116 Wisco7isi7i Acadeiny of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



superiority to the sun." In the business then of speech I am, 

 when speaking, ever conspicuous. The fact that you are also a 

 sharer in this business may or may not be specially indicated ; 

 and, even when it is so indicated, it is only as a minor associate 

 that I recognize you. I rank myself as the senior partner. 



A moment later our respective rank may change. In answer- 

 ing me you are in turn, in your ovm estimation, the speaker, the 

 first person, the protagonist, the leading actor on the stage of 

 thought-exchange. That is, your estimate of yourself will tally 

 with my previous estimate of myself. 



But I shall not fully accept your estimate. Though I cease 

 to speak and become a listener, I do not forfeit, in my own esti- 

 mation, my linguistic prestige. Putting myself in your place, 

 I assent indeed to your use of the "I," to designate yourself. 

 But this assent is based upon a mere hypothesis. From my 

 point of viewing the actual, I alone am ^^I." I do not speak of 

 myself as "thou'' or recognize that another is really ^'I." The 

 fact that a converse view is taken by every other person, the fact 

 that is, that no one calls me "I" except myself, and that every 

 one appropriates the "I" in self-designation, is merely the fact 

 that the egocentric view-point is, in matters colloquial, not pe- 

 cular to myself.-^ 



The other required participant in thought-communication is 

 a hearer. Of the several sorts of hearers, I have in mind for the 

 moment the intended hearer only. There may indeed be more 

 than one such hearer, but this case of mere plurality may be neg- 

 lected. 



My intended hearer is such, of course, from the special view- 

 point of myself. The person addressed by me, it is true, may 

 coincide with the person addressed by you or by another; but 

 this is the merest accident. He is to me a person addressed, 

 so far alone as I address him. The aims of others than myself 

 are to me irrelevant. ^^Intended hearer of what I have to say'' 

 may be accepted as expressing what I mean by ^^thou." 



^This essential immutability of "I," even when the role of speaker is ex- 

 changed for that of hearer, further indicates the absoluteness of self-conception. 

 The speaker, it is true, uses the "I" only when speaking of himself, that is, of 

 a speaker ; but his reason for using it seems to be, not that he is the speaker, 

 but that he is self ; whether this self be speaker or hearer seems to be at least 

 of very secondary importance. "I," then, is the name for self in the absolute, 

 whether speaking or hearing— being, thinking or acting— in "splendid isolation" 

 from all else that is. 



