THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 315 



as a whole. We must care more for our honor, our friends, 

 our human ties, than for a sound skin or wealth. And the 

 spiritual self is so supremely precious that, rather than 

 lose it, a man ought to be willing to give up friends and 

 good fame, and property, and life itself. 



In each kind of self, material, social, and spiritual, men 

 distinguish between the immediate and actual, and the re- 

 mote and potential, between the narrower and the wider 

 view, to the detriment of the former and advantage of the 

 latter. One must forego a present bodily enjoyment for 

 the sake of one's general health ; one must abandon the 

 dollar in the hand for the sake of the hundred dollars to 

 come ; one must make an enemy of his present interlocutor 

 if thereby one makes friends of a more valued circle ; one 

 must go without learning and grace, and wit, the better to 

 compass one's soul's salvation. 



Of all these wider, more potential selves, the potential 

 social self is the most interesting, by reason of certain 

 apparent paradoxes to which it leads in conduct, and by 

 reason of its connection with our moral and religious life. 

 When for motives of honor and conscience I brave the con- 

 demnation of my OAvn family, club, and 'set'; when, as a 

 protestant, I turn catholic ; as a catholic, freethinker ; as a 

 'regular practitioner,' homoeopath, or what not, I am always 

 inwardly strengthened in my course and steeled against the 

 loss of my actual social self by the thought of other and 

 better possible social judges than those whose verdict goes 

 against me now. The ideal social self which I thus seek 

 in appealing to their decision may be very remote : it may 

 be represented as barely possible. I may not hope for its 

 realization during my lifetime ; I may even expect the 

 future generations, which would approve me if they knew 

 me, to know nothing about me when I am dead and gone. 

 Yet still the emotion that beckons me on is indubitably 

 the pursuit of an ideal social self, of a self that is at least 

 ivorthy of approving recognition by the highest possible 

 judging companion, if such companion there be.* This 



* It must be observed that the qualities of the Self thus ideally consti- 

 tuted are all qualities aporoved by my actual fellows in the first instance ; 

 and that my reason for now appealing from their verdict to that of the 



