THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 309 



me connaH,' as the French workman says of the implement 

 he can use well. So that it comes about that persons for 

 whose opinion we care nothing are neyertheless persons 

 whose notice we woo ; and that many a man truly great, 

 many a woman truly fastidious in most respects, will take a 

 deal of trouble to dazzle some insignificant cad whose 

 whole jDersonality they heartily despise. 



Under the head of spiritual self-seeking ought to be 

 included every impulse towards psychic progress, whether 

 intellectual, moral, or spiritual in the narrow sense of the 

 term. It must be admitted, however, that much that com- 

 monly passes for spiritual self-seeking in this narrow sense 

 is only material and social self-seeking beyond the grave. 

 In the Mohammedan desire for paradise and the Christian 

 aspiration not to be damned in hell, the materiality of the 

 goods sought is undisguised. In the more jjositive and 

 refined view of heaven many of its goods, the fellowship of 

 the saints and of our dead ones, and the presence of God, 

 are but social goods of the most exalted kind. It is onl_y 

 the search of the redeemed inward nature, the spotlessness 

 from sin, whether here or hereafter, that can count aa 

 spiritual self-seeking pure and undetiled. 



But this broad external review of the facts of the life Oi 

 the Self will be incomplete without some account of the 



BIVALRY AND CONFLICT OF THE DIFFERENT SELVES. 



With most objects of desire, j)hysical nature restricts our 

 choice to but one of many represented goods, and even so it 

 is here. I am often confronted by the necessity of stand- 

 ing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. 

 Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and 

 fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million 

 a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a 

 philosopher ; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and 

 African explorer, as well as a ' tone-poet ' and saint. But 

 the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work 

 would run counter to the saint's ; the hon-vivant and the 

 philanthropist would trip each other up ; the philosopher 

 and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same 



