Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/102

 maimed and mutilated. His self, his personality, would still exist. What exactly the pure self means is a question over which philosophers are still wrangling. We may call it, if we care, the soul or spirit or the mind or Ego; but the important point is that the self or "I" is presupposed in all we do and all we think. It is I who do this or that action; it is I who eat and sleep and think and work; it is I who have this emotion of anger, that sentiment of patriotism, this impulse to enlist, that desire to fight; it is I who am overwhelmed in a mood of despondency or am sunk in temperamental melancholy; it is I who doubt and hesitate and deliberate and reflect. All these actions and feelings and thoughts are referred to myself. They help to constitute myself; or we may say that they belong to me, that I have them. The I is the most intimate and real core of myself.

§ 2. The Social Nature of the Self. The child's awareness of himself develops alongside his recognition of other selves or persons. He could not become conscious of himself at all, did he not come into contact with other selves. Thus the self is thoroughly social. At first the child does not distinguish between "things" and "persons." He treats them all alike, he treats them, in fact, just as he treats himself. Tables and chairs are regarded as persons, and so are animals. But the child gradually comes to see that there are important differences between persons and things. Things are much more constant in their behaviour than persons. They can always be counted upon; they never vary. But the behaviour of persons seems to the child very