I.
The English designate by the term of self-feeling, and the Germans by that of Selbstgefühl, a group of sentiments directly derived from the ego. I scarcely know what to call them: “personal” would be too vague a term, “egoistic” too ambiguous (“egotistic” would be better). To identify them with pride and its opposite would be to restrict them too far, for they have other forms. We might, for want of a better, include them under the term amour-propre (in its etymological meaning, amor proprius), i.e., satisfaction or dissatisfaction with one’s self, with its different varieties.
Whatever name we may give them, these emotional forms are reducible to one primary fact of which they are the embodiment in consciousness—viz., the feeling (well-founded, or not) of personal strength or weakness, with the tendency to action or arrest of action which is its motor manifestation. We can also, but in a less direct manner, connect them with the instinct of conservation, and say, with Höffding, that they result from that instinct “arrived at the full consciousness of itself and incarnated in the idea of the Ego.”
This group has its peculiar characteristics. It is almost, if not quite, exclusively human, while the emotions hitherto studied have been as much animal as human. It is late in making its appearance (about the end of the third year), and is the last in chronological order, except the sex-instinct. This is because it soon assumes a reflective character, and because it implies that the ego is constituted and that the individual is conscious of himself as such.
The self-feeling has two forms, one positive, the other negative, of which pride and humility may respectively be taken as the types.
Under its positive form, it has a well-known physiological expression,[[151]] which consists of a series of movements tending to two ends—(1) Increase in size: the respiration is deep, the thorax greatly dilated, the gestures eccentric, and, as it were, aggressive, whence the popular expressions “puffed up” or “swollen” with pride. (2) Increase in height: the body and head are held more erect, the gait is assured, the mouth firmly closed, the teeth clenched; in megalomaniacs, who present, so to speak, the caricature of pride, these traits are still further emphasised. Some writers note, besides, as a specific character, the action of the musculus superbus, which everts the lower lip.
Psychologically, the feeling of strength is sui generis and irreducible. It is related on one side to joy, being the sthenic emotion par excellence, on the other to anger, because the feeling of superiority soon leads to contempt, insolence, brutality, and the exercise of strength under its aggressive form. Let us remember that we have, on a previous occasion, connected with this feeling the pleasure which frequently accompanies satisfied anger. As it depends, more than any other primary emotion, on reflection, its development is determined by intellectual conditions.
Is there any equivalent to it among animals? Certain facts allow us to suppose that there is. The courteous contests of pretended battle, the song, the dances by which the males attempt to captivate the females, the triumph of some and the defeat of others, must produce some states analogous to pride and humiliation. The arrogant attitudes of the cock and the turkey-cock, the ostentatious display of the peacock, are taken as symbols of naïf pride; and if the expression of an emotion is that emotion objectivised, we can easily suppose that it exists in some manner. In children, the personal feeling is at first connected with the exercise of physical strength expended in struggling with each other and in games; later on, with personal appearance, clothes and ornaments, especially in girls. In consequence of an increasing irradiation, the self-feeling envelops everything entering into its sphere of action which may help to swell its importance—house, furniture, relations. Later on comes the consciousness of intellectual force, and the advantages procured by it—fame, power, riches, etc.
As derivative, or different aspects of egotistic emotion, under its positive form, we find pride, vanity, contempt, love of glory, ambition, emulation, courage, daring, boldness, etc. The special study of each of these feelings belongs rather to the moralist than the psychologist.[[152]]
Under its negative form, personal emotion cannot detain us long, as it would only be a repetition of what we have previously studied under the converse aspect. It has for its basis a feeling of weakness and impotence. It shows itself by diminution or arrest of movement; its gestures are concentric, and it consists in belittling instead of aggrandising, of lowering instead of raising. It is related on one side to sadness, and on the other to fear; in short, it is the complete antithesis to the positive form.
From this source flow, with different adaptations, humility, timidity, modesty, resignation, patience, meanness, cowardice, want of self-confidence, etc. Most of these manifestations are not simple, but result from the combined action of several causes, as we shall see later on.