his own private pleasures and pains,
with the personal actions which were before observed, it is true, in
other persons but not understood. The act of the father has now become
his own. So one by one the various attributes which he has found to be
characteristic of the persons of his social circle, become his, in
his own thought. He is now _for himself_ an agent who has the marks of
a Person or a Self. He now understands _from_ _the inside_ all the
various personal suggestions. What he saw persons do is now no longer
"projective"--simply there, outside, in the environment; it has become
what we call "subjective." The details are grouped and held together
by the sense of agency working itself out in his imitative struggles.

This is what we mean by Self-consciousness. It is not an inborn thing
with the child. He gradually acquires it. And it is not a sense of a
distinct and separate self, first known and then compared with other
persons. On the contrary, it is gradually built up in the child's mind
from the same material exactly as that of which he makes up his
thought of other persons. The deeds he can do he first sees others
doing; only then can he imitate them and find out that he also is a
being who can perform them.

So it goes all through our lives. Our sense of Self is constantly
changing, constantly being enriched. We have not the same thought of
self two days in succession. To-day I think of myself as something to
be proud of, to-morrow as something to be ashamed of. To-day I learn
something from you, and the thought that it is common to you and to me
is the basis of my sympathy with you. To-morrow I learn to commit the
unworthy act which Mr. A. commits, and the thought that he and I are
so far the same is the basis of the common disapproval which I feel of
him and me.

2. The second result of this imitative learning about personality is
of equal importance. When the child has taken up an action by
imitation and made it subjective, finding out that personality has an
inside, something more than the mere physical body, then he reads this
fact back into the other persons also. He says to himself: "He too, my
little brother, must have _in him_ a sense of agency similar to this
of mine. He acts imitatively, too; he has pleasures and pains; he
shows sympathy for me, just as I do for him. So do all the persons
with whom I have become so far acquainted. They are, then, 'subjects'
as I am--something richer than the m