absence or deficiency which explains many things which at first
sight seem obscure in the psychology of children and of animals. The
baby (it has often been noticed) experiences little or no sense of FEAR.
It does not know enough to be afraid; it has never formed any image of
itself, as of a thing which might be injured. It may shrink from actual
pain or discomfort, but it does not LOOK FORWARD--which is of the
essence of fear--to pain in the future. Fear and self-consciousness are
closely interlinked. Similarly with animals, we often wonder how a horse
or a cow can endure to stand out in a field all night, exposed to cold
and rain, in the lethargic patient way that they exhibit. It is not that
they do not FEEL the discomfort, but it is that they do not envisage
THEMSELVES as enduring this pain and suffering for all those coming
hours; and as we know with ourselves that nine-tenths of our miseries
really consist in looking forward to future miseries, so we understand
that the absence or at any rate slight prevalence of self-consciousness
in animals enables them to endure forms of distress which would drive us
mad.

In time then the babe arrives at self-consciousness; and, as one might
expect, the growing boy or girl often becomes intensely aware of Self.
His or her self-consciousness is crude, no doubt, but it has very little
misgiving. If the question of the nature of the Self is propounded to
the boy as a problem he has no difficulty in solving it. He says "I know
well enough who I am: I am the boy with red hair what gave Jimmy Brown
such a jolly good licking last Monday week." He knows well enough--or
thinks he knows--who he is. And at a later age, though his definition
may change and he may describe himself chiefly as a good cricketer or
successful in certain examinations, his method is practically the same.
He fixes his mind on a certain bundle of qualities and capacities which
he is supposed to possess, and calls that bundle Himself. And in a more
elaborate way we most of us, I imagine, do the same.

Presently, however, with more careful thought, we begin to see
difficulties in this view. I see that directly I think of myself as a
certain bundle of qualities--and for that matter it is of no account
whether the qualities are good or bad, or in what sort of charming
confusion they are mixed--I see at once that I am merely looking at
a bundle of qualities: and that the real "I," the Self, is not that
bundle, but is