It is always vain to try to separate the outer aspect of a motive, the other people, the cause or the like, which we think of as external, from the private or self aspect, which we think of as internal. The apparent separation is purely illusive. It is surely a very simple truth that what makes us act in an unselfish or devoted manner is always some sort of sentiment in our own minds, and if we cherish this sentiment intimately it is a part of ourselves. We develop the inner life by outwardly directed thought and action, relating mostly to other persons, to causes, and the like. Is there no difference, then, it may be asked, between doing a kind act to please someone else and doing it to please one’s self? I should say regarding this that while it is obvious, if one thinks of it, that pleasing another can exist for me only as a pleasant feeling in my own mind, which is the motive of my action, there is a difference in the meaning of these expressions as commonly used. Pleasing one’s self ordinarily means that we act from some comparatively narrow sentiment not involving penetrating sympathy. Thus, if one gives Christmas presents to make a good impression or from a sense of propriety, he might be said to do it to please himself, while if he really imagined the pleasure the gift would bring to the recipient he would do it to please the latter. But it is clear enough that his own pleasure might be quite as great in the second case. Again, sometimes we do things “to please others” which we declare are painful to ourselves. But this, of course, means merely that there are conflicting impulses in our own minds, some of which are sacrificed to others. The satisfaction, or whatever you choose to call it, that one gets when he prefers his duty to some other course is just as much his own as any pleasure he renounces. No self-sacrifice is admirable that is not the choice of a higher or larger aspect of the self over a lower or partial aspect. If a man’s act is really self-sacrifice, that is, not properly his own, he would better not do it.
Some opponent of Darwin attempted to convict him of egotism by counting the number of times that the pronoun “I” appears upon the first few pages of the “Origin of Species.” He was able to find a great many, and to cause Darwin, who was as modest a man as ever lived, to feel abashed at the showing; but it is doubtful if he convinced any reader of the book of the truth of the assertion. In fact, although the dictionary defines egotism as “the habit or practice of thinking and talking much of one’s self,” the use of the first-personal pronoun is hardly the essence of the matter. This use is always in some degree a self-assertion, but it has a disagreeable or egotistical effect only in so far as the self asserted is repellent to us. Even Montaigne, who says “I” on every other line, and whose avowed purpose is to display himself at large and in all possible detail, does not, it seems to me, really make an impression of egotism upon the congenial reader, because he contrives to make his self so interesting in every aspect that the more we are reminded of it the better we are pleased; and there is good sense in his doctrine that “not to speak roundly of a man’s self implies some lack of courage; a firm and lofty judgment, and that judges soundly and surely, makes use of his own example upon all occasions, as well as those of others.” A person will not displease sensible people by saying “I” so long as the self thus asserted stands for something, is a pertinent, significant “I,” and not merely a random self-intrusion. We are not displeased to see an athlete roll up his sleeves and show his muscles, although if a man of only ordinary development did so it would seem an impertinence; nor do we think less of Rembrandt for painting his own portrait every few months. The “I” should be functional, and so long as a man is functioning acceptably there can be no objection to his using it.
Indeed, it is a common remark that the most delightful companions, or authors of books, are often the most egotistical in the sense that they are always talking about themselves. The reason for this is that if the “I” is interesting and agreeable we adopt it for the time being and make it our own. Then, being on the inside as it were, it is our own self that is so expansive and happy. We adopt Montaigne, or Lamb, or Thackeray, or Stevenson, or Whitman, or Thoreau, and think of their words as our words. Thus even extravagant self-assertion, if the reader can only be led to enter into it, may be congenial. There may be quite as much egotism in the suppression of “I” as in the use of it, and a forced and obvious avoidance of this pronoun often gives a disagreeable feeling of the writer’s self-consciousness. In short, egotism is a matter of character, not of forms of language, and if we are egotists the fact will out in spite of any conventional rules of decorum that we may follow.
It is possible to maintain that “I” is a more modest pronoun than “one,” by which some writers seem to wish to displace it. If a man says “I think,” he speaks only for himself, while if he says “one thinks,” he insinuates that the opinion advanced is a general or normal view. To say “one does not like this picture,” is a more deadly attack upon it than to say “I do not like it.”
It would seem also that more freedom of self-expression is appropriate to a book than to ordinary intercourse, because people are not obliged to read books, and the author has a right to assume that his readers are, in a general way, sympathetic with that phase of his personality that he is trying to express. If we do not sympathize why do we continue to read? We may, however, find fault with him if he departs from that which it is the proper function of the book to assert, and intrudes a weak and irrelevant “I” in which he has no reason to suppose us interested. I presume we can all think of books that might apparently be improved by going through them and striking out passages in which the author has incontinently expressed an aspect of himself that has no proper place in the work.
In every higher kind of production a person needs to understand and believe in himself—the more thoroughly the better. It is precisely that in him which he feels to be worthy and at the same time peculiar—the characteristic—that it is his duty to produce, communicate, and realize; and he cannot possess this, cannot differentiate it, cleanse it from impurities, consolidate and organize it, except through prolonged and interested self-contemplation. Only this can enable him to free himself from the imitative on the one hand and the whimsical on the other, and to stand forth without shame or arrogance for what he truly is. Consequently every productive mind must have intense self-feeling; it must delight to contemplate the characteristic, to gloat over it if you please, and in this way learn to define, arrange, and express it. If one will take up a work of literary art like, say, the “Sentimental Journey,” he will see that a main source of the charm of it is in the writer’s assured and contented familiarity with himself. A man who writes like that has delighted to brood over his thoughts, jealously excluding everything not wholly congenial to him, and gradually working out an adequate expression. And the superiority, or at least the difference, in tone and manner of the earlier English literature as compared with that of the nineteenth century is apparently connected with a more assured and reposeful self-possession on the part of the older writers, made possible, no doubt, by a less urgent general life. The same fact of self-intensity goes with notable production in all sorts of literature, in every art, in statesmanship, philanthropy, religion; in all kinds of career.
Who does not feel at times what Goethe calls the joy of dwelling in one’s self, of surrounding himself with the fruits of his own mind, with things he has made, perhaps, books he has chosen, his familiar clothes and possessions of all sorts, with his wife, children, and old friends, and with his own thoughts, which some, like Robert Louis Stevenson, confess to a love of re-reading in books, letters, or diaries? At times even conscientious people, perhaps, look kindly at their own faults, deficiencies, and mannerisms, precisely as they would on those of a familiar friend. Without self-love in some such sense as this any solid and genial growth of character and accomplishment is hardly possible. “Whatever any man has to effect must emanate from him like a second self; and how could this be possible were not his first self entirely pervaded by it?” Nor is it opposed to the love of others. “Indeed,” says Mr. Stevenson, “he who loves himself, not in idle vanity, but with a plenitude of knowledge, is the best equipped of all to love his neighbors.”
Self-love, Shakespeare says, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting; and many serious varieties of the latter might be specified. There is, for instance, a culpable sort of self-dreading cowardice, not at all uncommon with sensitive people, which shrinks from developing and asserting a just “I” because of the stress of self-feeling—of vanity, uncertainty, and mortification—which is foreseen and shunned. If one is liable to these sentiments the proper course is to bear with them as with other disturbing conditions, rather than to allow them to stand in the way of what, after all, one is born to do. “Know your own bone,” says Thoreau, “gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”[[54]] “If I am not I, who will be?”
A tendency to secretiveness very often goes with this self-cherishing. Goethe was as amorous and jealous about his unpublished works, in some cases, as the master of a seraglio; fostering them for years, and sometimes not telling his closest friends of their existence. His Eugenie, “meine Liebling Eugenie,” as he calls it, was vulgarized and ruined for him by his fatal mistake in publishing the first part before the whole was complete. It would not be difficult to show that the same cherishing of favorite and peculiar ideas is found also in painters, sculptors, and effective persons of every sort. As was suggested in an earlier chapter, this secretiveness has a social reference, and few works of art could be carried through if the artist was convinced they would have no value in the eyes of anyone else. He hides his work that he may purify and perfect it, thus making it at once more wholly and delightfully his own and also more valuable to the world in the end. As soon as the painter exhibits his picture he loses it, in a sense; his system of ideas about it becomes more or less confused and disorganized by the inrush of impressions arising from a sense of what other people think of it; it is no longer the perfect and intimate thing which his thought cherished, but has become somewhat crude, vulgar, and disgusting, so that if he is sensitive he may wish never to look upon it again. This, I take it, is why Goethe could not finish Eugenie, and why Guignet, a French painter, of whom Hamerton speaks, used to alter or throw away a painting that anyone by chance saw upon the easel. Likewise it was in order more perfectly to know and express himself—in his book called “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”—that Thoreau retired to Walden Pond, and it was doubtless with the same view that Descartes quitted Paris and dwelt for eight years in Holland, concealing even his place of residence. The Self, like a child, is not likely to hold its own in the world unless it has had a mature prenatal development.
It may be said, perhaps, that these views contradict a well-known fact, namely, that we do our best work when we are not self-conscious, not thinking about effect, but filled with disinterested and impersonal passion. Such truth as there is in this idea is, however, in no way inconsistent with what has just been said. It is true that a certain abandonment and self-forgetting is often characteristic of high thought and noble action. But there would be no production, no high thought or noble action, if we relied entirely upon these impassioned moments without preparing ourselves to have them. It is only as we have self-consciousness that we can be aware of those special tendencies which we assert in production, or can learn how to express them, or even have the desire to do so. The moment of insight would be impossible without the persistent self-conscious endeavor that preceded it, nor has enthusiastic action any value without a similar discipline.