Rising
out of unconscious conditions into reflex actions--those ingenious
provisions for our security at times when we have no directing powers
of our own--we gradually pass into conditions of consciousness, where
we are able to seize the single experience and to be absorbed in it.
Out of this emerges by degrees an apprehension of ourselves contrasted
with our experiences. Even, however, when this self-consciousness is
once established, it may on vivacious or morbid occasions be
overthrown. It by no means attends all the events of our lives. Yet it
marks all conduct that can be called good. Goodness which is
distinctively personal must in some way express the formation and
maintenance of a self-conscious life.
But more is needed. A person fashioned in the way described would be
aware of himself, aware of his mental changes, perhaps aware of an
objective order of things producing these changes, and still might
have no real share himself in what was going on. We can at least
imagine a being merely contemplative. He sits as a spectator at his
own drama. Trains of associated ideas pass before his interested gaze;
a multitude of transactions occur in his contemplated surroundings;
but he is powerless to intervene. He passively beholds, and does
nothing. If such a state of things can be imagined, and if something
like it occasionally occurs in our experience, it does not represent
our normal condition.
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