“No,” she said, “I think I get the drift of it.” She looked at his intent face. He wasn’t in the least talking down to her; he was simply trying to express himself as well as he possibly could to her. He was treating her like an equal. Like an equal!
That was his general philosophy. He was coming to the question of himself now, he said. He became very earnest over the coffee cups and ash tray on the swept tablecloth. He spread elucidatory hands before her. He was conscientiously explicit. He saw in himself two phases, or rather two levels of existence. Roughly speaking, two. They had links and intermediate stages of course, but they could be ignored when one just wanted to express the idea. First of all, he was the old instinctive individual, fearful, greedy, lustful, jealous, self-assertive. That was the primary self. He had to attend to that primary self because it carried all the rest of him, as a rider must see that his horse gets oats. Deeper lay social instincts and dispositions arising out of family life. That was the second self, the social self. Man, he threw out, is a creature that has become more and more consciously social in the last two or three hundred thousand years. He has been lengthening his life, keeping his children with him longer and longer, enlarging his community from family herds into clans and tribes and nations. The deep-lying continuity of life was becoming more apparent and finding more and more definite expression with this socialization of man. To educate anyone in the proper sense of the word was to make him more and more aware of this continuity. The importance of the passionate feverish self was then reduced. True education was self-subordination to a greater life, to the social self. The natural instincts and limitations of the primary self were in conflict with this wider underflow; education, good education, tended to correct them.
“Here am I,” said Devizes, “as we all are, a creature in a state of internal conflict, quicker, fiercer mortal instincts at issue with a deeper, calmer, less brightly lit, but finally stronger drive towards immortal purposes. And I am—how shall I put it?—I personally am, to the best of my ability, on the side of the deeper things. My aptitudes and temperament and opportunities have brought me to psychology—as a profession. I work to add to the accumulation of human knowledge and understanding about the mind. I work for illumination. My particular work is to study and cure troubled and tangled minds. I try to straighten them out and simplify them and illuminate them. And above all I try to learn from them. I seek the mental or physical cause of their distresses. I try to set down as clearly and accessibly as possible, all I observe and learn. That’s my job. That’s my aim. It gives me a general direction for my life. All the stuff of my mere individual existence I try to subordinate to that end. Not always. My monkey individual gets loose at times and gibbers on the roof. And at other times it’s rather good company as a relief from overwork. Vanity and self-indulgence have their uses. But never mind the monkey now. I do not want to be a brilliant person; I want to be a vital part. That’s my essential creed. I want to be the sort of wheel in the machinery they call a mental expert. As good a wheel as I can be. That’s what I’m up to in general terms, Christina Alberta. That’s what I think I am.”
“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, reflecting profoundly. “Of course I can’t produce a statement like that. You’ve got your system—complete.”
“And finished,” said Devizes. “You’ve got to tell your story in your own way. At your age—you ought to be with loose ends to all your convictions.”
“I wonder if I can tell you any story.”
“You’ve got to try your best now. It’s only fair play.”
“Yes.”
There was a little silence.
“It’s wonderful to talk to you like this,” said Christina Alberta. “It’s wonderful to talk to anyone like this.”