Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/103

EXTENT, DEGREE, AND UNITY IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 87 produced by the character in another which stifles or makes impossible the exercise of some instinct in ourselves. The aversion which a person of constant mind has for fickleness is of this kind, and this may be quite unconscious of its cause. Egoists, since their instincts exclude each other, are mutually intolerant as well as antipathetic. Rivals hate each other in this double way. Thus, not to dwell on this subject at too great length in this place, we may read much of our unconscious nature in our social consciousness. But this needs much discrimina- tion. Moreover, I warn myself that I am passing beyond the bounds of the subject. The readings of self in the movements of instinct con- trolling conduct may be compared with similar readings relative to the movements of attention controlling thought. The variety of intellectual interest may be compared with the variety of moral instinct. And interest like instinct may be unconscious and remain so long. We may fail to become conscious of a special interest or intellectual bias either because circumstances furnish no opportunity for its exercise, or because, though it acts, it is always merged in some larger scheme of interest which it subserves, and from which it is not distinguished. For example, the interest in the concrete of sensuous details is merged by one in his. talent as a realistic painter, while in another it is part of his equipment for the study of the natural sciences. Without this interest either of these two persons would miss his char- acteristic mark ; but the leading part it takes is probably not part of self-consciousness in the one case or in the other. It will probably come to light in consequence of definite introspective activity, supported it may be by the remarks of other persons. Whether any particular person is interested enough in himself as an object of knowledge to follow up such lines of reflexion is in itself a question. This kind of self-consciousness depends specially on having this kind of psychologic interest. Just as some care to study the anatomy of beetles and the physiology of plants, so others find supreme interest in the analysis of the mental conditions revealed in a consciousness of self. Self-consciousness at this point shows to the man his springs of observation and thought springs inclining him this way or that in the apprehension of truth, though free from the bias of moral instincts. These latter also colour our know- ledge of the world, but more grossly, so that the skilled in- tellect can detect and eliminate the bias given. The bias of our special intellectual interests however, the excessive