"I was
absorbed in thought," we say; the I was sucked out by strenuous
attention elsewhere. "I was swept away with grief," i.e., I vanished,
while grief held sway. "I was transported with delight," "I was
overwhelmed with shame," and--perhaps most beautiful of all these
fragments of poetic psychology,--"I was beside myself with terror," I
felt myself, to be near, but was still parted; through the fear I
could merely catch glimpses of the one who was terrified.
These and similar phrases suggest the instability of self-
consciousness. It is not fixed, once and forever, but varies
continually and within a wide range of degree. We like to think that
man possesses full self-consciousness, while other creatures have
none. Our minds are disposed to part off things with sharpness, but
nature cares less about sharp divisions and seems on the whole to
prefer subtle gradations and unstable varieties. So the self has all
degrees of vividness. Of it we never have an experience barely. It is
always in some condition, colored by what it is mixed with. I know
myself speaking or angry or hearing; I know myself, that is, in some
special mood. But never am I able to sunder this self from the special
mass of consciousness in which it is immersed and to gaze upon it pure
and simple. At times that mass of consciousness is so engrossing that
hardly a trace of the self remains.
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