SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 133 



all disposed to copy those who influence us 

 through our feelings of admiration or respect. 

 The abnormal acuteness of the faculties when 

 under hypnotic influence is also illustrated by 

 common experience. Our energy and skill are 

 at their highest when evoked by an impulse that 

 is strong enough to make us forget ourselves : 

 there are few who have not suffered from the 

 paralysing effect of a fit of self-consciousness. 

 The hypnotic condition can be brought about in 

 various methods, and it is difficult to isolate the 

 actual cause. But it appears that in all cases the 

 attention of the person who is to be hypnotized 

 must be attracted and concentrated, and it may 

 be that he loses his consciousness of himself by 

 strengthening his consciousness of externals 

 that the concentration of his ordinary perceptive 

 awareness costs him the temporary atrophy of 

 those tender shoots which we have figured as 

 representing consciousness of self. So we all 

 know that self-consciousness vanishes when we 

 are engrossed in study, or in any pursuit which 

 absorbs the whole of our attention. 



If our faculties are appraised by their practical 

 helpfulness in the struggle for life, self-conscious- 

 ness appears to be an injurious superfluity. If 

 acute it may interfere, not only with the exer- 

 cise of acquired dexterities but with the per- 

 formance of our instinctive bodily functions. 

 There is no more fruitful cause of " foozling " on 

 the links than self-conscious thoughts of our 

 style at the moment when our attention should 

 be concentrated upon the ball. If self-conscious- 

 ness is exceedingly acute the limbs may fail, 

 the articulation of speech become difficult, and 

 even the beating of the heart may be interrupted. 

 These are the terrors of a bashful man. But if 

 we consider the causes that have led to the ethical 



