Hume, in his chapter on Personal Identity, observes, “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.” This is a good illustration of a futile and mistaken attempt to absorb self-consciousness in consciousness of consciousness. Of course Hume was not the hypothetical ego which we have instanced as purely objective observer of his own consciousness; when he was conscious of any consciousness, as a heat or light sensation, a pleasure or a pain, he was assuredly, like other mortals, conscious of it as his own. The sense of mine-ness as psychic fact he should not have ignored, whatever might be his conclusions as to the myself But metaphysical psychology is always apt to swerve from fact.
The close connection of self-consciousness with consciousness of consciousness leads often to their confusion. Thus under the head “Illusions of Self-consciousness,” J. M. Baldwin, in his treatise on the Senses and Intellect, says, “Of these subjective illusions we may mention emotional illusions, wrong estimates of our emotional states, as when an angry man declares that he was never more cool in his life.” This instance is plainly an illusion of introspection, not of self-inspection; there is a mistake in the consciousness of consciousness. Wundt, in defining self-sense as perception of the unity of experience, falls into the same confusion.
It points to the fundamental value and place of these cognition factors, that when we say any one is conscious we imply them all. Thus I say of some one rendered unconscious by an accident, “He slowly recovered consciousness,” by which I mean, became aware of himself and his surroundings with awareness of his own mental activities. He is consciously conscious, objectively conscious, and self-conscious. All this makes up for us being conscious, and is for cognitive mind such a simple organic basal movement as circulatory-nervous-motor function is for body.
An organism must, of course, have had some psychosis before it can become conscious of it, and of it as its own, and this primitive psychosis we regard as pure pleasure-pain series. But in the struggle for existence the organism is driven out of this subjectivity to cognize its environment as related to itself, to apprehend and comprehend and so to feel about itself—emotion—and so led to intelligent will activity as real self-activity. At the very first the organism has pleasures and pains, without knowing them as determined in itself by objects, but this primitive pre-cognitive stage is short, and most psychisms are certainly beyond it; they sense and notice things, bodily and beyond the body, as of experience value in pleasure and pain terms. At some most critical moment cognition first arose as triple movement, object—subject—consciousness knowledge. Just what may have been its original form it is most difficult to determine, but we may suppose it to have been a very weak activity, possibly expressible, as, “it hurts,” object being simply pain centre. “It hurts,” means object self-related, with consciousness of the consciousness, and this is our language expression for what seems to be an extremely common psychosis among many organisms. As simple pains were probably the first conscious phenomena, consciousness of pain was probably the first consciousness of consciousness, involving also subject and object consciousness. Not only to have a pain, but to be conscious of it as definitely objectively determined is decidedly useful attainment, which is finally inground in experience, so that it occurs spontaneously in highest psychisms. But it is only with a few of the highest human psychisms that consciousness object and subject are apprehended as general facts. Even by philosophers and scientists, subject, subjectivity, and object are not easily apprehended in their distinctness as purely general modes; it requires will strain to properly know them.
We have throughout sought the origin and place of modes of consciousness in function, and from this point of view we must view object-knowledge, subject-knowledge, and consciousness-knowledge as early coincident and correlative. Cognition springs up as a threefold mode, for in no single factor by itself has it life value. Pain, we say, forced the organism to work out to object as painer, cognition arising at once as triple activity. However, this does not imply that there is a constant knowing with, an apperception, that every consciousness is accompanied with a consciousness of it. Pains, pleasures, perceptions, etc., constantly engross the consciousness field without our apprehending them. Simple, common folk and children are rarely apperceptive, but yet they are eminently self-conscious, and consciousness conscious in all their life of naïve selfishness. They are constantly perceiving the significance of things for their own experience, and acting upon this felt meaning. Although not immediately aware of what is passing in their own consciousness, as is common to certain high types of human psychism, yet in their self-interest they certainly know themselves as experiencers. Thus immediate awareness of one’s own psychic attitude as such—apperception—is a kind of consciousness of consciousness in measure divorced from consciousness of the object, and so belonging to such a high scope of psychism that it hardly falls within the range of our discussion, which is confined to simple direct emotion—value of things as implying both self and consciousness knowledge. Apperception as a constant reflection and introspection is certainly not original. In its original form consciousness of consciousness is merely implied element in the study of things. The study of conscious self self-possession, self-poise, conscious psychic self-development, is all very late.
Leaving now the general consideration and analysis of self-consciousness in the light of the general doctrine of evolution, let us note how it occurs in consciousness to-day. Let us come to some direct inductive study.
The simplest method and the most direct of studying the rise and nature of self-consciousness is in those experiences in coming to self-consciousness from deep sleep or from coma after severe accident. I say, “I regained consciousness,” “I came to consciousness,” meaning, not bare consciousness as in mere sensations or perceptions, but a self-consciousness involved therein. In becoming conscious I came to self-consciousness; in becoming aware of the objective, I at once realize my subjectivity, myself as experiencer. In coming out from under the influence of chloroform, there is, I have distinctly observed in my own case, a struggling to realize, which is both objective and subjective cognition. It is true a person having awakened under very strange circumstances, as in a bed in a hospital after an accident, may declare, “I did not know myself,” but this does not mean that he had no self-consciousness, but merely that for the moment he did not identify this self, himself, as John Smith, of Jonesville, etc. Sometimes it happens that self-identification is not reached at all, but the self, as bodily whole experiencing, is speedily aware of self, a new personality and sense of personality quickly grows up. Again, a lunatic mistaking himself for Herod or Cæsar is thus always self-conscious. He has consciously established himself as the self playing a part in the world, but according to the opinion of his sane fellows he is much in error as to what that part is. Strictly speaking, there is no illusion of self-consciousness, except under the impossible supposition that a being not a real self or psychic individual should have self-sense; but the very act of self-cognizance implies reality of self-hood. It is plain that even the insane man who regards himself as tree or stone, has, however, the act of self-regard, is really self-conscious. Strictly speaking, we cannot identify or recognise self, for sense of self is necessary in any recognition to make it such, a self-consciousness is a fundamental prius. You recognise a tree, a house, but you do not recognise yourself except as yourself is mere object related to you, to your experience. Self-identification means only objective act, and is not, then, the same as self-consciousness, though based upon it.
I have endeavoured to make observations of myself in moments of awaking from sleep or going to sleep, to find whether subjective reference and objective apprehension are mingled co-ordinately in consciousness from the beginning, whether the self-sense reaches through both the perceptive life and the sensation life. Drowsing in bed I sometimes have a feeling of bare pleasure as the first stage in a pleasant awakening. There is here no sensing, no localizing, no awareness of body or of anything, no self-consciousness. This mere undifferentiated pleasure, interrupted by “cat-naps,” may often recur. Lolling half-awake every one has frequently experienced these feelings of pure pleasure, unsensed and unlocalized, and wholly unobjectivised, the barest and simplest consciousness, the very first stage in awaking. In this very lowest status in which I can ever catch my consciousness I have the pleasure from the warmth and softness of the bed without having to feel warm or sensing the soft. It is a distinct step to even feeling warm; moreover, in extreme drowsiness it is an effortful step, an active sensing, an objectifying self-activity, and hence a real self-consciousness, implied in the sensing act. To feel warm, to sense in this mode, is primarily object cognition which implies a measure of subject and consciousness cognition in feeling the warmth as source of the pleasure. Any one who will closely examine his mental state at the very first stage of slow awaking from deep sleep—a state of primitive consciousness—will notice a vanishing moment of mere pleasure or pain, and in cases of great drowsiness, when a sensation supervenes upon this stage, it does not merely come, as in our ordinary consciousness, but it is brought; there is objectifying effort. So in basking in the sun like an animal, the very first and lowest stage of consciousness I drop to is pure pleasure without having even to feel warm; and the feeling warm is distinctly a new and higher step in consciousness which is often attained by some slight effort. Thus it is distinctly possible for a man at times to be too lazy to feel warm; and this fundamental laziness must be accounted not uncommon with lower psychisms. Similarly for cold awakening one. There is a moment of pain from cold before one feels cold, a general pain and uneasiness discomfort before one realizes what is the matter, feels cold and the part cold—foot it may be—and so reaches some self-consciousness; in language expression, I am cold or feel cold. Here is a self-conscious personal experience, though the first touch of mere pain was experienced by the individual unconscious of himself.
We infer, then, that self-consciousness is first reached and maintained in the sensing act as definite cognitive volition. To sense warmth and cold is simply a little earlier objectification than to attain sense of a light or a sound. To feel is as active as to look or to listen. We know that there are modes of force an appreciation of which does not now enter into known psychosis, but which might be sensed through long and severe effort and evolve a new sense-organ. Thus, if the conditions of life had demanded it, there would have arisen in the struggle of existence a magnetic sense, though now a man may place his head between the poles of the strongest magnet and be unable to reach any sensation. A magnetic sense once organized and inbred into experience would act with the same apparent spontaneity, as a “given,” as does such a sensation as that of heat; and a person feeling magnetic would have self-feeling implied the same as in feeling warm. That feeling warm with us denotes something which possesses consciousness rather than consciousness by struggle possessing it, is simply the result of the inheritance of the accumulated mental force by which past generations have reached this sense, and thereby consolidated self-consciousness with it, for self-consciousness is built up as reflex cognition from the cognitive effort and willing of the individual. Sensation always begins in a sensing, a volition of the individual to realize externality in its experience value, that is, mode of affection of its own body, as in feeling warm pleasurably or painfully. When the objective is not merely sensed but perceived, when object and objects are definitely cognized, self-consciousness is greatly furthered, as each object and objectifying cognizance means self-reference or interpretation in terms of self-experience.
That self-consciousness is early and fundamental psychosis, is apparent, not only from the gradual losing consciousness on going to sleep or in gaining consciousness in waking, but also from the fact of its being universal in dream life. Those factors which remain throughout all stages and kinds of dream life, are justly regarded as organic and basal. The higher and later elements, those which are still nascent and in the volitional stage, as conscience and reason, rarely or never occur in dreams. In the slightest dreams there is personal quality; I am consciously experiencing, I am walking, riding, looking, hearing, etc. An awareness of self pervades all dream life, even in its lowest form. We are constantly in a world of objects which we are conscious of in their experience value as affecting us or to affect us. A person relating a dream always narrates it as personal experience and so felt—“I dreamed I was in a cave and I heard water running and I felt it cold,” etc., etc. As far then as we can survey dream life, it is a significant fact that self-consciousness pervades it.