Self and Consciousness

The savage commonly fancies that the link between a name and the person denominated by it is a real and substantial bond. In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital portion of himself, and takes care of it accordingly.—Sir James Frazer

§ 73. The Concept of Self.—We said on p. 9 that the word mind is used by the psychologist as an inclusive name for all the phenomena of the psychological world, that is to say, of the world with man left in. We then found, on p. 10, that the man left in reduces to a functional nervous system. This means, of course, that there are as many psychological worlds as there are separate nervous systems; so that the psychological world, which the psychologist tries to describe, is in reality an average or generalize world; though the observations upon which his descriptions rest are always made upon this or that particular world. The same thing holds of any science. A boy picks up a bit of jagged stone, and with a jerk of his wrist flips it across the road. No physicist could tell you the exact course described by that stone, and no physicist wants to. Physics deals with the ideal course of ideal projectiles hurled under fixed conditions; the boy and the jerk and the jagged stone are all generalised away into some mathematically smooth trajectory. The observations of physics, on the other hand, are made by men working under conditions that are not ideal, and using instruments that differ from the wrist and the stone only in degree, not in kind; the smooth curve is derived from data all of which have their margin of empirical error.

Psychology, however, just because it has to do with a world in which man himself remains, is in a different case from the physical sciences; it has to take account of the self. The concept of self is not solely psychological; it is a common-sense concept; and like all the constructions of common sense it has three sides, philosophical, practical, and scientific. It is philosophical, in so far as it involves an attempt to explain or to rationalise the facts of observation; and it evidently does that; the notion of self is a way of explaining the continuity of memory and of conduct; I remember my past because I am I, and I behave in this way or that because it is ‘like me’ to do so. The concept is also practical; common sense rates a self as gifted or energetic or lazy or improvident; it is always valuing or estimating some Him or Her, some You or Me. It is further scientific, that is, psychological; for the self thus rated is some particular combination of talent, temperament and character, and the continuity which the self explains is some particular mental constitution, intellectual, emotive, active; one cannot at all define the ‘person’ or ‘individual’ of common sense without using psychological terms. So that psychology, if only in self-defence, must have its say in the matter, and must recast the self from its own point of view.

The recasting is not difficult. A self, in the psychological sense, is one of the particular psychological worlds. It is not mind, but a mind, the mental phenomena correlated with a particular nervous system, and arranged and determined in accordance with the tendencies of that system. We have made no mention of it hitherto, in this book, because our main business has been with general psychology, and we have had no need of it. Psychology, however, does not confine itself to the generalised world: and that is how it comes to be in different case from the physical sciences, and takes account, not only in self-defence, of the concept of self. If you go back to pp. 31 f., you will note that there is a differential psychology, a psychology of individual differences, as well as a general psychology. The variation of mental processes from observer to observer, and the limits and manner of this variation, are indeed just as much matter of observable fact, and therefore just as proper a subject for scientific enquiry, as their uniformity; and as the incidents of a man’s career may be set forth objectively, without praise or blame, in a biography, so may his psychological self, his mental processes in correlation with his nervous system, be set forth in a psychography. We ourselves, although we have been occupied with general psychology, and have for the most part spoken of ‘practised observers’ as a physicist might speak of ‘a sensitive galvanometer,’ without going into particulars,—we ourselves have, nevertheless, found frequent occasion to mention individual differences. The facts that we have thus touched upon incidentally are worked up, systematically, by differential psychology.

The concept of self is, however, a common-sense concept; it has, as we have seen, its practical side; and you will understand, therefore, that the differential study of selves has a high practical importance. Such a study is not rigorously or exclusively psychological. But since certain ‘mental traits,’ and certain combinations of them, may render a man fit or unfit for a proposed business or profession, it is important to know in what degree these traits are present; and here the psychologist is of assistance; he has helped to devise ‘mental tests’ which serve to identify and measure them. It is also especially important to know what traits are likely to be found together, and in what degree. This problem has been vigorously attacked, of recent years, on the side of intellect; and while the details belong to a chapter in practical psychology (p. 33) which we cannot here open, there is one result, at any rate, which should find a place in a scientific text-book. There seems to be no doubt that the individual nervous system possesses, over and above its special habits, susceptibilities, tendencies, and activities, a characteristic manner of functioning at large; so that a common or general factor enters into all the special intellectual responses that are called forth by particular situations. It is not easy to make this result clear to the reader, mainly because no one has as yet a clear idea of what the common or general factor is; we have good evidence that it exists, but we can say very little more about it. Different names have been given to it: ‘energy of attention,’ ‘general ability,’ ‘intellective energy,’ ‘general intelligence’; but they indicate the way in which it manifests itself, and not its own nature; the best name for the present is the vague ‘general common factor.’ We do not know, either, upon what it depends: on blood-supply, perhaps, or on the arrangement of nervous structures, or on some individual ‘quality’ of the nervous elements, or perhaps on something else that we cannot even guess at. What it does is to hold a man’s intellectual traits together and to enter into the exhibition of them all; it is thus, from the psychological point of view, a sort of supreme determining tendency, guiding all mental processes whatsoever into the channels of intellectual selfhood. Whether there is a like general factor on the emotive side, and whether ‘emotive energy’ is of the same kind as this ‘intellective energy,’ cannot be said.

One further point! We have been careful, in dealing with the common-sense concept of self, to distinguish its three aspects, philosophical, practical, scientific; but we have drawn the limits of this self more strictly than everyday usage warrants; and we must now correct that error. Common sense, as we remarked on p. 2, is likely to confuse the Me with the Mine, and the Him with the His; the self is extended from personality to possessions. The confusion of Him and His is a natural consequence of the practical reference of the concept; the easiest way to rate or estimate another person is to consider his property, his sphere of influence, his social prominence; and these things, which are a part of the other person’s value, thus become for us a part of himself. The confusion of Me with Mine has a different origin. Intellect, temperament and character are based upon habits, and habits imply an habitual surroundings; we are ‘not ourselves’ when we leave our accustomed groove. No doubt, each of these sources of confusion intermingles with the other; we are not concerned, however, to follow them in detail.

§ 74. The Persistence of the Self.—A full account of the self of common sense, in so far as this self calls for psychological treatment, belongs to social and not to general psychology; and the discussion therefore falls outside the scope of the present book. We must, however, say a word about that observed continuity of memory and conduct which the concept of self, on its philosophical side, professes to explain (p. 308); for the notion of the persistence of the self has had a marked influence, as we shall see in § 75, upon this chapter of general psychology.

We are all of us disposed to take the persistence of the self for granted. Do I not now remember what I did and thought and felt when I was a small child? and do I not now act in accordance with my character, as family and friends expect me to act? Surely the thing is obvious: the organism is physically continuous, from infancy to old age; a likeness of interest, of skill, of aptitudes, may be traced from childhood to manhood; and the discovery of the ‘general common factor’ in the intellectual sphere only confirms what we knew before. The child becomes the adult, and the adult passes into senility, while the self remains the same,—growing and developing and shrinking, to be sure, but essentially unchanged throughout. That is the natural view; and for the most part it goes unchallenged.

Let us see, however, whether it may not be questioned. We remember; that is true; but we also forget. The fact that certain past events are remembered tells more heavily, in common-sense thinking, than the fact that very many past events are forgotten, simply because it is human nature, as Bacon said, to give more weight to positive than to negative instances; but science does not emphasize; science takes all the facts at the same level. The organism, again, is physically continuous, and ‘the child is father of the man’; but who makes these observations? Not I, who am the continuous organism, but—in the first instance, at any rate—my fellow-men, those who are about me; and my fellow-men clinch their observations by the bestowal upon me of a personal name. In primitive thought, the superstitions that connect the name with the personality are legion; and even to-day our own name is warmly intimate, a very factor of our self. This name, which forms part of us and holds us together all through life, comes nevertheless from the outside; we do not name ourselves! Consider, further, the influence of language in general. It is clear that language, as it developed forms of speech in accordance with the common-sense notion of self, would powerfully reinforce that notion; the words and phrases which at first expressed ideas would come, in time, to shape or suggest ideas. The common-sense view is thus accepted as natural; but there is no proof that it is correct.

Suppose, then, that we openly challenge that view; what can we urge against it? We find, first of all, that language bears witness against itself. We say that a man is at times ‘out of himself,’ ‘not himself,’ ‘beside himself’; we say that he forgets, surpasses, loses, disregards, neglects, discredits, contradicts himself; we say that he does himself injustice, that he cannot contain himself, and so forth. Our daily life bears witness to the same effect. A man may be suave and affable in business and a veritable bear at home; and the man who sits as judge upon the bench, and plays a beginner’s game upon the golf-course, and carries his little son pick-a-back to bed, is he the same self in all three situations? There are changes of selfhood so abrupt that they remind us of the ‘mutations’ of the biologists: religious conversion, loss of fortune, sudden elevation to a position of responsibility, disappointment in love, may make ‘another man’ of the man we knew. The seven ages, we might almost say, correspond with as many different selves; it is a common remark that so-and-so has not fulfilled the promise of his youth, and that so-and-so is no longer the man he was. Pathology brings corroboration of the most striking kind; there are cases of dual or multiple personality, in which the same ‘individual’ shows at different times very marked differences of intelligence, emotivity and conduct, differences so marked that the same organism appears as two or more distinct ‘selves’; and these selves may be wholly separate in experience, so that one self has no knowledge or memory of the experiences of another. Here, therefore, the abnormal is a more trenchant and clean-cut figure of the normal; it is the normal carried, so to say, to its logical extreme. The judge delivering a charge does not think of his golf, and the irritated golf-player does not think of his charge; but in the abnormal cases the division may be complete; the one ‘personality’ cannot think of the other.

If, then, there are facts which look toward the persistence and continuity and stability of the self, there are also other facts which look toward impermanence and discontinuity and instability. Common sense has laid stress upon the positive evidence, and has enshrined in language the concept of a persistent and continuous self. This one-sided attitude, as we are now to see, has had its effect upon psychology. We have carried the present analysis only so far as was necessary for our own purposes; the full psychological discussion of the self of common sense belongs, as we said just now, to another branch of the science.

§ 75. The Self in Experience.—So far, we have been discussing the psychological self as viewed, so to say, from the outside; we have found out what the word ‘self’ means when it is used as a technical term like ‘mind’ or ‘memory.’ We have now to raise a different question, and to ask: How is myself represented in experience? There are very many occasions when the organism is, literally, thrown back on itself, when it meets a situation by a self-response; what mental processes are then involved?

Self, in such cases, is a meaning; and, in principle, any mental process whatsoever may represent the self (or the phase or feature of the self that is called forth by the situation) if its context and determination carry the meaning of selfhood. We can hardly expect, however, that the context and determination will be explicit, a group of mental processes lying open to observation. For the meaning of self is very old in human history; and we learn from early childhood to speak a language in which it is already stereotyped, a language which bristles with I and my. We shall say more about language later. Meantime, you see that these are just the circumstances in which context and determination cease to be explicit, and reduce to a set or disposition of the nervous system (p. 120). Hence we must be satisfied to distinguish the forms in which the self-experience appears, and to discover what particular mental processes, if any, fall characteristically into these self-forms. In other words, we enquire whether the self-meaning attaches to a perception, or an idea, or a feeling, and so on down the list; and we enquire also whether the self-perception or self-idea, or whatever the form may be, is characteristically visual or auditory or kinÆsthetic, and so on. In principle, remember, any form and any kind of process may represent the self, provided that the self-context and the self-determination are somehow there; we are now to gather observations, and to see what forms and what processes do, in fact, represent the self in our experience.

Let us begin, however, by clearing out of the way certain erroneous views that have appeared in psychology under the influence of common sense. Since the self of common sense is persistent, it has been argued that the self-experience must also be continuous; and psychologists, instead of going to the facts, have tried to find a basis in experience for this supposed continuity. It is sometimes said, for instance, that all mental processes alike are essentially self-processes; because they are processes within a particular psychological world, because they belong to a self, therefore they have the character of selfness stamped upon them, and are known and experienced as processes-of-me. Does that view seem to you to be natural and reasonable? But consider the logic of it; try a parallel argument! We might as well say that because every native-born American belongs to the group of American citizenship, therefore he is always aware that he is an American citizen; or that because a certain man is wealthy, therefore he is always aware of his possessions. The fallacy is plain. It is sometimes said, again, that not all mental processes alike, but only the feeling-processes—sense-feelings, emotions, sentiments, feeling-attitudes—have this character of selfness stamped upon them; the feelings are ‘subjective’ experiences, and therefore being with them a reference to the self. The confusion is the same as that which we have just pointed out; it is argued that, because all the feeling-processes are subjective (we need not enquire too curiously what that word means!), therefore they must always mean the great subjective thing, the self; because a man is wealthy, therefore his wealth must always mean wealth to him; whereas it may, in various circumstances, mean an oil-painting or a steam-yacht. There is, however, another objection. This view maintains that feeling-processes of some kind are always present in experience; otherwise, indeed, they could not continuously refer to self; but observation shows that much of our experience is indifferent, without tinge of feeling. It is sometimes said, once more, that the organic sensations are the peculiar self-experiences; they are always with us, forming a constant background of self, upon which our other and less stable experiences come and go. But it may be doubted whether these sensations are continuous; at any rate, they vary enormously in intensity and in their appeal to the attention. An experience of nausea is overwhelming; but need there be, in perfect health, any sensation whatever from heart-beat or breathing or digestion? Moreover, the logic of the position is still unsound. For a continuous experience is not necessarily the experience of something continuous; the fact that a man is all the while wealthy does not imply that he is continually realising his wealth.

Having thus cleared the ground of bad argument, we may turn to the facts of observation. The question whether the self-experience is or is not continuous we leave, for the moment, entirely open. We ask, first: In what form or forms does this self-experience occur? and the answer is: In all possible forms. We may perceive ourself, as when we consult the glass to make sure that we look all right; we may have an idea of ourself, in memory or imagination; we may have a feeling of self, when we are lonely or vexed or ill at ease; we may have a concept of self, as when we say emphatically in conversation ‘I can’t conceive of so-and-so’; we may have all sorts of self-attitudes, intellectual and emotive. Any form of mental connection may appear under a determination, or in a context, that gives it the meaning of self; only be clear that it is always the determination or context, and not the form, which is recept; ponsible for the selfness of the experience. We look in the glass, time and again, without having a self-perception; and we are often lonely and uncomfortable, without having a self-feeling; and we may say ‘I’ a hundred times over, without having a self-concept. The setting is what gives the self-meaning to the experience.

We ask, secondly: Are there any particular mental processes that enter characteristically into the self-forms? and here the answer is less easy. We have seen that language has a large number of self-words ready made for us to use; and we learn in our early years—sometimes painfully enough—to connect the self with our body. So the perceived self tends to be a visual perception of the body, or of some part of it; the felt self tends to be a blend of feeling with kinÆsthetic and organic sensation (these processes are, indeed, regular components of feelings and mental attitudes); while the conceived self is, of course, a matter of verbal perception and idea,—ordinarily, that is, a matter of auditory-kinÆsthetic complexes. If, however, these processes are characteristic, we have no evidence that they are essential; continued observation would probably show that the self-meaning may attach to all sorts of processes, as it is carried by all sorts of forms, so that tones and touches, tastes and smells, may on occasion come to us as the experienced Me.

On the whole, therefore, what holds in principle of the form of the self-experience holds also in observable fact; the experience may take all possible forms; though, in a given mind, some forms may appear more frequently than others. Within the different forms, on the other hand, there seems to be a tendency toward the appearance of particular mental processes, those concerned in the visual perception of the body, in felt organic stir and in verbal perceptions and ideas. And now, what of continuity?

Prejudice is strong; but you must be ready to discard it. Experimental and everyday observation both testify, when the question is directly put, to the intermittence of the self-experience. We are not always aware of our self. The self-experience does not appear, for example, when we are engaged in our ordinary routine employment. It does not appear in concentrated thought; the views and theories which a popular psychology regards as personal are, as a rule, quite selfless in their forming and phrasing. It does not appear when we are absorbed in a novel, or a play, or the hearing of music. It need not appear in many of the situations that are designated by self-words. The very fact that we can call it up at will, that we can ‘come to ourselves’ whenever we like, indicates that it is not always present in our experience. It is the specific expression of a special determination; and the frequency of the determination varies, we must suppose, in different cases; some of us are continually recurring to a self-experience, while others find it a more casual visitor.

You should not accept this conclusion blindly; you may test it in your own experience. Notice meanwhile that, if it is sound, it throws further light upon the theories of pp. 316 ff. Mental processes are not always experienced as self-processes, but all mental forms and probably all mental processes may lie under the self-determination. Feelings do not always bring a reference to self, but the self-meaning is very often carried by a feeling. The organic sensations are not always self-experiences, but a self-feeling may be largely composed of organic processes. If we have dismissed the theories themselves, we must still credit them with the measure of truth that they contain.

§ 76. The Snares of Language.—You were warned on p. 36 that language may be misleading, and that the phrases which you naturally use oftentimes imply a view of the world, or an attitude towards experience, which is foreign to science. Nowhere, perhaps, is this discrepancy greater than in the phrases which refer to the self. Language, as we know, is older than science, and expresses the results of common-sense interpretation rather than of factual observation. The self of language is, accordingly; not the psychological self, but the counterpart of the mannikin-mind (p. 7); and just as we must be on guard, and remember our psychological definition, whenever in a psychological context we say or think the word ‘mind,’ so must we be on guard against the common-sense notion of ‘self’ that has insinuated itself into a thousand turns of familiar speech. An observer, describing a particular experience, may say, quite naturally, ‘I find no trace of self-reference!’—and there is no harm done, if we realise that the I of his remark is the traditional self-concept of language, and the self the psychological experience of self; but there may be very great harm, if likeness of words leads us to confound the personal with the impersonal, common sense with science. Only by an unreadable pedantry can we avoid the I-phrases and the other personal sentences; but we must always bear in mind that language, the very form and structure of it, embodies a theory, an explanation or interpretation of the self; and that, if we reject this theory, we have to couch our criticism in terms of the theory we reject.

There is another danger. Language has many words which begin with self: self-possession, self-assurance, self-consciousness, and the like; and the implication is that the corresponding mental processes represent self-experiences, in the sense of p. 315. But do they? Let us take self-consciousness as an example. A young lecturer stands for the first time upon the platform, and a kindly soul in the audience may murmur: ‘Poor young man! he is dreadfully self-conscious!’ Truly, the signs are there: parched throat, burning cheeks, gasping breath, hoarse and broken voice, moist and trembling hands, uncertainty of all coordinated movements; everything that indicates what the audience, from their external standpoint (p. 313), must regard as self-consciousness; and yet there may be nothing whatever of self-reference in the lecturer’s own experience. He feels timid, excited, heartily uncomfortable; but it is very unlikely that he is thinking of himself; he has too many other things to think of! Suppose that his lecture is a success, and that he steps from the lecture-room in a mood of self-congratulation; he feels relief, relaxation; he ‘glows’ with satisfaction and pride; but, again, there need be no sort of self-reference in his experience. Yet, in writing to a friend about the eventful lecture, he may very well say: ‘I felt terribly self-conscious when I began, but afterwards I really was a bit pleased with myself!’ The personal forms are so natural as to be almost inevitable. How often, when a conversation has languished, do two or three persons with a simultaneous impulse try to revive it—by uttering a long-drawn ‘I’! and how often are we surprised, when we read over a letter just written, to see that every paragraph begins with the same ‘I’! Not by any means necessarily because we are thinking at the time of ourselves, but very likely because we have nothing urgent to say, and so slip instinctively into the commonest and most stereotyped pattern of speech. Language, therefore, is no more than any other movement (p. 232) an index to mind. The I-phrases and the self-words may carry a self-meaning, or they may not; it all depends upon the determination of the moment.

Do not imagine, however, that psychology alone suffers from this warp and bias of language! The tendency to personalisation (p. 205), which shows itself in the mannikin-mind and the common-sense self, appears also in the ‘forces’ of physics and the ‘attractions’ of chemistry; and if the psychologist has to clarify the current notions of mind and self, the worker in these other sciences must, on his side, come to terms with a like heritage of equivocal words. All such concepts illustrate the same speculative trend of primitive thinking; and all of them are stumbling-blocks in the path of science.

§ 77. Consciousness and The Subconscious.—“Consciousness,” says Professor Ward, “is the vaguest, most protean, and most treacherous of psychological terms”; and Bain, writing in 1880, distinguished no less than thirteen meanings of the word; he could find more to-day! The ambiguity of the term seems to be due, in the last resort, to the running together of two fundamental meanings, the one of which is scientific or psychological, the other logical or philosophical. In the latter, the logical meaning, consciousness is awareness or knowledge, and ‘conscious of’ means ‘aware of’; in the former, the scientific meaning, consciousness is mental experience, experience regarded from the psychological point of view, and one can no more use the phrase ‘conscious of’ than one can use ‘mental of.’ If you think how natural it is to say ‘I was conscious of so-and-so,’ you will realise that the logical meaning is generally current; and if you remember that we have the terms ‘mind,’ ‘mental process,’ as names of mental experience, you will see that in psychology the word ‘consciousness’ is unnecessary; we have, in fact, not used it in this book,—until we came upon the popular expression ‘self-consciousness’ in § 76.

We have avoided the word, however, not only because it is unnecessary, but also because the logical or philosophical meaning that it tends to suggest is directly harmful in psychology. For the psychologist has nothing in the world to do with knowledge or awareness; he stands, in this regard, upon precisely the same level as the physicist or the chemist. Look up the word atom in a dictionary; you find, perhaps, that it is ‘an ultimate indivisible particle of matter’; and you would smile if you read ‘knowledge of an ultimate indivisible particle of matter.’ Look up metal; and you find ‘an elementary substance possessing such and such properties’; you would think it absurd to say ‘an awareness of an elementary substance’ possessing those properties. But now think of sensation, which is an elementary mental process (p. 65): you would probably not smile if you found ‘the first stage of knowledge; the elementary way of knowing some phenomenon of the outside world’; and that is because you are thoroughly accustomed to regard consciousness as awareness, and conscious processes as processes which are aware of something beyond themselves. Yet it is every whit as absurd, from the scientific point of view, to make sensation a ‘stage of knowledge’ or a ‘way of knowing’ as it is to define the atom as ‘knowledge’ or the metal as ‘an awareness.’ Science takes experience for granted, deals with the nature of things given (p. 4); so that questions about ‘knowing’ or ‘being aware of’ lie beyond the range of science, whether the particular science is psychology or physics.

You now understand why it is that we have avoided the term ‘consciousness.’ If we had said that red is an elementary conscious process, then you might have supposed that it is an elementary process in or by which you become aware of a red object; whereas, if we say that red is an elementary mental process, you have no reason to think of the red object, since ‘to become mental of a red object’ is not English. It is very likely, all the same, that you have been thinking of the object of knowledge, in spite of the terminology of the book, and in spite of the express warning that science has nothing to do with values or meanings or uses; the statements of a text-book, however emphatic they are, cannot always make headway against ingrained habits of thought and speech. If, then, you have at any point fallen into this mistake (and it may comfort you to know that the author, in his first years of studentship, was trapped by it again and again), go back now and read over the chapters in point; and if you discover that the mistake was partly due to the language there employed, remember that authors are human and that words are very slippery things.

So much of consciousness: what, now, shall we say of the subconscious? The term is fashionable; and though we have nowhere used it, we can hardly pass it by without mention. The subconscious may be defined as an extension of the conscious beyond the limits of observation. As an extension of the conscious, it tends always to be an extension of meaning beyond the meaning of the conscious; we do not hear of a ‘submental.’ As an extension of the conscious, it is always a matter of inference; what we cannot observe, we must infer. So there needs no argument to prove that the subconscious is not a part of the subject-matter of psychology. How, then, does it come into psychology?

It comes in as an explanatory concept, like the older concept of association (p. 146), to account for, to rationalise, the phenomena that are conscious. We have ourselves been satisfied with description and correlation, and we have therefore confined ourselves to mental and nervous processes which are in principle observable; though we have often enough been obliged to say that the facts, in this or that chapter of psychology or neurology, are few or wanting. There is, however, in many minds, a craving for ‘explanation’; and it must be admitted that such a craving is natural enough; for it shows in every phase of primitive thought, and may be traced throughout the history of science. Think, for instance, of the potency of explanation by ‘cause and effect’!—though when we examine a case of cause and effect we never, in fact, find anything more than correlation. There are many psychologists, then, who cannot be satisfied with description and correlation; they must refer the direction of thought to a ‘subconscious disposition,’ and explain the connections of ideas by ‘subconscious tendencies,’ and so on. They have recourse to the subconscious for purposes of explanation.

We must urge two objections against this mode of psychologising. In the first place, the construction of a subconscious is unnecessary. Science is not called upon to ‘explain’ anything; description and correlation are the modern—and more modest—representatives of the ‘explanation’ that an older science looked for and professed to find. Secondly, the introduction of a subconscious is dangerous. It is a matter of inference from the conscious; but who shall draw the line, in such a case, between legitimate and illegitimate inference? When from the course of the mental stream and the interplay of mental processes we infer the existence of associative and determining tendencies in the nervous system, our argument is safeguarded. No man, it is true, has seen those tendencies in course; but the inference to them is checked and controlled by the whole vast body of fact and method that makes up modern physiology. Things stand very differently with the subconscious. Here the inference must, it is plain, go beyond the conscious, since its aim is to explain the conscious; yet the conscious facts are all the facts we have; when once we have embarked on the subconscious, there are no more facts to steer by. Henceforth everything depends upon individual preference; and we may have many theories of the subconscious, widely different and equally plausible. The danger is that an erroneous theory of the subconscious distort our view of the conscious.

There is, however, another side to this whole question. The notion of a subconscious has proved useful in certain fields of practical psychology, and more especially in psychiatry and psychotherapeutics; and in matters of practice utility is a sufficient justification. Science cannot ask the physician to give up a theory which works. She can only point out that present utility is no test of ultimate truth,—there were plenty of useful inventions in the days when the physics of heat was dominated by the theory of caloric, and the physics of light by the theory of emission!—and that nobody has ever observed, or can ever observe, the subconscious at work; the wonderful things that it does testify rather to their reporter’s thought and imagination, to his conscious ingenuity in explaining, than to the scientific reality of the subconscious itself.

§ 78. Conclusion.—So we are at an end; and as you look back over the chapters of the book, you will have your own thoughts about the work done,—about your change of attitude from common sense to psychology, about the nature of mind, when mind is regarded from the scientific point of view, about the difficult or unsatisfactory places in psychology. The author has no wish to disturb these thoughts; every student must sum things up for himself, as every student, if he is to get the scientific point of view, must rely on his own thinking from the beginning (p. 36); for the kingdom of science is not in word but in power. There are, nevertheless, a few considerations that may be set down here, not as a summary made for you by the author, but simply as a general supplement to your own conclusions.

Realise, then, first of all, that there is nothing in the whole wide world that cannot be psychologised. Sound and light and heat, law and language and morals, “the whole choir of heaven and furniture of earth,” all alike become subject-matter of psychology if we regard them from the psychological standpoint, as they are in man’s experience (p. 9). The range of psychology is the range of that experience, and nothing more narrow. The psychological point of view is logically coordinate with the point of view of the physical sciences; these describe the world with man left out, psychology describes the world with man left in; but the psychologist surveys the broader field.

Realise, secondly, that you have the materials and the opportunity of psychological observation always with you. Truly, we must have laboratories; if we are to attain to accurate and comparable results, we must put ourselves under conditions that can be rigorously controlled. But get the habit of psychological observation, and you will be surprised to find (though it follows, does it not, from the laws of attention?) how much psychology there is in your daily life; how often you can snapshot a baffling experience, and catch a hint of analytical possibilities; how often you light upon something that the text-books do not discuss, but that this habit of observation reveals and places for you. Take the occasions as they come; plenty of good astronomical work has been done with a pair of opera glasses!—and if you cannot, later on, experiment for yourself in a laboratory, at least you have gained a new outlook and a new competence; it is as if you had gained access to a whole literature by the mastery of some foreign language.

Realise, thirdly, that a system of science, whether the science be psychology or any other, is built up of nothing else than facts and logic. The facts of observation are the essential things; without them there is no science possible; but logic makes the facts available and rememberable; it groups and classifies, decides the sequence of chapters and paragraphs, points to gaps and discrepancies in the record of facts, governs the whole presentation. So there should be nothing more in a text-book of science than facts and logic. The man of science, trying to answer an unanswered question (p. 277), will guess and forecast and speculate and imagine; and some of his guesses and speculations may be worthy of mention in the history of his science; but there should be no glimmer of them in the scientific system. Science, you remember, is impersonal and disinterested, dry fact and cold logic; there are all sorts of personal adventures and interesting episodes by the way, while science is in the making; but if you have the scientific temperament, you feel the fascination of fact and logic themselves.

And, in any case, they are all that science gives you! So realise, lastly, the limitations of science; do not expect from it more than it can give. Over and over you hear it said ‘Science has failed to satisfy us about this’ and ‘Science has shown itself unable to deal with that’; but ask yourself—if you deem the statements true—what are the ‘this’ and the ‘that,’ and whether science ever gave any pledge that she would handle them. Scientific discoveries have had far-reaching consequences for practice, and have changed our whole mode of living; but the fact remains that “the most useful parts of science have been investigated for the sake of truth, and not for their usefulness.” Scientific progress is reflected in the systems of logic and ethics and Æsthetics, even in metaphysics itself; but theoretical values lie, as practical values also lie, beyond the purview of the scientific enquirer. Science is bound down from the outset to a certain method, the method of observation; to a certain point of view, the existential as opposed to the significant; to a certain task, the task of description and correlation. Beyond these limits, science has no pretensions; within them, she has accomplished much, and is earnest to accomplish more.

Questions and Exercises

(1) Keep a pad by you for a week, and note down the occasions when your experience is wholly selfless and markedly selfful. Describe, as well as you can, the various self-experiences.

(2) Mention some of the superstitions that connect the name with the personality (p. 313). Is there any echo of these superstitions in our own civilised experience?

(3) On p. 319 a hint is given of the way in which vision, kinÆsthesis and organic sensation, and verbal ideas might come to be preferred, as vehicles of the meaning of self. Can you make any further suggestion as regards kinÆsthesis and organic sensation?

(4) A well-known medical writer remarks: “Self is stomach. The function of assimilating food is the most fundamental of all the functions; it is antecedent even to locomotion and propagation. Hence anything which directly affects the organism as a whole affects the stomach.” What self is here referred to?

(5) Professor Mach tells the following story. “I got into an omnibus one morning, after a tiring night on the train, just as some one else was entering from the far end. ‘Some broken-down schoolmaster,’ I thought. It was myself; there was a large mirror opposite the omnibus door” (see Analysis of Sensations, 1910, 4). What psychological laws does the story illustrate?

(6) What is meant by the ‘unity of consciousness’?

(7) Sir Walter Scott tells the tale of a boy, always at the top of his class, who, when asked a question, “fumbled with his fingers at a particular button in the lower part of his waistcoat”; Scott cut the button off, and the boy came down from his place of leadership (J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, i., 1837, 94). What is the psychology of the incident?

(8) Write a psychological criticism of the following statement: “Alike in conflict, rivalry, sense of liability to punishment or vengeance, etc., the truth is continually being borne in upon the mind of an animal that it is a separate individuality; and this though it be conceded that the animal is never able, even in the most shadowy manner, to think about itself as such. In this way there arises a sort of ‘outward self-consciousness,’ which differs from true or inward self-consciousness only in the absence of any attention being directed upon the inward mental states as such” (G. J. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, 1888, 198 f.).

(9) Among the facts which have led to the hypothesis of a subconscious are (a) the existence of blind strivings, organic tendencies, etc., for which no conscious antecedent can be discovered; (b) the mechanisation of complicated movements, such as piano-playing; (c) the appearance in ‘memory’ of ideas which seem to have cropped up of themselves, i.e., have no assignable physical or mental condition; (d) the phenomena of secondary personality (Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, ii., 1902, 606). How does the hypothesis help in such cases? and how does the psychology of this book take account of the facts?

(10) Consider any case of remedial suggestion, of what is popularly called faith-cure, that you happen to know at first-hand. Show how the hypothesis of subconscious agency might naturally occur to one who tries to ‘explain’ the facts, and show how science might deal with them apart from that hypothesis.

(11) (a) Satisfy yourself, by the collection of phrases, that the words ‘conscious,’ ‘subconscious,’ ‘unconscious,’ are used in very various meanings. (b) What does the word ‘conscious’ mean by derivation? How did it originate?

(12) The complaint is often made that scientific men do not popularise their results. What do you take to be the great stumbling-block in the way of popularisation?

References

W. James, Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, chs. ix., x.; J. Sully, The Human Mind, i., 1892, ch. xii., §§ 25, 26; C. Mercier, Sanity and Insanity, 1899; T. Ribot, The Diseases of Personality, 1895; J. M. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes, 1906, and Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, 1906, refs. in indices; W. Wundt, Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, 1896, and Outlines of Psychology, 1907, refs. in indices; E. B. Titchener, Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 544 ff.; A. Bain, The Emotions and the Will, 1880, 539 ff., 602 ff.; T. Flournoy, From India to the Planet Mars, 1900; M. Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality, 1906, and The Unconscious, 1914; S. Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1914; B. Hart and C. Spearman, General Ability, Its Existence and Nature, in the British Journal of Psychology, v., March 1912, 51 ff.

On beliefs connected with names, see E. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, 1878, 123 ff.; J. G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, 1911, 318 ff.