CHAPTER III
THE PLACE OF THE “SELF” IN REALITY
[§ 1.] The “self” is (1) a teleological concept, (2) implies a contrasted not-self (where this contrast is absent from an experience there is no genuine sense of self); (3) but the limits which divide self and not-self are not fixed but fluctuating. The not-self is not a merely external limit, but consists of discordant elements within the individual, which are extruded from it by a mental construction. (4) The self is a product of development, and has its being in the time-series. (5) The self is never given complete in a moment of actual experience, but is an ideal construction; probably selfhood implies some degree of intellectual development. [§ 2.] The Absolute or Infinite Individual, being free from all internal discord, can have no not-self, and therefore cannot properly be called a self. [§ 3.] Still less can it be a person. [§ 4.] In a society of selves we have a more genuinely self-determined individual than in the single self. Hence it would be nearer the truth to think of the Absolute as a Society, though no finite whole adequately expresses the Absolute’s full nature. We must remember, however, (a) that probably the individuals in the Absolute are not all in direct relation, and (b) that in thinking of it as a Society we are not denying its real individuality. [§ 5.] The self is not in its own nature imperishable; as to the particular problem of its continuance after death, no decision can be arrived at on grounds of Metaphysics. Neither the negative presumption drawn from our inability to understand the conditions of continuance, nor the lack of empirical evidence, is conclusive; on the other hand, there is not sufficient metaphysical reason for taking immortality as certain.
§ 1. We have already, in Book II. chap. 1, § 5, incidentally raised the question whether the whole spiritual system which we found ground to regard as the reality of the universe, can properly be spoken of as a “self.” We decided that to apply such a predicate to it was at least misleading, and might prepare the way for serious intellectual sophistication. Our discussion of the general character of psychological conceptions has now made it possible for us to return to the problem with reasonable hopes of being able to treat it more fully, and to arrive at some definite conclusion as to the amount of truth embodied by the notion of “self.”
First of all, then, let us attempt to fix the general meaning of the concept, and to single out some of its more prominent characteristics. It would clearly require much more space than we can spare to enumerate all the senses in which the notion of “self” has been used in Psychology, and the work, when done, would not be entirely germane to our metaphysical purpose. What I propose to attempt here will be simply to consider certain aspects of the concept of “self” which are manifestly indispensable for the purpose of ethical and historical appreciation, and to ask what their value is for the metaphysical interpretation of existence.
(1) It is manifest, to begin with, that “self” is a teleological concept. The self whose quality is revealed in Biography and History, and judged in Ethics, has for its exclusive material our emotional interests and purposive attitudes towards the various constituents of our surroundings; of these, and of nothing else, our self is made. And the self, again, is one and individual, just in so far as these interests and purposes can be thought of as forming the expression, in the detail of succession, of a central coherent interest or purpose. Where this central interest appears not to exist at all, we have no logical right to speak of a succession of purposive acts as the expression of a single self. Thus, though it may be necessary for some of the practical purposes of police administration to take bodily identity as evidence of identity of self, we all recognise that what a man does in a state of mental alienation complete enough to abolish continuity of purpose, is not material for his biographer except in so far as the knowledge of it may modify his interests and purposes on his return to sanity. And even in cases where we may acquiesce in the necessity for assuming responsibility before the law for “deeds done in the body,” conscience acquits us of moral guilt if we honestly feel we can say, “I was not myself when it was done.”[[184]] The teleological character of the unity we ascribe to the self is further illustrated by the puzzles suggested by the “alternate” and “multiple” personalities occasionally brought to light in the study of hypnotism and of mental pathology. Finally, in the fairly numerous cases of “conversion,” where a man, as we say, becomes a “new being” or parts with his “old self,” we only recognise him as identical with his past self in so far as we succeed in thinking of his “new life” as being the expression of aims and interests which were, at least implicitly and as “tendencies,” already present, though concealed, in the “old.”
(2) The self implies, and has no existence apart from, a not-self, and it is only in the contrast with the not-self that it is aware of itself as a self. This seems to me clear, as a matter of principle, though the consequences of the principle are in much current speculation partly misconceived, partly neglected. The most important among them, for our purposes, are the following. The feeling of self is certainly not an inseparable concomitant of all our experience. For it only arises—and here nothing but direct experimentation can be appealed to as evidence—as a contrast-effect in connection with our awareness of a not-self, whether as imposing restraints upon the expression of the self, or as undergoing modification by the self. Hence experiences from which this contrast is absent seem to exhibit no trace of genuine “self-consciousness.”[[185]] Feeling, where you can get it in its simple form, seems to be universally allowed to be an instance in point. Much of our perception appears to me, though I know the view is not widely current among psychologists, to be in the same position. E.g., normally when I am looking at an object, say for instance, a white-washed wall, I do not find that I am in any real sense “conscious of self.” The content of my awareness seems, to me at least, to be just the wall in a setting of a mass of unanalysed feeling, organic and other, which you may, if you please, from your standpoint as an external observer, call my perceiving self, but of which I am only aware as the setting of the perceived wall.
It is only when attention to the content of the perception becomes difficult (as, e.g., through fatigue of the organs of sense, or conflict with some incompatible purpose) that I am normally aware of the perceived object as a not-self opposed to and restricting my self. The same is, I think, true of much of our life of conscious purposive action. I do not find that in my intellectual pursuit of a chosen study, or again in my social relations to the other members of my community, I have explicit awareness of the “facts” of science, or the interests and purposes of others as a not-self with which my own interests are contrasted as those of the self, except in so far as I either find these facts and interests in actual collision with some aim of my own, or experience the removal of such a collision. In ordinary social life, for instance, I have a strong feeling of self as opposed to not-self when the plans of some member of my immediate circle clash with my own, and again when I succeed in winning such a recalcitrant over to my own side; my self in the one case feels repression, in the other expansion. But I do not think it can be said that the self-feeling arises in actual life where there is temporarily no consciousness of opposition or its removal. For instance, while we are harmoniously working with other men for a previously concerted end, the consciousness of self and its contrasted not-self scarcely appears to enter into our experience.[[186]] This is, I presume, why practical worldly wisdom has always regarded “self-consciousness” as a source of weakness and moral failure. While we are steadily engaged in the progressive execution of a purpose, we “lose ourselves” in the work; it is only upon a check that we become “self-conscious.”
(3) The next point to be noted is that there is no definite line of demarcation between self and not-self. In particular, we must not fall into the error of supposing that the whole content of the relation between self and not-self is social,—the self on its side consisting of me, and the not-self of other men. It is true, no doubt, that the origin of the distinction is mainly social, since it is in the main through experience of what it is to have my execution of a desired act repressed by others, and again to have the stumbling-blocks which have previously restricted my action removed by their co-operation, that I come to be definitely aware of what I want, and of the fact that it is I who want it. But it would be hard to show that the distinction between the self and the not-self could not originate at all except in a social medium, and it is clear that the range of its applicability, when originated, is not limited to the social relation. There seems, on the one hand, to be no feature in our experience whatever which is entirely excluded from entering into the constitution of what is felt as the self. My social intimates, my professional colleagues, my regular occupations, even my clothes or articles of furniture, to which I have grown accustomed, may be so essential to the continuity of my characteristic interests in life that their removal would make my character unrecognisable, or possibly even lead to insanity or death. And as thus indispensable to the teleological unity or my existence, all these “external” objects seem to be capable of passing into and becoming part of the self.
We see an extreme instance of this in the case of the savage transplanted into civilised surroundings, who fails in body and mind and finally dies, without recognisable disease, simply from the disappearance of the interests connected with his old surroundings; or that of the clinging affectionate persons who, in the same way, fade away upon the loss of a beloved relative or friend. In a minor degree we see the same thing in those changes of character which common speech happily describe by such phrases as “he has never been himself since—his wife died, since he lost that money,” and so forth. In principle there seems to be no factor of what we should currently call the self’s environment which may not in this way come to be part of the content of the self.[[187]]