328 PSTGHOLOOr. 



balance of praise and blame as easily as we weigh other 

 people, — though with dilficultj quite as fairly. The just 

 man is the one who can weigh himself impartially. Impar- 

 tial weighing presupjDoses a rare faculty of abstraction from 

 the vividness with' which, as Herr Horwicz has pointed out, 

 things known as intimately as our own possessions and 

 performances appeal to our imagination ; and an equally 

 rare power of vividly representing the affairs of others. But, 

 granting these rare powers, there is no reason why a man 

 should not pass judgment on himself quite as objectively 

 and well as on anyone else. No matter how he feels about 

 himself, unduly elated or unduly dej)ressed, he may still 

 truly know his own worth by measuring it by the outward 

 standard he applies to other men, and counteract the injus- 

 tice of the feeling he cannot wholly escape. This self- 

 measuring process has nothing to do with the instinctive 

 self-regard we have hitherto been dealing with. Being 

 merely ouo application of intellectual comparison, it need 

 no longer detain us here. Please note again, however, how 

 the pure Ego appears merely as the vehicle in which the 

 estimation is carried on, the objects estimated being all of 

 them facts of an empirical sort, * one's body, one's credit, 



* Professor Bain, in his chapter on ' Emotions of Self,' does scant jus- 

 tice to the primitive nature of a large part of our self-feeling, and seems to 

 reduce it to reflective self-estimation of this sober intellectual sort, which 

 certainly most of it is not. He says that when the attention is turned 

 inward upon self as a Personality, " we are putting forth towards ourselves 

 ihe kind of exercise that properly accompanies our contemplation of other 

 persons. We are accustomed to scrutinize the actions and conduct of those 

 about us. to set a higher value upon one man than upon another, by com- 

 paring the two; to pity on3 in distress; to feel mmplacencp towards a par 

 ticular individual; to congratulate a man on some good fortune that it 

 pleases us to see him gain; to admire greatness or excellence as displayed 

 ly any of our fellows. All these exercises are intrinsically social, like 

 Love and Resentment; an isolated individual could never attain to them, 

 nor exercise them. By what means, then, through what fiction [!] can we 

 turn round r.nd play them oif upon self? Or how comes it that we obtain 

 any satisfaction h/ putting self in the place of the other party? Perhaps 

 the simplest form of tha reflected act is that expressed by Self-worth and 

 Self-estimation, based r.uJ begun upon observation of the ways and con- 

 duct of our fellow-beings. We soon make comparisons among the indi- 

 viduals about us; we see that one is stronger and does more work than 

 another, and, in consequence perhaps, receives more pay. We see one 

 putting forth perhaps more kindness than another, and in consequence 



