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. At times the sense of being shut
up to one's self is positively oppressive. Between the two extremes
there is endless variation. When we call self-consciousness the
prerogative of man we do not mean that he fully possesses it, but only
that he may possess it, may possess it more and more; and that in it,
rather than in the merely conscious life, the significance of his
being is found.



VII

Probably we are born without it. We know how gradually the infant
acquires a mastery of its sensuous experience; and it is likely that