Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/95

EXTENT, DEGREE, AND UNITY IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 79 especially between ten and twelve is a good that no pains should be spared to secure. It is undoubtedly true that while the momentary self- consciousness partakes of the series of feelings which make the life-history, this whole is greatly affected by the feeling tone of the moment. If the subjective disturbance of the immediate event is pleasant, the whole tends more to the revival of past pleasures than in the opposite case. Like revives like in the feeling of the subject as in the qualifica- tions of the object. And so when there comes a moment of vivid inward consciousness, the life-history rises dimly as before, but so that it tends to turn out the bright or the gloomy side according to the tone due to the present moment. Good health begets and preserves cheerfulness because it is favourable to joyous present moments in which the self-conscious memory turns out its sunny side. Good endowment of eye and ear, of imagination and intellect, all tend to the contribution of pleasure more than pain, and so through momentary pleasures they colour the total subjec- tive mood pleasantly from time to time. Ill health, imper- fect senses, feeble imagination, deficient intellect, all conduce either to lower the total subjective tone or to leave it at least unraised ; though not less noteworthy is it that the total colours them. One melancholy consequence of the psychical law by which the whole series of feeling revived the integral of feeling, as it might be called is assimilated in tone to its last-coming constituent, is the cumulative effect of sorrow following sorrow in life. This may easily escape superficial observers, who, remembering that we can re-adjust our tastes and attention to endure contentedly most of the minor ills of life, assume hastily that even pain as such loses its quality by repetition. The fact, however, is that a new sorrow, reaching deep enough to rouse self-consciousness, rouses all the old sorrows more than the old joys, and the resultant subjective state is an integral of grief present and past. The second blow hits harder than the first. Pain cumulates in proportion to the unity and vividness of the emotional self-consciousness. 3. Variety in degree and unity of the self as felt. This leads us to our question as to the varieties of character implied in the above considerations. Self -con- sciousness as it concerns us here reposes on the emotional unity of the subject throughout life. Now this emotional unity may be more or less continuous and whole. The emotions may also be more or less vivid. Here then