current dogmas of his
day, but by ideal standards to which he has reflectively given
allegiance. But so much is the self, both in its consciousness
and expression, socially produced that men acting on purely
imagined ideal standards, current nowhere in their day and
generation, have imagined a group, no matter how small or
how remote, who would praise them or a God who noted and
approved their ways.
CHARACTER AND WILL. From the foregoing it would appear
that the self is an organization of habitual tendencies, developed
primarily through contact with other people and more
specifically through their praise and blame. And consciousness
of self is the awareness of the unique or specific character
of the habit-organization one has acquired. Individuals differ
natively in given capacities, and differences in fully developed
personalities depend, certainly in part, on innate
initial differences. But differences in the kinds of selfhood
displayed and experienced by different men are due to something
more than differences in native capacities and native
desires. The self that a man exhibits and of which he is conscious,
at any given period of his life, depends on the complex
system of habits he has in the course of his experience developed.
One individual may, as we have seen, develop a number
of sets of organized dispositions, a multiple character, as
it were, as a consequence of the multiplicity of groups with
which he has come in contact. But whether through deliberate
or habitual conformity to one group as a norm, or the
deliberate organization of habits of action and feeling and
thought, on the basis of ideal or reflective standards, a man
comes to develop a more or less "permanent self." That is,
while men start with somewhat similar native equipments,
each man's set of inborn tendencies comes to be fixed in a
fairly definite and specific system. While all men start within
limits equally responsive and similarly responsive to all stimuli,
certain stimuli come to have the "right of way." They
are more or less easily and more or less readily responded to,
according as they do or as they do not fit in with the habit-organization
which the individual has previously acquired.
When we say that a man has no character or individuality,
we mean that he has developed no stable organization of actions,
feelings, and thoughts, with reference to which and by
the predominant drive of which his actions are determined.
There is no particular system of behavior which he has come
consciously to identify as his person or self; no interweaving
of motives and stimuli by the persistent momentum of which
his conduct is controlled; no single group of stimuli rather
than another has, in his pulpy person, attained priority in
stimulating power. Such men are chameleons rather than
characters. Their actions do not flow from a selfhood or
individuality at all; they are merely the random results of the
accidental situations in which such men find themselves.
The self exists, then, as a well-defined, systematic trend of
behavior. Impulses to action attain a certain order of priority
in an individual's conduct, and it is by the momentum of
these primary drives to action that his life is controlled.
What is commonly known as "will" is simply another name
for the power and momentum of a man's "personal self."
Will exists not as a thing, but as a process. To will an action
means to identify it consciously with one's permanent self, to
weigh and support it with all the emotions and energies connected
with one's consciously realized habitual system of behavior.
A man may bring to bear on the accomplishment of
a given action the deepest and most powerful motive forces of
his developed personality. To pass a course or make a team
a student may marshal all the habits of loyalty, of self-assertion
(and the emotional energies associated with them) which
have become the leading ingredients of his character.
The "permanent self" becomes involved in the same way
in the case of willing _not_ to perform a certain action. Any
stimulus may, on occasion, be strong even if it has ceased to
be characteristic or habitual in a man's behavior. This is
particularly the case with some of the primary physical drives
to action. Even the ascetic feels the strong sting of sense-desire.
A man in resisting temptation, in denying the pressure
of an immediate stimulus, is setting up to block or inhibit
it all the contrary reactions and emotions which have
become part of the "permanent self." In more familiar language
he is setting will over against desire. The temporary
desire may be strong, but it is consciously regarded by the
individual as alien to his "real" or "better" self. And _will_
is this whole complex organization of the permanent self set
over against an alien intruding impulse.
The phenomenon of will contending against desire occurs
usually when a stimulus not characteristically powerful in a
man's conduct becomes so through special conditions of excitement
or fatigue. When a man is tired, or stirred by violent
emotion, his systematic organization of habits begins to
break down. The ideal permanent or inclusive self is then
brought into conflict with a temporary passion. Love conflicts
with duty, the lower with the higher self, flesh with
spirit, desire with will. Few men have so thoroughly integrated
a self that such conflicts altogether cease. Every one
carries about with him a more or less divided soul.
Fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.
There are, in the records of abnormal psychology, many cases
of really divided personalities, cases of two or more completely
separate habit-organizations inhabiting the same physical
body. Such a complete Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde dissociation
of a personality is clearly abnormal. But it is almost as
rare to find a completely integrated character. We are all of
us more or less multiple personalities. Our various personalities
usually keep their place and do not interfere with each
other. Our professional and family selves may be different;
they do not always collide. But the various characters that
we are in various situations not infrequently do clash. The
self whose keynote is ambition or learning may conflict with
the self whose focus is love.
"Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery!"
wrote Matthew Arnold. And it does seem to be true that a
man whose will is never divided or confused by contending
currents of desire, whose character is unified and whose action
is consistent, is saved from the perturbations, the confusions,
the tossings of spirit which possess less organized souls. But
to find one's self, and to keep one's self whole and undivided,
is a difficult achievement and a rare one. Even men whose
interests and activities are fairly well defined find their
characters divided and their wills, consequently, confused. A
man's duties as a husband and father may conflict with his
professional ambitions; his love of adventure, with his desire
for wealth and social position; his artistic interests, with his
philanthropic activities; his business principles, with his
religious scruples. A man can achieve a selfhood by thrusting
out all interests save one, and achieving thereby unity at the
expense of breadth. There are men who choose to be, and
succeed in being, first and last, scholars or poets or musicians
or doctors. All activities, interests, and ideals that do not
contribute to that particular and exclusive self are practically
negligible in their conduct. Such men, although they have
attained a permanent self, have not achieved a broad, comprehensive,
or inclusive one. They are like instruments
which can sound only one note, however clear that may be;
or like singers with only a single song. All lives are necessarily
finite and exclusive; every choice of an interest or ideal
very possibly precludes some other. A man cannot be all
things at once; "the philosopher and the lady-killer," as
James merrily remarks, "could not very well keep house in
the same tenement of clay." But a strong character need
not necessarily mean a narrow one, nor need a determined will
be the will of a fanatic. The self may be--in the case of rare
geniuses it has been--diverse in its interests, activities, and
sympathies, yet unified and consistent in action. A character
may be various without being confused; versatility is not
synonymous with chaos. A man's interests and activities
may be given a certain order, rank, and proportion, so that
his life may exhibit at once the color, consistency, clarity, and
variety of a finished symphony.
The consciousness of "self" which starts as a mere continuum
of bodily sensations comes to be the net result of one's
social and intellectual as well as physical activities. The
"self" of which we are conscious ceases to be our merely physical
person, and comes to include our possessions. The house
we live in and the garden we tend, our children, our friends,
our opinions, creations, or inventions, these become extensions
and more or less inalienable parts of our personalities.
Our "selfhood" includes not simply us, but ours.
Our possessions, and especially such as are the fruits of our
own actions, are indications of what we are. We judge, and
within limits correctly, of a man by the company he keeps,
the clothes he wears, by the books he reads, the pictures with
which he decorates his home, the kind of home he builds or
has built. And a man may feel as provoked by insult or injury
to the person or things which have become an intimate
part of his life as if he were being attacked in his physical
person. Strip a man one by one of his physical acquisitions,
of his associates, of the indications and mementos of the
things he has thought and done, and there would be no "self"
left. To speak of a man as a nonentity is to imply that he is
no "self" worth speaking of; that he can be blown about
hither and thither; that neither his opinions nor desires, nor
possessions, nor associates make an iota of difference in the
world. A man who is a "somebody," a "person to be reckoned
with," is one who is a "self." He is one whose physical
possessions or personal abilities or standing in the community
make him one of the "powers that be." And it is the desire
to be a factor in the world, to increase the scope and
consequence of one's self that is the leading ingredient in what we
call ambition, and the desire for fame, and at least one ingredient
in the desire for wealth. Men may want wealth
merely for the sake of possession, or for bodily comfort, but
part of the desire consists in the ability thereby to spread one's
influence, to be "one of the happy sons of earth, who lord it
over land and sea, in the full-blown lustihood that wealth
and power can give, and before whom, stiffen ourselves as
we will ... we cannot escape an emotion, sneaking or open,
of dread."[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 293.]
THE ENHANCEMENT OF THE SELF. The building-up of a more or
less permanent self is natively satisfactory to most men, and
every means will be taken to increase its scope and influence.
Biologically we are so constituted as to perform many acts
making for our self-preservation. The ordinary reflexes and
instincts such as those which prompt us to eat, to defend ourselves
against blows and the threatening approach of animals,
to keep our equilibrium and recover our balance, are examples
of these.
The development and preservation of our social self is also
made possible as it is initially prompted by our specifically
social instincts. There is a native tendency, as already noted,
to get ourselves noticed by other people, to seek their praise
and avoid their blame. The instincts of self-display and
leadership, and many of the non-social instincts, such as
curiosity and acquisitiveness, are frequently called into play in
the service of the more directly social tendencies of the
individual. A large part of our activity, whatever be its other
motives, is determined to some degree by the desire to develop
the social self, to be a "somebody," to cut a figure in the
world.
In the enlargement of the social self, various people use
various means, and with varying degrees of vigor, intensity,
and persistency. There are a few who go through life with
almost no sense of selfhood, who go through their daily routine
with no more recognition of their acts as their own than
that displayed by an animal or a machine. In most men the
sense of their personality and their interest in it are high, and
the development of the self is sought in all possible or
legitimate ways. The ways in which the self is developed, and the
kind of self that is sought, help to determine whether a man is
self-seeking in the lowest sense of that epithet, or idealistic
and ambitious in the approved popular sense.
The kind of self we seek to build up depends, as we have
seen, largely on the type of praise and blame and the general
character of the moral tradition to which we have been exposed.
But whichever type of self a man does select as his
ideal or permanent self, all his activities will be more or less
consciously and more or less consistently controlled by it.
His habits of action, his habitual choices, his habitual feelings,
will be built up with this ideal self as a standard and control.
He will do those things which "carry on" toward the ideal
self, leave undone those things which do not. The man or
woman who wishes simply to cut a figure "socially" will cultivate
the wit, the gayety, the facility, the smartness, which are
the familiar ingredients of such a personality. The same
persons will be singularly blind to abysses of ignorance which
would be painfully in the consciousness of those who had
set up for themselves ideals of erudition and culture. A
laborer will live and move and have his being serenely in clothes
and in surroundings that "would never do" for a professional
man who had committed himself to live according to the
social standards of his class. Sometimes a man's actions will
be directed toward the construction of an ideal self, on standards
far in advance of those of his group. A man in developing
such a self is, indeed, in some cases practically committing
social suicide. The extreme dissenter from the
current standards of action is attempting to build up what
James has well called a "spiritual self," a self in the light
of his own ideals, rather than those current among his
contemporaries.
EGOISM _VERSUS_ ALTRUISM. The individual in developing his
own personality need not, necessarily, be selfish, nor is the
enhancement of one's personality incompatible with altruism.
One man may find his individuality sufficiently developed in a
large bank account, another in discovering a cure for cancer;
one man may seek nothing but gratification of his physical
appetites; another may find his fulfillment on the battlefield
in defense of the national honor. Since man is born with the
original tendencies to herd with and have common sympathies
with his fellows, and to pity those of them that are weak
and distressed, there is nothing more unnatural about altruism
than about egoism. It is true that in some men the so-called
altruistic impulses, the impulse to sympathize with
the emotions, feelings, aspirations and difficulties of others,
and to pity them in their distress, are comparatively weak;
that in some men the more obviously egoistic impulses, such
as the gratification of bodily desires, the acquisition of
physical possessions are strong and uncontrollable. But through
education the altruistic and social impulses of men may be
cultivated and strengthened, so that they may become more
powerful and dominant than even the urgency of physical
desire. "Man cannot live by bread alone," and a man in
whom a passion for reform or for religion, for a cause or for a
conquest has become strong, will sacrifice food, sleep, and
physical comfort, and may even find the satisfactory fulfillment
of self in self-sacrifice and obliteration.[1]
[Footnote 1: This is partly because man's sense of selfhood is
so largely socially conditioned and affected by praise and blame.
Many a man in whom impulses of an egoistic sort are strong cannot
resist the scorn of his gang, club, or clique. In this sense even
socially beneficial actions may be "selfish."]
The old distinction between egoism and altruism is thus an
artificial one. A genuinely altruistic individual derives
satisfaction from the beneficent things he does, though he does
not, as Jeremy Bentham supposed, calculate the benefits he
will derive from his beneficence. Altruism is just as natural
as egoism in its origins, though the impulses of self-preservation
and personal physical satisfaction are natively stronger
and more numerous. But human beings can be educated to
altruism, and find the same satisfaction in service to others as
individuals reared in less humane conditions find in satisfying
their immediate physical desires.
SELF-SATISFACTION AND DISSATISFACTION. Since the development
of selfhood plays so large a part in human action, it is
natural that powerful emotions should be associated with it.
Individuals become conscious of the kind of self they are and
measure it favorably or unfavorably with the kind of self they
would be. In so far as the actuality they conceive themselves
to be measures up to the ideal self, to the fulfillment of
which they have dedicated themselves, they have a feeling of
self-satisfaction, of elation. They are jubilant or crestfallen,
satisfied or dissatisfied with themselves, in so far as they are
in their own estimation making good. In normal individuals,
these estimates of triumph and frustration are, of course,
colored and qualified by signs of approval and disapproval
from other people. There are very few--and these insanely
conceited--in whom the opinions of others are not largely
influential in determining their own estimates of themselves.
The emotions themselves of self-satisfaction and abasement are of
a unique sort ... 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 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.... 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.[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 307.]
Self-satisfaction depends, as has been said, on the kind of
self we are aiming at, and that in turn depends on the kind
of self we are. A professional bank-robber may take a craftsman's
pride in the skill with which he has rifled a safe and
made off with the booty, just as a surgeon may take pride in
a delicate operation, or a dramatist in a play. The ideal and
the measure of satisfaction will again be determined by the
group among whom we move. The bank-robber will not
boast of his exploits to a missionary conference; the surgeon
will prefer to explain the details of his achievement to medical
men who can critically appreciate its technique. The ideal
self we set ourselves may far outreach our achievements,
considerable and generally applauded though these be. A
man may know in his heart how futile are his triumphs, how
far from the goals he cherished as young ideals. Many a
brilliant comedian longs to play Hamlet; the gifted and scholarly
musician knows how easy it is to win an audience with
sentimental and specious music. The humility of genius has
again and again been noted. "The more one knows the less
one knows one knows."
Many men attain self-satisfaction through negation,
through a serene surrender of the unattainable. As the
Epicureans counseled, they increase their happiness by lessening
their desires. The content which middle-aged people exhibit
is not so frequently to be traced to the dazzling character of
their achievement as to their resignation to their station.
Young people are moody and unhappy not infrequently
because they cannot make a reconciliation between what they
would be and what they are. Others again attain satisfaction
vicariously in the achievements of others, as mediocre fathers
do in their brilliant children, or as sympathetic and interested
people do in the whole world about them.
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 are yet integral parts of the whole of this
brave world, have a fellow's share in the strength of the dairy 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.[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 313 (written in 1890).]
In some men a modicum of success will give a disproportionate
sense of confidence and power. The man to whom success
has always come easily is not baffled by problems that
would appall those who, in middle life, "lie among the failures
at the foot of the hill." As Goethe, who had always been
miraculously successful, said to one who came to complain
to him about the difficulty of an undertaking: "You have
but to blow on your hands." In a crowd one can hardly fail
to note the easy air of competence and confidence that
distinguishes the successful man of affairs.
THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE SELF AND OTHERS. The consciousness
of self increases with the expression of personal opinion
and power. The man whose books are translated into half a
dozen languages, to whose lectures people come from all parts
of the world, cannot help feeling an increased sense of
importance, although he may combine this consciousness with a
sense of personal humility. In the same way a man who
exerts great social power, who controls the economic lives of
thousands of employees, or whose benefactions in the way of
libraries and charitable institutions dot the land, develops
inevitably a sense of his own selfhood as over against that of the
group. He begins to realize that he does make a significant
difference in the world. This was curiously illustrated in a
speech delivered by Andrew Carnegie when, after a prolonged
absence in Europe, he came back to the opening of the Carnegie
Institute, the building of which had cost him six million
dollars:
He said he could not bring himself to a realization of what had
been done. He felt like Aladdin when he saw this building and was
aware that he had put it up, but he could not bring himself to
consciousness of having done it any more than if he had produced the
same effect by rubbing a lamp. He could not feel the ownership of
what he had given, and he could not feel that he had given it away.[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted from the obituary of Andrew Carnegie in the
_New York Times_ of August 12, 1919.]
This sense of incredulity at one's actions or achievements
is rarer than the consciousness of self which it promotes.
The intensity of this self-awareness is increased when opinion
is expressed or power exerted in the face of opposition. The
man who finds himself standing out against the community
in which he lives, who is a freethinker among those who are
intensely religious, an extremist among those who are custom-ridden,
spiritualistic among people who are controlled by
materialistic ideas, finds the sense of his own personality
heightened by contrast. When dissenting opinions are steadfastly
maintained in the face of the opposition of a powerful
majority, there develops a personality with edge and strength.
The man who can persist in his belief against the prevailing
winds of doctrine and of action may be wrong, but he is a
personality. He is intensely and persistently aware of himself.
Similarly, the exertion of power in the face of opposition
increases the sense of one's own power and helps to consolidate
it. One derives from it the same exhilaration that one
has in feeling a canoe under the impulsion of one's paddle
overcome the resistance of the water. In the same way, the
exertion of social power in the face of obstacles makes half the
exhilaration of politics and business for some types of men in
business and political life. One admires the ruthlessness of a
Napoleon at war or of a captain of industry in the sharp industrial
competition of the nineteenth century, not because it is
ruthless, but because it is power. Such men are at least not
neutral; they are positive forces.
The contrast between the "self" and the others may be
friendly, with a recognition of all other selves as equally
entitled to existence. One pursues the even tenor of one's way,
and is content to let others pursue theirs. Men of very powerful
personality have exhibited the utmost gentleness and
consideration of others. Lincoln, the typical strong, silent
man, displayed a tenderness for the suffering and distressed
that has already become proverbial.
The contrast between one's self and the world may be one of
bitter opposition, as when one's ideas or actions are subjected
to social censure. As Mill argued over half a century ago, the
forceful suppression of opinion produces a more violent manifestation
of it. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic
philosophy rose like the sun in the heavens. A sense of injustice,
of unfairness, will not only intensify a man's opinions but
his consciousness of his own personality. To meet with opposition
is to feel acutely the outlines of one's own person; to
be forced to recognize the differences between ourselves and
others is to discover what sort of people we ourselves are.
The contrast is likewise one of opposition, sometimes to
bitterness, when the individual seeks to impose his own
opinions or his own personality forcibly on others. A Mohammed,
fired with the zeal of a religious enthusiasm, may
spread his doctrine by fire and sword and be resisted
by similar violence. Others than the Germans have betaken themselves
to arms to spread a specific and arbitrary type of life.
On a small scale it is seen wherever a fanatical parent tries to
force his own belief and type of life upon his children, reared
in a younger and freer generation. In contemporary society
most individuals are neither tempted nor permitted to coerce
people to their own way of thinking, although economic pressure
and social ostracism are still powerful instruments by
which strategically situated individuals can force their own
opinions or types of life upon others.
TYPES OF SELF. The consciousness of self varies in its
expression and intensity and at different times may display
different types or combinations of types. No one is ever
utterly consistent, and different situations, different groups,
provoke different selves in us. Nobody writes quite the same
kind of letter to his different friends, or is, as has been pointed
out, the same person in different situations. But, except for
those intellectual will-o'-the-wisps, or moral ne'er-do-wells
who take on the color of every new circumstance in which they
happen to be cast, men do develop predominantly one type of
self which constitutes, in familiar language, their character.
The manner of our consciousness of our personality may vary
in quality, even though it be intense in degree. One
may be aware even of one's importance, without being "self-important."
One may be quite conscious of one's significance
in the world and yet not be "self-conscious." It is indeed
usually the little man who has a great air about him. The
officiousness and pettiness of the small soul invested with
authority has often been commented on. Proverbial wisdom
has succinctly recorded the fact that empty barrels make the
most noise. Latterly, Freudian psychology has pointed out
the mechanisms by which insignificant people compensate for
the poverty of their person by bluster and brag.[1]
[Footnote 1: On this point see an illuminating brief discussion
by Hart in _The Psychology of Insanity_.]
SELF-DISPLAY OR BOLDNESS. The most obvious type of
consciousness of self is found in individuals who seek mere social
conspicuousness, who spend no inconsiderable part of their
energy in deliberate display. The child says with naïve
frankness, "See how high I can jump." Many adults find
more conspicuous or subtle ways of saying the same thing.
One need only to take a ride in a bus or street car to find the
certain symptoms of self-display. These may consist in
nothing more serious than a peculiarly conspicuous collar or
hatband, or particularly high heels. It may consist in a loud
voice full of pompous references to great banquets recently
attended or great sums recently spent. It may be in a raised
eyebrow or a disdainful smile. There are people among
every one's acquaintance whose conversation is largely made
up of reminiscences of more or less personal glory, of deliberate
allusions to large salaries and famous friends, to glorious
prospects and past laurels.[1]
[Footnote 1: Almost every college class has one or two members
who enter vociferously and continuously into discussions, less
for the contribution of ideas or information than for the
propagation of their own personalities.]
On a larger scale this is to be found in the almost universal
desire to see one's name in print:
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 craving for notoriety 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!"[2]
[Footnote 2: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 308.]
As was pointed out in connection with praise and blame,
more of our actions than we should care to admit are determined
by this desire for recognition. The loud, the vulgar,
the notoriety seekers are merely extreme illustrations of a
type of self that most of us are some of the time.
SELF-SUFFICIENT MODESTY. The other extreme is exhibited
by the type of personality that is markedly averse to display
and shrinks from observation. In its intensest and possibly
least appealing form it is exhibited by people who become
awkwardly embarrassed in the presence of a stranger, however
fluent and vivacious they may be with their friends.
This type at its best may be described by the epithet of
self-sufficient modesty. To be such a person may be said to be an
achievement rather than a weakness. To be self-sufficient
and modest at the same time means that one is going about
one's business, that one is too absorbed in one's work to be
continually and anxiously noting what sort of figure one cuts
in the world. To quote Matthew Arnold's well-known lines:
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Self-Dependence._]
There are in every great university quiet great men who
steadily pursue vital and difficult researches without the
slightest reference or desire for cheap conspicuousness. In
every profession and business there are known to the
discriminating men who are experts, even geniuses in their own
field, but who shrink back from the loudness of publicity as
from a plague. There are a number of wealthy philanthropists
in all our large cities who consistently and steadily do
good works in almost complete anonymity. One finds in almost
every department of human activity these types of self-effacing
men who find their fulfillment in the work they do
rather than in moving in the aura of other people's admiration.
THE POSITIVE AND FLEXIBLE SELF. But in order to be effective
in affairs, some positive force must be displayed, and modesty
need not mean pusillanimity. A frequently observable
type of personality--and socially one of a highly desirable
sort--is the type of man who, himself standing for positive
convictions, ideas, and principles of action, and not casually
to be deflected from them, has sufficient flexibility and sensitivity
to the feelings of others, to accept modification. Such
a self not only has its initial force and momentum, but gains
as it goes by the experience of others. A personality must be
positive to contribute to the solution of difficulties and the
management of enterprises, but it must be receptive in order
to benefit by the ideas of others and coöperate with them.
To have power and humility at once is sometimes sufficient to
make a leader among men. Humility prevents us from rushing
headlong along the paths of our own dogmatic errors; it
enables us further to deal with other people who would be
simply antagonized by our flat-footed insistence on every
detail of our own initial position. The history of great
statesmanship is in part, at least, the history of wise compromise.
Nor does this mean sordid temporizing and opportunism. As
John Morley puts it:
It is the worst of political blunders to insist on carrying an ideal
set of principles into execution, where others have rights of dissent,
and those others persons whose assent is as indispensable to success
as it is difficult to attain. But to be afraid or ashamed of holding
such an ideal set of principles in one's mind in their highest and most
abstract expression, does more than any other one cause to stunt or
petrify those elements of character to which life should owe most of
its savor.[1]
[Footnote 1: Morley: _On Compromise_, p. 123.]
DOGMATISM AND SELF-ASSERTION. Too often, however, a
person of powerful and distinctive opinions is so moved by
the momentum of his own strong enthusiasms, so fixed by the
habitual definiteness of his own position that he cannot be
swayed. In its worst form this is rampant egoism and dogmatism.
All of us have met the loud-mouthed exponent of his
own opinions, who speaks whatever be the subject, as if _his_
position only were plausible or possible, and as if all who gain-said
him were either fools or knaves.
If we examine the mental furniture of the average man we shall
find it made up of a vast number of judgments of a very precise kind
upon subjects of very great variety, complexity, and difficulty. He
will have fairly settled views upon the origin and nature of the
universe, and upon what he will probably call its meaning; he will have
conclusions as to what is to happen to him at death and after, as to
what is and what should be the basis of conduct. He will know how
the country should be governed, and why it is going to the dogs, why
this piece of legislation is good and that bad. He will have strong
views upon military and naval strategy, the principles of taxation,
the use of alcohol and vaccination, the treatment of influenza, the
prevention of hydrophobia, upon municipal trading, the teaching of
Greek, upon what is permissible in art, satisfactory in literature, and
hopeful in science.
The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational
basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by
the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the
training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have
any opinion on them at all.[1]
[Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd_, p. 36.]
In action as well as opinion dogmatism and unbridled self-assertion
may be the dominant characteristics of a personality.
The man who has a strong will and little social sympathy
will be ruthlessly insistent on the attainment of his own
ends. This type of self has indeed been set up as an ideal by
such philosophers as Nietzsche and Max Stirner, who urged
that the really great man should express his own personality
irrespective of the weaklings whom he might crush in his
comet-like career. Thus writes Nietzsche in one of his
characteristic passages:
The _Superman_ I have at heart; _that_ is the first and only thing to
me--and _not_ man: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the sorriest,
not the best....
In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope....
In that ye have despaired, there is much to honor. For ye have
not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy.
For to-day have the petty people become master; they all preach
submission, and humility, and policy, and diligence, and consideration,
and the long _et cetera_ of petty virtues.
These masters of to-day--surpass them, O my brethren--these
petty people: they are the Superman's greatest danger![2]
[Footnote 2: _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ (Macmillan edition), pp. 351-52.]
It need scarcely be noted that even if the genius or Superman
were justified, as this philosophy insists, on ruthlessly
asserting his priority, it is a dangerous procedure to identify
one's ambitions with one's desserts. As already noted, a
flamboyant assurance of one's own importance is sometimes a
ludicrous symptom of the reverse.
The more legitimate manifestation of strong individualism
in action or opinion is in the case of deeply conscientious
natures, who will not compromise by a hair's breadth from
what they conceive to be the right. The fanatic is seldom an
appealing character, but he is a type that enforces admiration.
Of such unflinching insistence are martyrs and great leaders
made. There are in every community men who will regard it
as treachery to their highest ideals to compromise at all from
the inviolable principles to which they feel themselves committed.
Such men are difficult to deal with in human situations
involving coöperation and compromise, and they exhibit
frequently a rigid austerity, bitterness, and hate that do not
readily win sympathy. But it is to such men as these that
many religious and social reforms owe their initiation. Bertrand
Russell, who, whether one agrees with him or not, exhibits
a puritanical devotion to his social beliefs, has finely
described the type:
The impatient idealist--and without some impatience a man will
hardly prove effective--is almost sure to be led into hatred by the
oppositions and disappointments which he encounters in his
endeavors to bring happiness to the world. The more certain he is of
the purity of his motives and the truth of his gospel, the more
indignant will he become when his teaching is rejected.... The intense
faith which enables him to withstand persecution for the sake of his
beliefs makes him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that
any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest and must be
actuated by some sinister motive of treachery to the cause.[1]
[Footnote 1: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, pp. xiii-xiv.]
ENTHUSIASM. The enthusiast is another type of self that
plays an important part in social life and makes not the least
attractive of its figures. The exuberant exponent of ideas,
causes, persons, or institutions is an effective preacher,
teacher, or leader of men, and may be, apart from his utility,
intrinsically of the utmost charm. Emotions vividly displayed
are, as already pointed out in connection with sympathy,
readily duplicated in others, and the ardors of the
enthusiast are, when they have the earmarks of sincerity,
contagious. A genuinely enthusiastic personality kindles
his own fire in the hearts of others, and makes them
appreciate as no mere formal analysis could, the vital and moving
aspects of things. Good teaching has been defined as
communication by contagion, and the teachers whom students
usually testify to have influenced them most are not those
who doled out flat prescribed wisdom, but those whose own
informed ardor for their subject-matter communicated to the
student a warm sense of its significance. Leaders of great
movements who have been successful in controlling the energies
and loyalties of millions of men have been frequently
men of this high and contagious voltage. It certainly
constituted part of Theodore Roosevelt's political strength, and, in
more or less genuine form, is the asset of every successful
political speaker and leader.
Both for the one controlled by enthusiasm and for the
others to whom it spreads, experience becomes richer in
significance. Poets and the poetically-minded have to a singular
degree the power of clothing with imaginative enthusiasm
all the items of their experience.
Enthusiasm does not necessarily connote hysteria or sentimentalism.
The unstable enthusiast is a familiar type, the
man who has another object of eagerness and loyalty each
week. Mark Twain describes the type in the person of his
brother, who had a dozen different ambitions a year. But
enthusiasm may be a long-sustained devotion to a single ideal.
A curious instance of it was seen in the case of an Armenian
scholar who, so it is reported to the writer by a student of
Armenian culture, spent forty years in mastering cuneiform
script in order to prove that the Phrygians were descended
from the Armenians, and not _vice versa_.
Shelley could kindle the spirit of revolution in thousands
who would have been bored to death with the same fiery doctrines
in the abstract and cold pages of Godwin, from whom
Shelley derived his ideas of "political justice." The enthusiast,
since he instinctively likes to share his emotions, not
infrequently displays an intense desire for leadership, not so
much that he may be a leader as that he may win converts to
his own cause or creed. Such a personality finds its satisfaction
in some form of proselyting zeal, be it for a religion, for
a favorite charity, for good books, poetry, or social justice.
A well-known literary scholar who died recently was thus
described by one of his former students:
Dr. Gummere was not a teacher; he was a vital atmosphere and
his lectures, as one considered them from an intellectual or
emotional angle, were revelations or adventures. There never were
such classes as his, we believed. Who could equal him in readiness
of wit? Where was there such a raconteur? Who else could put the
feel of a poem into one's heart? ... His voice was very deep, and
exceedingly free and flexible. It always seemed to brim up as from
a spirit overflowing. Everything about him was individual and
spontaneous. He was perhaps most like a powerful river that braced
one's energies, and carried one along without the slightest desire to
resist.[1]
[Footnote 1: Charles Wharton Stork: "A Great Teacher," _The Nation_,
July 26, 1919.]
THE NEGATIVE SELF. All the types of personality or self that
have thus far been discussed are in some way positive or
assertive. But the self may be exhibited negatively, in a
shrinking, not only from observation, but from any positive
or pronounced action. This has already been noted in connection
with submissiveness. Most people in the presence of
their intellectual and social or even their physical superior,
experience a sense of, to use McDougall's term, "negative
self-feeling." In some people this negation or effacement of
the self is a predominant characteristic.
It may be mere social timidity, which, in the case of those
continually placed in servile positions, as in the case of the
proverbial "poor relation," may become chronic. In its most
disagreeable form it is exhibited as an obsequious flattering
and a pretentious humility. Of this the classic instance is
Uriah Heep in _David Copperfield_:
"I suppose you are quite a great lawyer," I [David Copperfield]
said, after looking at him for some time.
"Me, Master Copperfield?" said Uriah. "Oh, no! I'm a very
umble person."
It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he
frequently ground the palms against each other, as if to squeeze them
dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his
pocket-handkerchief.
"I am well aware that I am the umblest person going," said Uriah
Heep modestly, "let the other be where he may. My mother is
likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master
Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former
calling was umble. He was a sexton."
"What is he now?" I asked.
"He is a partaker of glory, at present, Master Copperfield, but we
have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for,
in living with Mr. Wickfield."
Negative self-feeling may be provoked by a genuine sense
of unworthiness or modesty, and when this takes place among
religious people, it may become a complete and rapturous
submissiveness to God. The records of many mediæval and
of some modern mystics emphasize this complete yielding to
the will of God, and in His will finding peace. James quotes
in this connection Pascal's _Prière pour bien user les maladies_:
I ask you, neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death;
but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and
my death, for your glory.... You alone know what is expedient
for me; you are the sovereign master; do with me according to your
will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to
yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and
bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad
in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or
sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That
discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden
among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not
seek to fathom.[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted in James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 286.]
Self-surrender, however, takes other forms than religious
absorption or devotion. "Saintliness" is not unknown in
secular forms of life, in the devotion of men to any ideal,
despite pain and privation of worldly goods and successes.
The doctor sacrificing his life in a leper colony is an extreme
example. But something of the same humility and submissiveness
is exhibited every time a man makes a choice which
places the welfare of other people before his own immediate
success. It is shown by the thousands of physicians and
settlement workers and teachers who spend their lives in
patient devotion to labors that bring little remuneration and
as little glory. Men of affairs and a large proportion of other
men generally measure worth by worldly success. But even
from the worldly, such signs of self-surrender elicit admiration.
ECCENTRICS. There is one type of self so various and
miscellaneous that it can only be subsumed under the general
epithet, "eccentric." These are the unexpectedly large number
of individuals in our civilization who do not come under any
of the usual categories, who display some small or great
abnormality which sets them off from the general run of men.
That some of these are accounted eccentric is to be explained
in the light of man's tendency, as a gregarious animal, to
think "queer" and "freakish" anything off the beaten track.
Some are clearly and unmistakably abnormal in some physiological
or psychological respect. From these are recruited
the inmates of our penitentiaries and insane asylums and the
candidates for them. But there are eccentricities of social
behavior, types of personality which though they cannot be
classed as either insane or criminal, yet definitely set an
individual apart.
These include what Trotter has called the "mentally unstable,"
as set over against "the great class of normal, sensible,
reliable middle age, with its definite views, its resiliency
to the depressing influence of facts, and its gift for forming
the backbone of the State." There are the large group of
slightly neurasthenic, made so, in part, by the high nervous
tension under which modern, especially modern urban, life is
lived. These include what are commonly called the hysterical
or over-emotional, or "temperamental" types. In a
civilization where most professions demand regularity,
restraint, punctuality, and directness, unstability and excess
emotionalism are necessarily at a discount. There are the
vagabond types who, like young Georges, Jean-qhristophe's
protégé, regard a profession as a prison house, in which most
of one's capacities are cruelly confined. There are again
those who, possessing singular and exclusive sensitivity to
æsthetic values, to music, art, and poetry, find the world
outside their own lyric enthusiasms flat, stale, and unprofitable.
If, as so frequently happens, these combine, along with their
peculiar temperaments, little genius and slender means, social
and economic life becomes for them a blind alley. Every year
at our great universities we see small groups of young men,
who, having spent three or four years on philosophy, literature,
and the liberal arts, and having no interest in academic
life, are put to it to find a profession in which they can find a
genuine interest or possible success.
Among these "eccentrics" a few have been reckoned geniuses
by their contemporaries or by posterity. In such cases
society hesitates to apply its usual formulæ. One cannot
condemn out of hand a Shelley. He is not of the run of men.
Shelley was one of those spokesmen of the _a priori_, one of those
nurslings of the womb, like a bee or a butterfly, a dogmatic, inspired,
perfect, and incorrigible creature.... Being a finished child of
nature, not a joint product, like most of us, of nature, history, and
society, he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense, but was
obtuse to the droll miscellaneous lessons of fortune. The cannonade
of hard inexplicable facts that knocks into most of us what little
wisdom we have, left Shelley dazed and sore, perhaps, but uninstructed.[1]
[Footnote 1: Santayana: _Winds of Doctrine_; Shelley, p. 159.]
It is difficult to draw the line in some cases between genius
and insanity.[1] There have been time and again in society
Cassandras who have spoken true prophecies and have been
thought mad. There have been, on the other hand, those
who, having some of the external eccentricities of genius,
have given an illusive impression of greatness. The professional
Bohemian likes to make himself great by wearing
his hair long and living in a garret. But it is unquestionably
true that a highly sensitive and creative mind is often ill at
ease in the world of action, and remains a vagabond, an
_enfant terrible_ or an eccentric all through life. It remains
a fact that in contemporary society there are a small number
of people, some of them of considerable talents, who simply
cannot be made to fit into the social routine. For such
Bertrand Russell suggests a "vagabond's wage." This he
conceives as being just large enough to enable them to get
along, to give them a chance to wander and experiment, but
sufficiently small to penalize them for not settling down to
the accustomed social routines.[2]
[Footnote 1: Thus Plato: "But he who, not being inspired and
having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and
thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art--he,
I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere
at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman."
_Phoedrus_ (Jowett translation), p. 550.]
[Footnote 2: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, p. 177.
There was recently introduced to the writer a boy, aged nineteen,
for whom this would be an admirable solution. Brought up in a
tenement and working as a clerk, this youngster wrote what
competent judges pronounced to be really extraordinary lyrics.
He was at the same time utterly helpless in the world of affairs.
Even at college his casual habits and absorption would have
prevented him from getting through his freshman year.]
Mill has generalized the situation of the genius:
Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a
small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve
the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an
_atmosphere_ of freedom. Persons of genius are, _ex vi termini_, more
individual than any other people--less capable, consequently, of
fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small
number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members
the trouble of forming their own character.... If they are of a
strong character, and break their fetters, they become a mark for
the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to commonplace,
to point at with solemn warning as "wild," "erratic," and the
like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara River for not
flowing smoothly between its banks, like a Dutch canal.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. III.]
THE ACTIVE AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE. One final distinction
must be made, one that cuts across all the types of self hitherto
discussed, namely, the distinction between the man of
action and the man of thought. One need not go far in literature
or in life to find the contrast made. In the Scriptures
Mary is set over against Martha, Rachel against Leah.
Hamlet and Ulysses are permanent representations of the
melancholy thinker and the exuberant adventurer. The
business man and the executive may be put over against the
poet and the scholar; the strenuous organizer and administrator
over against the quiet philosopher. Both have their
outstanding uses, and, in their extreme forms, their
outstanding defects. The active type, as we say, "gets things
done." He builds bridges and industries; he manages markets
and men. His eye is on the practical; he is dependable,
rapid, and efficient. In an industrial civilization he is the
great heroic type. The statesman and the railroad builder,
the newspaper editors and the political leaders captivate the
imaginations as they control the destinies of mankind.
On the other hand, there are those who stand aside (either
from incapacity or disinclination or both) from the management
of affairs and the life of action, and spend their lives in
observation and contemplation. Plato and Aristotle regarded
this as the highest type of life; it may have been because they
were themselves both philosophers. In its extreme form it
is exhibited in such men as Spinoza or Kant, spending their
lives in practical obscurity, speculating on time and space and
eternity. But it is apparent in less extreme types. The
"patient observer," the genial spectator of other men's actions
is not infrequent. When he has literary gifts he is a philosopher
or a poet. Lucretius in a famous passage stated the
contemplative ideal, contrasting it with its opposite:
Sweet it is when on the great seas the winds are buffeting, to gaze
from the land on another's great struggles; not because it is pleasure
or joy that any one should be distressed, but because it is sweet to
perceive from what misfortunes you yourself are free. Sweet is it, too,
to behold great contests of war in full array over the plains, when you
have no part in the danger. But nothing is more gladdening than
to dwell in the calm high places, firmly embattled on the heights by
the teaching of the wise, whence you can look down on others, and
see them wandering hither and thither and going astray, as they seek
the way of life, in strife matching their wits or rival claims of birth,
struggling night and day by surpassing effort to rise up to the height
of power and gain possession of the world.[1]
[Footnote 1: Lucretius: _De Rerum Natura_ (Bailey translation),
book II, lines 1-12.]
But in the two types it is not the fruit of action or contemplation,
but action and contemplation themselves that the
two types find respectively interesting. The man of action
finds an immediate satisfaction in movement, change, the
clamor of affairs, the contacts with other people, the making
of changes in the practical world. The man of thought finds
as immediate enjoyment in noting the ways of men, and reflecting
upon them.
That contemplation, disinterested thinking, also has its use
goes without saying. The thinker and the dreamer may be
something at least of what the Irish poet boasts:
"... the movers and shakers
Of the world, forever, it seems."
The scholar, the thinker, the man who stands aside from
immediate action, may, often does, help the world of action
in a far-reaching way. The researches of a Newton make
possible eventually the feats of modern engineering and
telegraphy; the abstruse study of the calculus helps to build
bridges and skyscrapers.
Both types, in their extremes, have their weaknesses. The
extremely practical man "may cut off the limb upon which
he is sitting," or "see no further than the end of his nose." A
really great administrator is not penny-wise; he thinks far
ahead, around and into a problem. He is concerned for
tomorrow as well as to-day. The contemplative man may
come to be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
There is the hero of one Russian novel who reflects through
three hundred pages on his wasted life, all at the ripe age of
twenty-three.[1] The practical man gains width and insight
by checking himself with reflection; the contemplative finds
thought called home and made meaningful by contacts with
the world. It was something of this balance which Plato
had in mind when he insisted that his future philosopher-king
should, after fifteen years' study, go for fifteen years into the
"cave" or world to learn to deal with men and affairs. The
"mere theorist" is often an absurd if not a dangerous character;
the practical man may come to make the wheels go
round without ever taking note of his direction.
[Footnote 1: Contchareff: _Oblomoff_.]
As pointed out in the beginning of this discussion, no one
of these types is exclusively exemplified in any one individual.
To be exclusively any one of these would be to be a caricature
rather than a character.[2] But to be no one of these types to
any degree at all is to be no character at all, is to be socially a
nonentity, a minus quantity; it is to be determined by the
vicissitudes of chance or circumstance; it is to be a succession
of vacillations rather than a distinctive self-determined
personality. Each of these types, moreover, if not extreme, has
its specific excellences, and their various presence lends
richness and diversity to social life.
[Footnote 2: Dickens's success lay, perhaps chiefly, in his
ability to draw these unforgettable exaggerations, these outstanding
types: "Micawber" waiting for something to turn up; the fiendish
cruelty of "Bill Sikes"; the angelic self-effacement of "Little Nell";
the hypocritical "Mr. Pecksniff"; the gossipy "Sairy Gamp." He had
a unique gift for representing psychological traits in large. The
so-called psychological novelists like Meredith, trace a character
through its moods and fluctuations, making truer, more composite,
though less memorable characters.]
EMOTIONS AROUSED IN THE MAINTENANCE OF THE SELF. These
various types of self may be defended with bitterness and
pertinacity, and in their support the most powerful emotions
may be enlisted. As pointed out in connection with individuality
in opinion, men may be willing to die for their beliefs.
Similarly invasion of one's home, infringement or threat
against what one regards as one's rights or one's possessions,
whether physical or social, may be bitterly contested. And
in this conflict in support of the integrity of the self, anger,
hate, fear, submissiveness, all the nuances of emotion may be
aroused. The themes of great tragedy are built largely on
this theme of insistent selfhood. Any obstruction of the self-integrity
one has set one's self may provoke a violent reaction.
It may be interference with one's love, as in the case of Medea
or Othello, the pain of ingratitude as in Lear, the conflict
between "the lower and the higher self," as in the case of
Macbeth's loyalty and his ambition. These are the staple
materials of drama. In common experience, an insult to one's
wife or friend, an obstacle placed in the way of one's professional
career, deprivation of one's liberty or one's property,
or one's unhindered "pursuit of happiness," are the provocations
to violent emotions in the sustaining of the self. How
violent or what form the reaction will take depends on the
situation of the "self" involved. If one has been grossly
insulted by another upon whom one is utterly dependent
socially and economically, a rankling and impotent rage may be
the only outlet. To a person gifted with humility, the
disillusions of a false friendship may provoke nothing more than
a deep but resigned disappointment. Where passion and
determination run high, and retaliation is feasible, a violent
hate may find violent fulfillment. In earlier and more
bloodthirsty days, the dagger, the duel, and poison were, as
illustrated in the history of the Borgias, ways of maintaining
the self and venting one's anger or revenge. Even in
modern society the still distressingly large number of crimes
of violence may be traced in many, perhaps most cases, to
blind and bitter hate. To any deep personal injury, hate,
whether it takes overt form or not, is still the instinctive
answer; just such hate as Euripides represents in the jealous
Medea, when she, a barbarian captive among the Greeks,
sees Jason, her lover, about to be married to a Greek princess:
"... But I, being citiless, am cast aside,
By him that wedded me, a savage bride.
. . . . . . . .
"I ask one thing. If chance yet ope to me
Some path, if even now my hand can win,
Strength to requite this Jason for his sin,
Betray me not! Oh, in all things but this,
I know how full of fears a woman is,
And faints at need, and shrinking from the light
Of battle; but once spoil her of her right
In man's love, and there moves, I warn thee well,
No bloodier spirit between Heaven and Hell."[1]
[Footnote 1: Euripides: _Medea_ (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 16.]
In defense of the self in its narrower or broader sense, courage
and heroism may be displayed. The martyr will die
rather than submit; there have been many to whom Patrick
Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me death," was something
more than rhetoric. The self for which we will fight, of course,
varies. A spoilt child will go into a paroxysm of rage if its
toy is taken away. Older people will fight for smaller or
larger points of social position. There is the familiar citizen
who will insist on his rights, often of a petty sort, in a hotel,
theater, or department store. Or a man may display the last
extremity of courage in defense of some ideal, as in a man's
surrender of his life for his country. Something of the same
heroism is displayed by individuals who stand out against
their group in the face of ridicule or persecution. It is the
general sympathy with the desire to preserve one's selfhood
untarnished that gives point to Henley's lines:
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
. . . . . . . .
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."[2]
[Footnote 2: _Invictus_.]
In the same way as the emotions fear, anger, and hate, and
their variations and degrees, may be aroused by attack or
threat against the self, so help and encouragement of an
individual's selfhood arouse love, affection, and gratitude. Even
our affection for our parents, though in part instinctive, is
undoubtedly increased by the care and persistence with which
they have fostered our own life and hopes, have educated us,
and made possible for us a career. The same motives play a
part in our affection for teachers who have beneficently influenced
our lives, for other older people who "give us a start,"
advice and encouragement or financial aid. Even the love of
God has in religious ritual been colored with gratitude for
God's mercies and benevolences.
THE INDIVIDUALITY OF GROUPS. Groups may display the same
individuality and sense of selfhood as is exhibited by
individuals. And the members of the group may come to regard
the group life as something quite as important and inalienable
as their own personalities and possessions. Indeed in defense
of the integrity of the group life, as in the case, for example,
of national honor, the individual life and possession may come
to be reckoned as naught. Man's gregariousness and his
instinctive sympathy with his own kind make it easy for the
individual to identify his own life with that of the group.
What threatens or endangers the group will in consequence
arouse in him the same emotions as are aroused by threats or
dangers that concern his own personality. An insult to the
flag may send a thrill of danger through the millions who
read about it, just as would an insult to themselves or their
families.
Group feeling may exist on various levels. It may be
nothing more momentous than local pride, having the tallest
tower, the finest amusement park, the best baseball team, or
being the "sixth largest city." It may be a belligerent
imperialism, a "desire for a place in the sun." It may be a
desire for independence and an autonomous group life,
manifested so strikingly recently by such small nationalities as
Poland and Czecho-Slovakia and influential in keeping Switzerland
alive as a nationality through hundreds of years,
though surrounded by powerful neighbors.[1] While a group
does not exist save as an abstraction, looked at as a whole it
may exhibit the same outstanding traits, or the same types
of selfhood as an individual. It may be fiercely belligerent
and dogmatic; it may, like literary exponents of the German
ideal, desire to spread its own conception of Kultur throughout
the world.[2] It may be insistent on its own position, or
its own possessions or its own glory. It may be fanatic in
aggrandizement. It may be interested in the welfare of other
groups, as in the case of large nationalities championing and
protecting the causes of small or oppressed ones, such an ideal
as was expressed, for example, by President Wilson in his
address to Congress on the entrance of America into the
Great War:
[Footnote 1: Group feeling may be displayed under the most
disadvantageous conditions, as in the strong sentiment for
nationalism current among the Jews, even through all the
centuries of dispersion.]
[Footnote 2: Thorstein Veblen has pointed out how the "common man"
comes to identify his interest with that of the group: "The common
man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the
national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind
to gain from the increase of renown that comes to his sovereign,
his language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or
his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual
assets of self-complacency are indeed to be rated as grounds of
high-minded patriotism without afterthought." (_The Nature of
Peace_, p. 56.)]
... We shall fight for the things which we have always carried
nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit
to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the
rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right
by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all
nations and make the world itself at last free.[3]
[Footnote 3: Woodrow Wilson: _Address to Congress_, April 2, 1917.]
The selfhood displayed by various groups varies with the
degree and integration of the individual within the group.
In extreme cases, such as that of Germany under the imperial
régime, the group individuality may completely overshadow
and engulf that of the individual. This ideal was not
infrequently expressed by German political writers:
To us the state is the most indispensable as well as highest requisite
of our earthly existence.... All individualistic endeavor must
be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim.... The state
eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of the individuals
within its jurisdiction. This conception of the state which is as
much a part of our life as the blood in our veins, is nowhere to be
found in the English constitution, and is quite foreign to English
thought, and to that of America as well.[1]
[Footnote 1: Eduard Meyer: _England, Its Political Organization and
Development and the War Against Germany_ (English translation), pp. 30-31.]
While custom-bound and feudal régimes may emphasize
the tendency to suppress development of individuality, and
insist on regimentation in thought and action--an ideal
proclaimed with increasing generality in Germany from Hegel
down[2] there may be on the part of both individuals and
groups the tendency to promote individuality as itself a social
good. In such a case the social structure and educational
systems and methods will be designed to promote individuality
rather than to suppress it. Individual variations, if it be
generally recognized that they are the only source of progress,
will be utilized and cultivated instead of suppressed.[3]
[Footnote 2: See Dewey: _German Philosophy and Politics_.]
[Footnote 3: Individuality is the theme of Montessori kindergarten
methods.]
Throughout the nineteenth century (indeed throughout
the history of political theory), the pendulum swung between
individualism and complete socialization. Spencer long ago
proclaimed the dominance of the individual; T. H. Green,
following the German philosophers, the dominance of the
state. Like the contrast between egoism and altruism, an
emphasis on either side is bound to be artificial. The
individual can only be a self in a social order; the individual is
only an individual in contrast with others. It is doubtful, for
example, whether a man living all his life alone on a desert
island would discover any individuality at all. A man's
character is displayed in action, and his actions are always,
or nearly always, performed with reference to other people.
And a man's best self-realization cannot be achieved save in
congenial social order. A man will not readily grow into a
saint among a society of sinners, and unless the social order
provides opportunities for the highest type of life, it will exist
only in a very fortunate and favored few. One of the charges
that has been laid against democracy is that it fails to
encourage the highest types of scientific and artistic interests,
that it is the gospel of the mediocre.[1]
[Footnote 1: This is the essence of the aristocratic position,
that a choice life lived by a few is better than a vulgar one
shared by the many.]
It is too often forgotten, on the other hand, by those who
emphasize the importance of society, that society is, after all,
nothing more than an aggregate of selves. The "state," the
"social order" is nothing but the individuals who make it up,
and their relations to each other.
The group exists, after all, even as the most completely
socialized political doctrines insist, for the realization of
individual selves, for freedom of opportunity and initiative. It
is when "individualism" runs rampant, when self-realization
on the part of one individual interferes with self-realization
on the part of all others that individualism becomes a menace.
Individuality is itself valuable, in the first place, because as
Mill pointed out in his essay on _Liberty_ earlier quoted:
What has made the European family an improving instead of a
stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in
them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not the cause; but
their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals,
classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another; they have
struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something
valuable; and although at every period those who traveled in different
paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have
thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled
to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development
have rarely had any permanent success, and each has endured in
time to receive the good which the others have offered.[2]
[Footnote 2: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. III.]
Apart from the variations in group customs and traditions,
and their progressive application to changing circumstances
which individuality makes possible, it cannot be too strongly
emphasized that society is the name for the process by which
individuals live together. It is the individuals who are the
realities and the happiness of individuals which is the aim of
social organization. Such happiness is only attainable when
individuals are allowed to make the most of their native
capacities and individual interests. The social group as a group
will be more interesting, colorful, and various when every
experimentation and variety of life are encouraged and promoted.
And the individuals in such a society will be personalities,
not the mere mechanisms of a regimented routine.