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Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham
page 65 of 957 (06%)
knew Mr. Watson expected him to leave the preparatory school with a
scholarship.

But he had grown very self-conscious. The new-born child does not realise
that his body is more a part of himself than surrounding objects, and will
play with his toes without any feeling that they belong to him more than
the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he
understands the fact of the body. And experiences of the same kind are
necessary for the individual to become conscious of himself; but here
there is the difference that, although everyone becomes equally conscious
of his body as a separate and complete organism, everyone does not become
equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate personality. The
feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not
always developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the
individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as he,
as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the lucky in
life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are
shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are
enjoyed in common; you will see them on Whit-Monday dancing on Hampstead
Heath, shouting at a football match, or from club windows in Pall Mall
cheering a royal procession. It is because of them that man has been
called a social animal.

Philip passed from the innocence of childhood to bitter consciousness of
himself by the ridicule which his club-foot had excited. The circumstances
of his case were so peculiar that he could not apply to them the
ready-made rules which acted well enough in ordinary affairs, and he was
forced to think for himself. The many books he had read filled his mind
with ideas which, because he only half understood them, gave more scope to
his imagination. Beneath his painful shyness something was growing up
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