934 Dynamic Theory. 



because others do. But later on he discovers that the object he calls 

 " Tommy " is not, as a whole, related to his sensations as other objects 

 are, but that somewhere about it is the home of these sensations. The 

 different parts of the bod} T , considered separately, are still regarded as 

 objective, and continue to be through life, but still as belonging to the 

 part that holds the sensations. We speak of our head, hand, foot, 

 brain, mind, bod} 7 , blood, &c. As we speak of our different parts al- 

 ternately, we seem to regard the part spoken of as an external object, 

 and all the rest as the ego. It is in this spirit that the feeling of self- 

 control arises, as shown in chapter 66. Thus, a man will say, " /only 

 succeeded by a great effort in restraining myself from attacking that 

 man." Here he puts for the " I " those motives of prudence, or that 

 discretion which is "the better part of valor," and for the "myself," 

 that part which felt the provocation, indignation and resentment. The 

 latter appears temporarily as the objective part of the man. If, on the 

 contrary, his indignation became strong enough to control his action, 

 he would describe it by saying, ' ' I became so angry at that man that I 

 just went for him. " The ego fathers the action, whatever it may be, 

 and it thus appears to keep company with the will. 



Those things with which we are in habitual contact, and which con- 

 stantly pertain to us, come to be identified with us and to enter into our 

 personality. We speak of the acts which we are accustomed to perform 

 constantly as our " habits ;" that is, our clothes. In this we instinc- 

 tively recognize the intimacy which exists between ourselves and our 

 clothes. We are, in a measure, renewed wfien we change from old 

 clothes to new, from the rough, work-day suit, to the "Sunday clothes;" 

 and our feelings and deportment toward others are largely influenced by 

 what they have on. A king in his robes of state, inspires a very dif- 

 ferent feeling from that towards the same man in a tinker's dress, work- 

 ing at a bench. 



Maudsley observes that a foreign body, an artificial tooth for example, 

 with which we are in constant sensory contact, becomes, in feeling, a 

 part of ourselves, while a paralyzed or much 'numbed part of the body 

 comes to be felt as a foreign body. So that an artificial tooth may be 

 a truer part of the ego than a paralyzed finger. The condition on 

 which this is so, is, no doubt, that the artificial tooth is useful to us, 

 and enters into our active life, while the other does not. 



It is obvious that every sensation we get from our environment enters 

 into and modifies our conscious personality. In fact it is sensations and 

 the ideas constructed and compounded from them, which together consti- 

 tute the conscious personality. This feeling of 1 myself, must be 

 different in different individuals, because the sensations have been 

 different. While both savage and civilized men have the five sen- 



