§ 2. The Social Factor in the Development of Self Consciousness. — We have so far only given an abstract account of what is meant by Self as ideal construction. We have said nothing of the motives which prompt it. These, as in the case of the external world, are primarily practical, and arise from the relation of different individuals to each other in the same community. In such a community each individual is even more dependent on his fellows and their conduct than he is on his physical environment. We have seen that even for the power of thinking effectively, and so adjusting his actions to physical conditions, he is dependent on intercourse with others by means of language and otherwise. He must be continually adapting himself to his social environment; and to that end he must study the conditions which determine the conduct of his fellows towards himself and towards each other. He must strive to ideally represent their experiences, the impulses which determine their actions, their emotions, their trains of ideas, and so on. In this way he is led to the ideal construction of their subjective history. Now it is true that other Selves are not his own very Self, but they are none the less Selves, though they are other Selves.

Interpretation of the behaviour of others can only be founded on data derived from his own experience of the motives and ideas which prompt and guide his own actions. Thus in the very process of constructing a representation of the subjective experience of others, he must construct a representation of his own subjective experience. He is continually comparing others with himself, noting the points of agreement and difference. Every advance in his knowledge of them is also an advance in his knowledge of himself; and, conversely, every advance in his knowledge of himself is an advance in his knowledge of others. The same result may be reached in a somewhat different way. The individual has not only to consider the attitude of others towards himself, but his own attitude towards them. He must shape his own ways of thinking and acting so as to please them and secure their friendly behaviour towards himself. Thus he is constantly urged to a comparison between what he is and does and what his fellows require of him. In this way he is forced to think about his own thoughts, actions, capabilities, and the like.

In this way the environment of social relationships supplies the prompting motives of an ideal construction, in which the present Self appears as a link in a series embracing the remembered past and the expected future. But this is only one part of the function of the social factor. It not only supplies motives for the ideal construction, it also supplies essential material entering into all developed human self-consciousness. The thought of Self always involves the thought of manifold and complex relations to other selves. A man's own ideal representation of himself includes the view which he thinks other take of him, the view which he wishes them to take of him, the view which he anticipates that they will take of him, or that they would take of him if he acted in certain ways, and so forth. "The characters, attributes, functions, or other organic constituents of the self commonly extend, from our own point of view, decidedly beyond anything that can be directly presented in any series of our isolated inner experiences, however extended. When one is vain, one's self-consciousness involves the notion that one's self really exists, in some way or other, for the thoughts and estimates of others, and is at least worthy, if not the possessor, of their praise or of their envy. When one feels guilty, one does not and cannot abstract from the conceived presence of one's self in and for the experience of a real or ideal judge of one's guilt. In all such cases the self of self-consciousness thus appears as something that it would not and could not be were there not others in the world to behold, or to estimate it, to be led or otherwise influenced by it, or to appeal to it. It is now from such points of view that the self of self-consciousness comes, in the end, to get form as a being who takes himself to have a social position, an office, a profession, — in brief, a vast group of functions without which the self would appear to itself to be, relatively speaking, a mere cipher, while these functions are at once regarded as organically joined to the self, and centred in it, and, nevertheless, are unintelligible unless one goes beyond one's private consciousness, and takes account of the ideas and estimates of other people."*

* Prof. Royce, "Observations on Anomalies of Self-Consciousness," Psychological Review, vol. ii.. No. 5, pp. 437-438.

As the idea of Self essentially involves the idea of varying relations to other selves, it will vary according as its relations vary. In relation to enemies it is a combative Self; in relation to superiors it is a submissive, receptive Self; in relation to inferiors it is a dominant, controlling Self. To again quote Royce: "If I strut about in fancied dignity, my nonEgo is the world of people who, as I fondly hope, are admiring me. Accordingly I then exist, for myself, as the beheld of all beholders, the model. If I sink in despair and selfabasement, my nonEgo is the world of the conceived real or ideal people whose imagined contempt interests, but overwhelms me, and I exist for myself as the despised Ego, worthy of their illwill. When I speak, my nonEgo is the person or persons addressed, and my Ego is the speaker. If I suddenly note that, though I talk, nobody marks me, both the nonEgo and my Ego dramatically change together in my consciousness."*

* Op. cit.t p. 443.