SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 201 



less consciousness of a limb as belonging to "self," than did 

 Buffon's parrot, which would first ask itself for its own claw, 

 and then comply with the request by placing the claw in its 

 own beak — in the same way as it would give the claw to any 

 one else who asked for it in the same words. 



Later on, when the outward self-consciousness already 

 explained has begun to be developed, we find that the child, like 

 the animal, has learnt to associate its own organism with its 

 own mental states, in such wise that it recognizes its body as 

 belonging in a peculiar manner to the self, so far as the self is 

 recognizable by the logic of recepts. This is the stage that we 

 meet with in animals. Next the child begins to talk, and, as 

 we might expect, this first translation of the logic of recepts 

 reveals the fact that as yet there is no inward self-conscious- 

 ness, but only outward : as yet the child has paid no attention 

 to his own mental states, further than to feel that he feels 

 them ; and in the result we find that the child speaks to him- 

 self as an object, i.e. by his proper name or in the third person. 

 That is to say, " the child does not as yet set himself in oppo- 

 sition to all outer objects, including all other persons, but 

 regards himself as one among many objects." * The change 

 of a child's phraseology from speaking of self as an object to 

 speaking of self as a subject does not take place — or but 

 rarely so — till the third year. When it has taken place we 

 have definite evidence of true self-consciousness, though still 

 in a rudimentary stage. And it is doubtful whether this 

 change would take place even at so early an age as the third 

 year, were it not promoted by the " social environment." For, 

 as Mr. Sully observes, " the relation of self and not self, in- 



• Sully, loc. at., p. 376. See also Wundt, loc. cit.y i. 289. He shows that 

 this speaking of self in the third person is not due to "imitation," but, on the 

 contrary, opposed to it. For ** a thousand times the child hears that its elders do 

 not thus speak of themselves." The child hears that its elders call it in the third 

 person, and in this it follows them. But such imitation as we here find is 

 expressive only of the fact that hitherto the child has not distinguished between 

 self as an object and self as a subject. Only later on, when this distinction has 

 begun to dawn, does imitation proceed to apply to the self the first person, after 

 the manner in which other selves (now recognized by the child as such) are heard 

 to do. 



