apply these names in the same manner: and now mark most particularly the curious part of the process; how they follow the same rule when speaking of themselves. They hear people calling them by their own names in the third person, and not having any notion of themselves, not having realized their own personality, they have nothing else for it than to adhere, in this case too, to their old principle of imitation, and to do towards themselves just what others do towards them; that is to say, when speaking of themselves they are unavoidably forced to designate themselves by a word in the third person; or in other words, to speak of themselves as if they were not themselves.
So long, then, as this state of things continues, the human being is to be regarded as leading altogether mere animal life, as living completely under the dominion and within the domain of nature. The law of its whole being is the law of causality. Its sensations, feelings of every kind, and all its exercises of reason, are mere effects, which again in their turn are capable of becoming causes. It cannot be said to be without "mind," if by the attribution of "mind" to it we mean that it is subject to various sensations, passions, desires, &c., but it certainly is without consciousness, or that notion of self, that realization of its own personality, which in the subsequent stages of its existence accompanies these modifications of its being. It is still entirely the creature of instinct, which may be exactly and completely defined as unconscious reason.
It is true that the child at this stage of its existence often puts on the semblance of the intensest selfishness; but to call it selfish, in the proper sense of the word, would be to apply to it a complete misnomer. This would imply that it stood upon moral ground, whereas its being rests as yet upon no moral foundations at all. We indeed have a moral soil beneath our feet. And this is the origin of our mistake. In us, conduct similar to the child's would be really selfish, because we occupy a moral ground, and have realized our own personality; and hence, forgetting the different grounds upon which we and it stand, we transfer over upon it, through a mistaken analogy, or rather upon a false hypothesis, language which would serve to characterise its conduct, only provided it stood in the same situation with us, and like us possessed the notion and reality of itself. The child is driven to the gratification of its desires (prior to consciousness) at whatever cost, and whatever the consequences may be, just as an animal or a machine is impelled to accomplish the work for which it was designed; and the desire dies only when gratified, or when its natural force is spent, or when supplanted by some other desire equally blind and equally out of its control. How can we affix the epithet selfish, or any other term indicating either blame or praise, to a creature which as yet is not a self at all, either in thought, in word, or deed? For let it be particularly noted that the notion of self is a great deal more than a mere notion—that is to say, it possesses far more than a mere logical value and contents—it is absolutely genetic or creative. Thinking oneself "I" makes oneself "I;" and it is only by thinking himself "I" that a man can make himself "I; or, in other words, change an unconscious thing into that which is now a conscious self. Nothing else will or can do it. So long as a Being does not think itself "I," it does not and cannot become "I." No other being, no being except itself, can make it "I." More, however, of this hereafter.
But now mark the moment when the child pronounces the word "I," and knows what this expression means. Here is a new and most important step taken. Let no one regard this step as insignificant, or treat our mention of it lightly and superciliously; for, to say the least of it, it is a step the like of which in magnitude and wonder the human being never yet took, and never shall take again, throughout the whole course of his rational and immortal career. We have read in fable of Circæan charms, which changed men into brutes; but here in this little monosyllable is contained a truer and more potent charm—the spell of an inverted and unfabulous enchantment, which converts the feral into the human being. The origination of this little monosyllable lifts man out of the natural into the moral universe. It places him, indeed, upon a perilous pre-eminence, being the assertion of nothing less than his own absolute independence.
