. It develops a consciousness of
"self."

In its simplest form this consciousness of self is nothing
more than a continuous stream of inner organic sensations,
and the constant process of the body and limbs "and the
special interest of these as the seat of various pleasures and
pains." This is what James calls the "bodily self." As it
grows older, the baby distinguishes between persons and
things. And as, in setting off his own body from other things,
it discovers its "bodily self," so in setting off its own opinions,
actions, and thoughts from other people, it discovers its "social
self." It is because Nature does in some degree the
"giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us," that we do
discover our "selves" at all. "The normal human being, if it
were possible for him to grow up from birth onward in a purely
physical environment, deprived, that is, to say, of both animal
and human companionship, would develop but a very
crude and rudimentary idea of the self."[1]

[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 183.]

THE SOCIAL SELF. A man's social self, that is, his consciousness
of himself as set over against all the other individuals
with whom he comes in contact, develops as his relations
with other people grow more complex and various. A man's
self, apart from his mere physical body, consists in his peculiar
organization of instincts and habits. In common language
this constitutes his personality or character. We can infer
from it what he will, as we say, characteristically do in any
given situation. And a particular organization of instincts
and habits is dependent very largely on the individual's social
experience, on the types and varieties of contact with
other people that he has established. There will be differences,
it goes without saying, that depend on initial differences
in native capacity. But both the consciousness of self and
the overt organization of instinctive and habitual actions are
dependent primarily on the groups with which an individual
comes in contact. In the formation of habits, both of action
and thought, the individual is affected, as we have seen,
largely by praise and blame. He very early comes to detect
signs of approval and disapproval, and both his consciousness
of his individuality and the character of that individuality
are, in the case of most persons, largely determined by these
outward signs of the praise and blame of others. And since,
in normal experience, a man comes