CHAPTER IX

OUR VARYING SELVES

IT could hardly have been Stevenson the romancer who made Doctor Jekyll say: "It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both." Rather, this was Stevenson the observer of human nature, who in common with all great novelists, possessed much of psychology and a bit of philosophy for the reflective moments of his characters.

Howells has graphically described these varying selves in the same person through the observation of one of his characters in April Hopes. Mrs. Brinkley was speaking of the Pasmer family but with special reference to Alice Pasmer. "The Pasmers are the dullest and most selfish people in the world,' she exclaimed.

"Oh, I don't think that's her character,' said Miss Cotton, ruffling her feathers defensively.

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"Neither do I. She has no fixed character. No girl has. Nobody has. We all have twenty different characters-more characters than gowns-and put them on and take them off just as often for different occasions. I know you think each person is permanently this or that; but my experience is that half the time they're the other thing.'

We all of us think that we know what the "self" is but the moment we try to describe it, difficulties arise and its various, contradictory characteristics become apparent. We readily distinguish between ourselves and other individuals. Our feelings, thoughts, interests, and emotions, generally, are also distinctive. They may be shared, to a

certain extent, by others, but our own radiate a warmth that makes them personal. Here, too, diversity within the "self" becomes evident. Self-appreciation and ambition conflict with humility; material prosperity with social and ethical ideals; self-preservation, or its more modern counterpart, self-advancement, with the rights of others. Perhaps, though, it is in action, the outward expression of our varying and conflicting emotions, that the contradictory character of the "self" is most noticeable. "I was not myself when I did that," is a frequent excuse; and this defense has passed over into law in the distinction between premeditated and unpremeditated homicide. At times the variations pass beyond the normal and an individual exhibits peculiarities so diverse that they have no common bond, not even that of memory connecting the varying selves. It is the intention of the writer to consider only normal variations, except for one case of peculiar interest because it approaches the parting of the ways.

Just because people are prone to think themselves more consistent than they are and because the opinion is rather prevalent that only under pathological conditions do varying personalities dwell side by side in the same individual and reveal themselves successively, just for that reason a survey of alternating selves in the same person seems profitable. All is grist that comes to your mill if you once begin to consider this question—all literature, history, biography, your friends, neighbors, and family. Even the crowned heads of Europe offer a crop for the garnering. Some recompense for the effort may be a quickened understanding of human nature and a keener appreciation of its incongruities and consequent frailties.

A bit of reflection will soon convince us that we are a strange composite of selves. No one can be labelled and tagged for any length of time. No one completely reveals himself at any moment. Proverbs such as "You must eat a peck of salt with a man before you know him" in

dicate that the experience of the race confirms this human characteristic. Sometimes we reveal alternately different or conflicting selves. Again, we possess two selves struggling for the mastery, either consciously or unconsciously. The self may change with physical conditions, fatigue, age, environment, companions, ambition, and mood.

We may dismiss briefly the influence of physical wellbeing and fatigue. The familiar amiability after a good dinner and the distorted mental vision due to fatigue or pain are generally recognized, and the necessity of reckoning with these factors has become axiomatic. Just how far the control of the self is possible and what its relation to conduct is will be touched upon later. But first let us turn to some of the many types of personalities that refuse to fit into an orderly scheme and yet are not unusual.

General George B. McClellan's Own Story1 contains excellent illustrations of two or three of the twenty characters that Mrs. Brinkley thinks every one has. "I pray every night and every morning that I may become neither depressed by disaster nor elated by success, and that I may keep one single object in view-the good of my country.' Compare this humility with the attitude expressed in the following passages in which modesty has entirely vanished and his view of himself is immensely enlarged. "Had the measures recommended" [by himself] "been carried into effect the war would have been closed in less than one-half the time and with infinite saving of blood and treasure." 2 And, besides, he tells us of the acknowledgment of generous enemies "that they feared me more than any of the northern generals, and that I had struck them harder blows when in the full prime of their strength." There is even evidence that he so far forgot "the good of my country" as to permit thoughts of a dictatorship to flash through his mind; but perhaps this was another way of saving the country from the inefficiency of the other generals. "How

1 P. 173.

2 P. 105.

3 P. 35.

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these brave fellows love me," he is reported to have said to one very near to him, "and what a power their love places in my hands! What is there to prevent my taking the government into my hands?" Could one ask for two more widely varying selves? Yet each was apparently unaware of the existence of the other. A study of McClellan's life has convinced the writer that he was earnestly desirous of serving his country at the cost of any personal sacrifice and that the other self-the self-aggrandizementcame into no noticeable conflict with his self-sacrificing loyalty.

Sometimes the two sets of ideas or beliefs are more clearly contradictory. People with such conflicts, like those of the McClellan type, are not aware of the contradiction because the two systems of thought flow along in parallel streams without overflowing their banks and mingling with one another. Stanton seems at times to have exhibited even more striking contradictions. In a letter to Dana, written in February, 1862, he exclaimed: "Much has been said of military combinations and of organizing victory. I hear such phrases with apprehension. They commenced in infidel France with the Italian campaigns and resulted in Waterloo. Who can organize victory? Who can combine the elements of success on the battlefield? We owe our recent victories to the Spirit of the Lord that moved our soldiers to rush into battle and filled the hearts of our enemies with dismay."2 This is interesting from one who devoted tireless energy to organizing victory. "From the moment he took hold of the war machine, he saw that every part was in order, so that his own work and others' work would not be thrown away. And back of the labor, the system, the insight, was the animating soul, an enormous, driving energy, which thrust

1 Union Portraits, by Gamaliel Bradford, p. 15. Quoted by Bradford from Piatt's Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union, p. 294. 2 Recollections of the Civil War, by Charles A. Dana, p. 7.

right on through obstacles and difficulties, would not yield, would not falter, would not turn back. . . . The very life and heart of the war depends on railroads. Stanton sees it and gets men like Haupt and McCallum out of civil life to do feats of engineering which command the admiration not of America only, but of the world." 1 This does not look like trusting to the "Spirit of the Lord that moved our soldiers to rush into battle and filled the hearts of our enemies with dismay."

Sir John Hawkins offers another illustration of this contradiction of ideas and beliefs. His love for his fellow sailors led him to devote his fortune to founding a hospital for indigent sailors. Yet this fortune was made in the slave traffic in which on his own boats and with his knowledge the most atrocious cruelties were practised, the slaves being treated far worse than cattle. Again as we have found, people of some scientific knowledge who surely realize the supreme importance of human life, are misled by an orgy of sentimental sympathy through the phrase "cruelty to animals," to oppose animal experimentation for the relief of human suffering. As an instance of the curious separation of personalities in some of these people, Havelock Ellis remarks: "I have often noted with interest that a passionate hatred of pain inflicted on animals is apt to be accompanied by a comparative indifference to pain inflicted upon human beings, and sometimes a certain complaisance, even pleasure, in such pain." The truth of this observation is supported by a news item in the daily press immediately after the

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1 Union Portraits, by Gamaliel Bradford, pp. 188 ff. 2 Impressions and Comments, p. 154.

3 December 15, 1917. Verified in all essentials by letters from Mr. Murray and from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The money-over $1,400, as it turned out-was raised by popular subscription. Consequently, the charter of the Society would not have forbidden the collection and use of the money for relief of the sufferings of human beings, had the Society so desired.