Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/529

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 5 I 3

appreciative. Furthermore, as the consciousness of interactivity develops, each phase of its development has a more particular significance and deeper meaning for us; and it is this meaning that cannot be gotten by description. The whole process is stated in internal terms as being the only adequate ones, and thus is beyond pure description. It is to be remembered, however, that this is not to be taken to mean that the consciousness of self is altogether an appreciative process. It is to be emphasized that all that we are contending for is that it includes appreciation as one of its essential moments.

Now, to get practically the same conclusion from another point of view, let us see what Professor Wundt has to tell us upon this topic. He holds that

as there are always some muscles in a state either of tension or of activity, it follows that we never lack a sense, either dim or clear, of the positions or

movements of our own body This permanent sense, moreover, has the

peculiarity that we are aware of our power, at any moment, voluntarily to arouse any of its ingredients. We excite the sensations of movement imme- diately by such impulses of the will as shall arouse the movements themselves ; and we excite the visual and tactile feelings of our body by the voluntary movement of our organs of sense. So we come to conceive this permanent mass of feeling as immediately or remotely subject to our will, and call it the consciousness of our self.* 2

It would seem legitimate from this to hold that, since the feeling of might we call it muscular potential is always internal, not directly to be imparted to any other, it is unique for each indi- vidual, and therefore appreciative.

The foregoing discussion would tend to show that whatever the psychological doctrine of the self may be, if it is at all adequate, it will be found to contain some appreciative ele- ment. It might be added, in this connection, that such exceed- ingly definite experiences of the self as that involved in pure thought-activities are not even approached by this notion of muscular potential. Now, if there is an appreciative moment present in this low, vague stage of the self-notion, how much more so is it necessary in the higher consciousness of the self involved in such thought-processes ! Moreover, self-consciousness


 * Physiologische Psychologie, ad ed., Vol. II, pp. 217-19.