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.No matter how he feelsabout himself, unduly elated or unduly depressed, he may still truly know his own worth bymeasuring it by the outward standard he applies to other men, and counteract the injustice of thefeeling he cannot wholly escape.This self-measuring process has nothing to do with theinstinctive self-regard we have hitherto been dealing with.Being merely one application ofintellectual comparison, it need no longer detain us here.Please note again, however, how thepure Ego appears merely as the vehicle in which the estimation is carried on, the objectsestimated being all of them facts of an empirical sort,[15] one's body, one's credit, [p.329] one'sfame, one's intellectual ability, one's goodness, or whatever the case may be.The empirical life of Self is divided, as below, intoMaterial.Social.Spiritual.Bodily Appetites and Desire to please, beInstincts noticed, Intellectual, Moral andReli -Love of Adornment, admired, etc.Self-Seeking.Foppery, Sociability, Emulation, gious Aspiration,Acquisitiveness, Envy, ConscientiousnessConstructiveness Love, Pursuit of Honor,Love of Home, etc.Ambition, etc.Social and FamilyPersonal Vanity, Modesty, Sense of Moral or MentalPride,Self- etc.Superiority, Purity, etc.Vainglory, Snobbery,Estimation Pride of Wealth, Fear of Sense of Inferiority or ofHumility, Shame, etc.Poverty GuiltThe Pure Ego.Get any book for free on: www.Abika.comTHE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY204Having summed up in the above table the principal results of the chapter thus far, I have said allthat need [p.330] be said of the constituents of the phenomenal self, and of the nature of self-regard.Our decks are consequently cleared for the struggle with that pure principle of personalidentity which has met us all along our preliminary exposition, but which we have always shiedfrom and treated as a difficulty to be postponed.Ever since Hume's time, it has been justlyregarded as the most puzzling puzzle with which psychology has to deal; and whatever view onemay espouse, one has to hold his position against heavy odds.If, with the Spiritualists, onecontend for a substantial soul, or transcendental principle of unity, one can give no positiveaccount of what that may be.And if, with the Humians, one deny such a principle and say thatthe stream of passing thoughts is all, one runs against the entire common-sense of mankind, ofwhich the belief in a distinct principle of selfhood seems an integral part.Whatever solution beadopted in the pages to come, we may as well make up our minds in advance that it will fail tosatisfy the majority of those to whom it is addressed.The best way of approaching the matterwill be to take up first -The Sense of Personal Identity.In the last chapter it was stated in as radical a way as possible that the thoughts which weactually know to exist do not fly about loose, but seem each to belong to some one [p.331]thinker and not to another.Each thought, out of a multitude of other thoughts of which it maythink, is able to distinguish those which belong to its own Ego from those which do not.Theformer have a warmth and intimacy about them of which the latter are completely devoid, beingmerely conceived, in a cold and foreign fashion, and not appearing as blood-relatives, bringingtheir greetings to us from out of the past.Now this consciousness of personal sameness may be treated either as a subjective phenomenonor as an objective deliverance, as a feeling, or as a truth.We may explain how one bit of thoughtcan come to judge other bits to belong to the same Ego with itself; or we may criticise itsjudgment and decide how far it may tally with the nature of things.As a mere subjective phenomenon the judgment presents no difficulty or mystery peculiar toitself.It belongs to the great class of judgments of sameness; and there is nothing moreremarkable in making a judgment of sameness in the first person than in the second or the third.The intellectual operations seem essentially alike, whether I say 'I am the same,' or whether I say'the pen is the same, as yesterday.' It is as easy to think this as to think the opposite and say'neither I nor the pen is the same.'This sort of bringing of things together into the object of a single judgment is of course essentialto all thinking.The things are conjoined in the thought, whatever may be the relation in whichthey appear to the thought.The thinking them is thinking them together, even if only with theresult of judging that they do not belong together [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]