Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/315

278 creature of circumstance, this evanescent shadow, be also the embodiment and revealer of eternal truth? Let us try to indicate the answer to this question.

As a matter of natural history, my idea of myself is of course a growth. No infant begins by being self-conscious. One has to learn to be self-conscious. My ordinary self-consciousness (or, as the psychologists technically call it, my empirical self-consciousness) is a product of experience, slowly woven together according to the laws of the association of ideas. If you ask what inner experiences form a basis for the formation of my idea of myself, the answer is, first of all, my experiences of my own internal bodily sensations, in particular of my “visceral” and my “muscular” sensations, including many masses of skin and joint sensations. These vary, but their routine remains on the whole relatively uniform, while my experiences of what I see or hear or externally touch vary endlessly. So far, the self is a relatively stable group of what are called the sensations of the common sensibility. To these get early joined my experiences of my emotions, and my feelings of voluntary control.