Self-Consciousness : Part 3

The Nature of Goodness
by George Herbert Palmer

(Page 5 of 12)

IV

But higher in the personal life than unconsciousness, higher than the reflex instincts, are the conscious experiences. By these, we for the first time became aware of what is going on within us and without. Messages sent from the outer world are stopped at a central office established in consciousness, looked over, and deciphered. We judge whether they require to be sent in one direction or another, or whether we may not rest in their simple cognizance. Every moment we receive a multitude of such messages. They are not always called for, but they come of themselves. My hand carelessly falling on the table reports in terms of touch. A person near me laughs, and I must hear. I see the flowers on the table; smell reports them too; while taste declares their leaves to be bitter and pungent. All this time the inner organs, with the processes of breathing, blood circulation, and nervous action, are announcing their acute or massive experiences. Continually, and not by our own choice, our minds are affected by the transactions around. Sensations occur -

"The eye, it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will."

These itemized experiences thus pouring in upon our passive selves are found to vary endlessly also in degree, time, and locality. Through such variations indeed they become itemized. "Therefore is space and therefore time," says Emerson, "that men may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and divisible."

V

Have we not, then, here reached the highest point of personal life, self-consciousness? No, that is a peak higher still, for this is but consciousness. Undoubtedly from consciousness self-consciousness grows, often appearing by degrees and being extremely difficult to discriminate. Yet the two are not the same. Possibly in marking the contrast between them I may be able to gain the collateral advantage of ridding myself of those disturbers of ethical discussion, the brutes. Whenever I am nearing an explanation of some moral intricacy one of my students is sure to come forward with a dog and to ask whether what I have said shows that dog to be a moral and responsible being. So I like to watch afar and banish the brutes betimes. Perhaps if I bestow a little attention on them at present, I may keep the creatures out of my pages for the future.

Many writers maintain that brutes differ from us precisely in this particular, that while they possess consciousness they have not self- consciousness. A brute, they say, has just such experiences as I have been describing: he tastes, smells, hears, sees, touches. All this he may do with greater intensity and precision than we. But he is entirely wrapped up in these separate sensations. The single experience holds his attention. He knows no other self than that; or, strictly speaking, he knows no self at all. It is the experience he knows, and not himself the experiencer. We say, "The cat feels herself warm;" but is it quite so? Does she feel herself, or does she feel warm? Which?

If we may trust the writers to whom I have referred, we ought rather to say, "The cat feels warm" than that "she feels herself warm;" for this latter statement implies a distinction of which she is in no way aware. She does not set off her passing moods in contrast to a self who might be warm or cold, active or idle, hungry or satiated. The experience of the instant occupies her so entirely that in reality the cat ceases to be a cat and becomes for the moment just warm. So it is in all her seeming activities. When she chases a mouse we rightly say, "She is chasing a mouse," for then she is nothing else. Such a state of things is at least conceivable. We can imagine momentary experiences to be so engrossing that the animal is exclusively occupied with them, unable to note connections with past and future, or even with herself, their perceiver. Through very fullness of Consciousness brutes may be lacking in self-consciousness.

Whether this is the case with the brutes or not, something quite different occurs in us. No particular experience can satisfy us; we accordingly say, not "I am an experience," but "I have an experience." To be able to throw off the bondage of the moment is the distinctive characteristic of a person. When Shelley watches the skylark, he envies him his power of whole-heartedly seizing a momentary joy. Then turning to himself, and feeling that his own condition, if broader, is on that very account more liable to sorrow, he cries, -

"We look before and after,
And pine for what is not."

That is the mark of man. He looks before and after. The outlook of the brute, if the questionable account which I have given of him is correct, is different. He looks to the present exclusively. The momentary experience takes all his attention. If it does not, he too in his little degree is a person. Could we determine this simple point in the brute's psychology, he would at once become available for ethical material. At present we cannot use him for such purposes, nor say whether he is selfish or self-sacrificing, possessed of moral standards and accountable, or driven by subtle yet automatic reflexes. The obvious facts of him may be interpreted plausibly in either way, and he cannot speak.

About the Author

George Herbert Palmer (1842-1933) was an American scholar and author, born in Boston. He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and in 1864 he graduated at Harvard, to which he returned, after study at Tübingen, Germany, and at Andover Theological Seminary, to be tutor in Greek. He became Alford professor of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity at Harvard.