An Introduction to Ethics, for Training Colleges/Chapter 6

by G. A. Johnston

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

 

THE MORAL SELF.

 

§ 1. The Growth of the Self In former chapters, in dealing with the child's instincts, his impulses and desires, and his emotions and sentiments, we have seen that all involve some reference to the self. But we have not yet asked, What is the self? That question we must now try to answer. It will be convenient to begin by describing how the child first comes to recognise the existence of his self.

At first, of course, the child has no distinct notion of its "self." It gradually comes to realise that its body belongs to it in a peculiar way. It plays with its fingers and toes, and finds that it has more control over them than the fingers of its mother, with which it also plays. It becomes conscious, too, that it has feeling in its fingers and toes. These things belong specially to it; and thus the self comes to mean the body. But gradually this conception of self becomes both extended and narrowed.

On the one hand, the conception of the self is widened. The child comes to regard the persons to whom it is related and the things which come into its possession as part of itself. Its mother and father have a peculiarly intimate relation to it, and they come to be regarded as part of the self. Clothes, too, become part of the self. Even in the case of the very young child, clothing seems peculiarly personal. The child feels abased if its clothing is not to its taste. Again, it feels personally elevated when it is attired in a new dress. The self also comes to include other possessions. Toys and dolls, balls and coins, all these form part of the self, and the child feels deprived of part of itself when the favourite doll or toy cannot be found. As the child grows up, those portions of his property which he has himself made seem more closely identified with himself than others. If these be lost, he experiences a shrinkage of personality. He feels literally smaller. The home also becomes identified with himself. If he leaves for good the home in which all his early experiences have been gained, he feels as if he had really abandoned part of his real self. Hence the self comes to mean all that the man is or has. "In its widest possible sense, a man's self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and his children, his ancestors and his friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down."^[1]

On the other hand, the conception of the self becomes narrowed and more distinctly defined. The child realises that all he possesses is not equally himself. There is an inner core, which would remain though all his possessions should be lost and his body maimed and mutilated. His self, his personality, would still exist. What exactly the pure self means is a question over which philosophers are still wrangling. We may call it, if we care, the soul or spirit or the mind or Ego; but the important point is that the self or "I" is presupposed in all we do and all we think. It is I who do this or that action; it is I who eat and sleep and think and work; it is I who have this emotion of anger, that sentiment of patriotism, this impulse to enlist, that desire to fight; it is I who am overwhelmed in a mood of despondency or am sunk in temperamental melancholy; it is I who doubt and hesitate and deliberate and reflect. All these actions and feelings and thoughts are referred to myself. They help to constitute myself; or we may say that they belong to me, that I have them. The I is the most intimate and real core of myself.

§ 2. The Social Nature of the Self. The child's awareness of himself develops alongside his recognition of other selves or persons. He could not become conscious of himself at all, did he not come into contact with other selves. Thus the self is thoroughly social. At first the child does not distinguish between "things" and "persons." He treats them all alike, he treats them, in fact, just as he treats himself. Tables and chairs are regarded as persons, and so are animals. But the child gradually comes to see that there are important differences between persons and things. Things are much more constant in their behaviour than persons. They can always be counted upon; they never vary. But the behaviour of persons seems to the child very capricious. Why should the nurse sometimes sing to it, and sometimes scold it? Why does mother sometimes whip it, and sometimes kiss it? That these variations in mother's and nurse's behaviour may be due to variations in its own behaviour does not at first occur to the child. But eventually the child recognises that it, like other persons, is a person whose behaviour is liable to change.

(a) Since persons, including itself, are apparently capricious and variable in their behaviour, they become the special objects of the child's attention. Persons are much more interesting than things. Thus the child pays special attention to its self and other selves.

(b) But the child is not content simply to attend to others. It pays attention to them in order to imitate them. The child is the most imitative of all animals. Up to the age of seven or eight, every normal child persistently imitates everything in its environment, but especially the persons with whom it comes in contact. Persons are so much easier and so much more interesting to imitate than things. The child imitates first the actions, and then the customs and habits of his parents; and thus he may acquire many of his parents' traits. When the child resembles his parents closely in character, the similarity is usually due far more to the influence of the early home environment than to the direct inheritance of particular qualities.

The child imitates not only its parents, but also everybody with whom it comes in contact, and even the examples suggested to it by fairy tales and the ideals inspired by religious instruction. The child's personality is gradually developed, as it acquires these traits and qualities which it imitates in others. In this way it transfers to itself qualities which it sees in others, and which seem desirable to it. Prof. Baldwin has explained clearly the kind of process that takes place. "Last year I thought of my friend W. as a man who had great skill on the bicycle, and who wrote readily on the typewriter; my sense of his personality included these accomplishments. … My sense of myself did not have these elements. But now, this year, I have learned to do both these things. I have taken the elements formerly recognised in W.'s personality, and by imitative learning brought them over to myself. I now think of myself as one who rides a 'wheel' and writes on a 'machine.' … So the truth we now learn is this: that very many of the particular marks which I now call mine, when I think of myself, have had just this origin. I have first found them in my social environment, and by reason of my social and imitative disposition, have transferred them to myself by trying to act as if they were true of me, and so coming to find out that they are true of me."^[2]

(c) But the child does not imitate every quality in those it sees around it. To some qualities or traits it has a natural repugnance. Its attitude to them is one of opposition. There is no doubt that many children early come to develop an attitude of opposition towards all that "grown-ups" are and do. The conduct of adults may excite opposition, because it is largely unintelligible. "These elders, our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only a certain blend of envy—of their good luck—and pity—for their inability to make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features of their character that, having absolute licence to indulge in the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun—free to fire cannons and explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. … On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances they were blind."^[3] It is quite true that to many children the virtues of "grown-ups" seem flat, and their lives dull. In these cases the attitude of the child is naturally not imitative but antagonistic.

Wholesale opposition will, no doubt, be very rare, except where sympathy between parent and child is entirely absent. Where sympathy does not exist between parent and child, or between teacher and pupil, the fault is very rarely the child's. If the teacher cannot create a sympathetic atmosphere in the class-room, the children's attitude to him will be antagonistic rather than imitative. And nothing could well be more fatal to the moral education of the child. The facility and willingness with which the child imitates is one of the conditions of moral progress. But a slavish imitation is not desirable. It is well that the imitative attitude is usually tempered by the tendency to oppose and to originate. The child very soon learns that he ought to imitate only some qualities (those that are "good"); others it ought not to imitate (these are "bad"). Perhaps the earliest definition which the child gives to "good" is "that which ought to be imitated." It is the privilege of parents and teachers to point out what qualities ought to be imitated, and in what circumstances the child should "learn to say No."

It is important to note that from the moral standpoint these two tendencies do not need to conflict. Rather do they work together for good. The child learns that certain habits and actions should be imitated, and it follows that certain other actions and habits should be eschewed. Imitation of one set of habits leads to or implies opposition to another set.

Now, the child has not been blindly attending to, imitating, and opposing other persons. Everything it imitates or opposes has been contributing to the development of its own personality. The self assimilates the actions and customs which it began by imitating. They have become part of itself, close-woven into its structure. Actions which were at first performed purely imitatively, as by a parrot or monkey, and hence were not really the actions of the self, now result directly from the activity of the self. Only those actions have moral value which are the actions of a self. If a child gives a penny to a beggar, simply because it sees its mother do so, the action is not really the child's. It might equally well have been done by a monkey. But when the child really assimilates the lesson of the kind action, and gives its penny, knowing why it does so, and having a feeling of pity in its heart, then the action is really the action of the self. It is a real expression of the self or personality.

Throughout we have seen that the self is essentially social. The consciousness of self grows through intercourse with other selves. The rudimentary self of the child gains its experience and realises itself by observing and imitating and opposing the other selves in its social environment. Apart from the influence of these other selves, it would not develop at all. And the consciousness of self always includes relations to other selves. My self-consciousness contains the conviction that I am in such and such a social position. Now this social position involves a whole system of relations to other selves in the society in which I live. These relations form part of my awareness of myself. From them I weave my notion of my social position, of my duties and my rights in the community of which I am a member.

§ 3. Personality and Vocation. Most children, as they grow up, create in imagination the kind of self they want to be. To the oft-recurring question, "And what are you going to be?" the child usually has a ready answer. But it may very frequently change its idea of its future self. At one time it wants to be a sailor, at another a minister. The young boy may experience great pleasure in dallying with a variety of possible selves. But the time comes when he must choose one of these fancied selves to be his real self. One of the possible selves must be actualised. He has only one life to live, he has only one self to live it; and if he wants to realise a character at all, he must choose some one walk in life in which to realise it.

Of course, he would like to be several different selves at once: all have their attractions. But he recognises that that is impossible. However severe the struggle, he must decide on some one self amid all the galaxy of his fancied selves; and this one self must become his real self. William James has put the point very vividly. "Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon vivant and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the bon vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher and lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them. … Our thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of a kind, which ones for it shall be realities, here chooses one of many possible selves or characters."^[4]

Even after it has been decided which self is to be realised, the vocation of realising this self may not be consistently followed. Many a medical student feels that his self as realised in the work of the Army or Church would be a nobler thing, many a divinity student thinks how much more useful his self would be if he had decided to actualise it in the ministry of healing the body. Somehow the other self which they project on the screen of their imagination seems so much finer than the one on which they have actually decided to stake their all. If they persist in dreaming about other possible selves after the possibility of realising them has passed, of course they become discontented with the walk in life which they have actually chosen. In such cases the self will never be realised as it might be. The personality will never develop to its full stature. But even when men feel that they have made a mistake in the choice of their trade or profession, they usually decide to make the best of it; and they may come to find, with a shock of pleasant surprise, that the self may be realised in any walk of life which offers worthy work. On the whole, experience shows that for character-building it makes remarkably little difference what station in life is occupied. The farmer, the miner, the teacher, the doctor may each and all use their trades and professions as means to the development of their personality.

One reason why the particular occupation often seems to have little direct influence on the development of personality is that much of the experience which goes to the moulding of character is acquired by a man in his leisure hours. Much of it is derived from domestic and social and religious relationships, which are common to all men.

This is the explanation of the fact that the self that a man develops may not be internally consistent. A man may develop different selves, according to the different relations in which he stands to different groups of people. He may form one self in his business and another in his church. Now these selves may be discordant. The business-self may be dishonest, the religious self pious. There is an internal conflict between the two selves: the man is really trying to serve God and Mammon. But in other cases, the apparently different selves may be perfectly consistent. The officer may be stern towards the soldiers whom he commands, but as gentle as a woman towards his children. Such a self would, in reality, be perfectly harmonious, though it appears in one aspect in its attitude to one group of people, and in another aspect in relation to another group.

It is essential for a consistent moral life that the self should be harmonious. The personality must be one and constant. Its attitudes may vary in different relations and under different circumstances, but the personality as a whole should be a unity, for only then will its conduct be consistent. It is one of the great tasks of education to help the child to develop a harmonious self, to secure that his "modes of feeling, thinking, and acting show unity, consistency, and distinctive individuality."^[5]

§ 4. The Self and its Habits. The importance of habit is now universally admitted, but it is not so widely recognised that habits are of no positive value until they are organised in the moral self. If our mental and moral and physical habits have been formed at haphazard, our lives will be but one stage removed from the capricious life of impulse. There is no more futile life than that which is at the mercy of chance impulses, but as a close second comes the life which is given up to habits which have grown up in accordance with no principle and in subordination to no system. A life is not morally good simply because it is composed of habits. People who have given over large tracts of their lives to habit have not always been careful to scrutinise the kinds of habits that have been formed. The full moral worth of habitual action is realised only by those who have organised their habits. Habits are organised only when they are definitely directed to serve the comprehensive ends of the self whose habits they are. The habits of the good life are systematic. They all contribute to the well-being of the self. Our habits are of our own making, and it depends on us whether they will work together for the good of the whole self. All habits are the habits of a self: they make the self, and are made by it.

The ethical importance of habit has been admirably stated by Bain and by James, and we quote four of the maxims that were enunciated by them.^[6]

(1) "The great thing in education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. ... For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all."

(2) "In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all."

(3) "Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right. … It is necessary, above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right. … The need of securing success at the outset is imperative. Failure at first is apt to dampen the energy of all future attempts, while past experience of success nerves one to future vigour."

(4) "Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations contribute the new 'set' to the brain. … No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved."

Of the importance of habit in the moral life there can be no manner of doubt; but we must also remember that habits are, after all, mechanical modes of behaviour, and that a universe of beings all acting uniformly and habitually with the precision of clockwork would not really be a moral world. While, then, we recognise the significance of habit, and the help it may give in the conduct of life, we must repeat that habits are morally valuable only in so far as they contribute to the maintenance of the distinctive individuality of the self.

§5. Some Educational Aspects of the Development of Personality. The great educational maxim is that the individuality of the child should be respected, and should be allowed full scope for development. We all know that the aim of education is not to turn out children all of the same brand, as the factory turns out sewing-machines or type-writers. When education is so much standardised as it is, there is grave danger that it may tend to turn the children into human machines. The child's natural tendency to initiate, to invent, and to originate, may be repressed from the beginning. Education may end, after passing children through successive "standards," simply in producing dull mediocrity. To a considerable extent, this has happened in Germany, where education is excessively systematised.

(1) All the great educators have emphasised the importance of preserving and developing the child's individuality, and of adapting education to the child's individual needs. Thus Locke says, "Each man's mind has some peculiarity, as well as his face, that distinguishes him from all others; and there are possibly scarce two children who can be conducted by exactly the same method."^[7] Even Herbart, with all his emphasis on the transforming power of education, insists that the individuality of the child which develops under the teacher's efforts should be respected and allowed as far as possible to follow its own bent.^[8] Froebel claimed that from its earliest days the child should be given every opportunity to develop spontaneously its own individuality. For Froebel, the child's individuality is a sort of divine spark which should be allowed to conform to its own inner law.^[9] And more recently Montessori has urged that the child's personality possesses a mysterious sanctity, which should never be invaded by the teacher. The teacher should beware of marring or stifling the mysterious powers which are latent in the self.^[10]

(2) But while it is right that the child's individuality should be respected, it is well to remember that the individuality of the child is a growing thing. The child's individuality grows by what it feeds on. And it has to be recognised that it does not always desire what is best for it to feed on. The natural impulses of the child are not always worthy. Its tendencies may be perverted. The development of personality cannot always be allowed to proceed spontaneously. While the teacher must always respect the child's self, that self needs to be advised, to be guided, to be influenced, and to be directed.

(3) In this process of influencing and being influenced, the personalities of teacher and child come into contact. We sometimes forget that the teacher has an individuality as well as the child. As an influence on character, the teacher's personality may be of immense importance. What has been said with regard to respecting the child's individuality is perfectly consistent with the claim that the teacher should influence the child. For influence means that the personality of the child develops in response to the personality of the teacher. The personality of the child is not suppressed when he is influenced. The child is not driven: he is influenced; he is attracted; and his individuality is elicited. The teacher should not impose his personality upon the child, but he cannot help bringing it into contact with the child. Personality counts for much everywhere: but nowhere does it count for more than in education.

 

For further reading: G. F. Stout: Manual, bk. iv. ch. vii.; W. James: Principles, vol. i. ch. iv. and x.; J. Adams: The Evolution of Educational Theory, pp. 33-40; J. Dewey: Educational Essays, ch. i. and ii.; M. Montessori: The Montessori Method; F. Froebel: The Education of Man.

1. James: Principles of Psychology, i. p. 291.
2. Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, pp. 10-11
3. Kenneth Grahame: The Golden Age, pp. 4-6.
4. Op. cit. i. p. 310.
5. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, i. p. 173.
6. Cf. Bain: The Emotions and the Will, ch. ix., §§1-9; and James: Principles, vol. i., pp. 122-125.
7. Some Thoughts on Education, § 216
8. Cf. Science of Education, bk. i. ch. ii.
9. Cf . The Education of Man, §§ 7 and 8.
10. Cf . The Montessori Method, ch. v.