Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/527

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 5 1 1

in its essential nature is appreciative as well as descriptive. Furthermore, the very divergence of opinion spoken of above, which results from attempting accurate description exclusively, shows that descriptive categories are not adequate; and may we not, therefore, infer that it is the very fact of the inadequacy of these categories that gives rise to the divergencies of opinion. An objector might say that this point is contradicted when Professor James says that he thinks he can tell in what this feeling of a central or active self consists. 27 But what he is really doing is to put that experience into appreciatively descriptive terms. This, and the contention that the objection noted has no validity, are shown by his own statement that this analysis of his may be found by someone else to fit that one's own experience, but that he cannot at all guarantee that it will, and that it is just as probable that there is some individual whose self -consciousness it will not fit. These are further substantiated by his remarks to the effect that his own feeling of self cannot be generalized, as it might, in points, be contradicted by the experience of someone else, showing that he is dealing with something that is individual. Further- more, it is to be noted, in support of the present contention, that he always characterizes the experience by the term " feeling," as when he says: "But when it [the central self] is found, it is felt;" 27 or, "the feeling of this central active self," etc. Pro- fessor Giddings strongly emphasizes this notion of the element of feeling as a very prominent one, not so much in the self as in consciousness of kind which, of course, includes the self; and thus any element of feeling in the self would naturally accrue also to the consciousness of kind.

Professor James further admits that description does not cover self -consciousness when he gives as the result of his analy- sis the following :

That (in some persons at least) the part of the innermost self which is most vividly felt turns out to consist for the most part of a collection of cephalic movements of "adjustments" which, for want of attention and reflec- tion, usually fail to be perceived and classed as what they are; that over and above these there is an obscurer feeling of something more*


 * Op. cit., p. 299 ; italics in quotation are his.


 * Op. cit., p. 355 ; italics mine.