THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. H19 



this ' Nnmber One ' within me, for which, according to pro- 

 verbial philosophy, I am sujjposed to keep so constant a 

 * lookout ' ? Is it the inner nucleus of my spiritual self, that 

 collection of obscurely felt ' adjustments,' plus perhaps that 

 still more obscurely perceived subjectivity as such, of which 

 w^e lecently spoke V Or is it perhaps the concrete stream 

 of my thought in its entirety, or some one section of the 

 same? Or may it be the indi\dsible Soul-Substance, in 

 which, according to the orthodox tradition, my faculties 

 inhere ? Or, finally, can it be the mere pronoun I ? Surely 

 it is none of these things, that self for which I feel such hot 

 regard. Though all of them together were put within me, 

 I should still be cold, and fail to exhibit anything worthy 

 of the name of selfishness or of devotion to 'Number One.' 

 To have a self that I can care for, nature must first present 

 me with some object interesting enough to make me insdnc- 

 tively wish to appropriate it for its own sake, and out of it 

 to manufacture one of those material, social, or spiritual 

 selves, which we have already passed in review. We shall 

 find that all the facts of rivalry and substitution that have 

 so striick us, all the shiftings and expansions and contrac- 

 tions of the sphere of what shall be considered me and 

 mine, are but results of the fact that certain things appeal 

 to primitive and instinctive impulses of our nature, and 

 that we follow their destinies with an excitement that owes 

 nothing to a reflective source. These objects our con- 

 sciousness treats as the primordial constituents of its Me. 

 Whatever other objects, whether by association with the 

 fate of these, or in any other way, come to be followed wdth 

 the same sort of interest, form our remoter and more sec- 

 ondary self. The ivords me, then, and self, so far as they 

 arouse feeling and connote emotional worth, are objective 

 designations, meanirig all the things which have the power 

 to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a 

 certain peculiar sort. Let us try to justify this proposition 

 in detail. 



The most palpable selfishness of a man is his bodily 

 selfishness ; and his most palpable self is the body to which 

 that selfishness relates. Now I say that he identifies him- 

 self with this body because he loves it, and that he does 



