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reflected furnishes it a powerful stimulus to do things. Children CHAP.I brought up in foundling asylums, where they receive good physical care but not loving personal attention, learn to walk and to speak much later than those whose baby efforts call forth the encouraging" ohs" and "ahs" of an admiring family, whose sympathy baby soon learns to claim as his right.

Children

"Strong joy and grief depend upon the treatment this rudi- Histrionic mentary social self receives. In the case of M., I noticed as early as the fourth month a 'hurt' way of crying which seemed to indicate a sense of personal slight. . . . The slightest tone of reproof would produce it. On the other hand, if people took notice and laughed and encouraged, she was hilarious. At about fifteen months old, she had become a perfect little actress,' seeming to live largely in imaginations of her effect upon other people. She constantly and obviously laid traps for attention and looked abashed or wept at any signs of disapproval or indifference.. If she hit upon any little trick that made people laugh, she would be sure to repeat it. . . . She had quite a repertory of these small performances, which she would display to a sympathetic audience or even try upon strangers." 12

Some never develop much beyond this childish stage. I recall a clever young college instructor who in every conversation was obviously occupied with the impression he was making. After he hal touched off an epigram you could see him busily priming the next one, in the meantime paying not the slightest attention to your remarks unless they dripped compliment. The callow monologist would make the round of his acquaintances like a landrd collecting rents and then retire to his den to gloat over the admiration he believed he had excited.

No one is totally indifferent to his mirrored self, but people dfer greatly in sensitiveness. The wise man schools himself to le content with the approval of the discerning. The strong man ires only for the handclap of his peers and will not be looking every minute for fear his social image has changed. Those born the purple give themselves little concern over what the comly think of them. We perceive Haman was an upstart when we read: "But when Haman saw Mordecai in the King's gare, that he stood not up nor moved for him, he was full of indigCooley, "Human Nature and the Social Order," pp. 164-67.

We Differ
Sensitive-
Mirrored

Greatly in

ness to the

Self

CHAP. I nation against Mordecai." After telling over his honors, he adds: "Yet all this availeth nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the King's gate."

No One Is
Really
Self-
Centered

The
"'Inde-

pendent"

Man Is

by Imagi

nary Approval

99 13

A man may think he turns on his own axis, but "if failure or disgrace arrives, if he suddenly finds that the faces of men show coldness or contempt instead of the kindliness and deference that he is used to, he will perceive from the shock, the fear, the sense of being outcast and helpless, that he was living in the minds of others without knowing it, just as we daily walk the solid ground without thinking how it bears us up.'

" 14

One we call "independent" or "self-sufficient" is not outside society nor dispensing altogether with social approval. He may Supported be a massive deep-draft character that from past approval has gained enough headway not to be stalled in the slack water of indifference, nor caught in an eddy of blame. He may be a discriminating person who smiles at the catcalls of the multitude provided only the wise appreciate him. He may be serene when all men revile him because in his imagination he sees himself triumphantly justified before some high tribunal of the worthies of the past or of the élite of the generations to come. As Ibsen puts into the mouth of one of his characters, "The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone," seeing that for corroboration he relies least on numbers or contemporaries. This is why faith in God is so bracing to the disinterested champion of an unpopular cause. Imagined divine approval enables him to hold his course amid general opposition and obloquy. In the homes of the Christian missionaries in Inner China one can read from the many cheering religious texts hung about the walls how, aliens in a strange land, they feel the need of counteracting the moral isolation in which they live.

Why the Vain Man Is Weak and Dependent

In a light-draft mind preoccupation with one's reflected self shows itself as vanity. The vain man, unlike the constructive and stable sort, cannot hold steadily to an idea of his worth. He cannot fix past social approval as a durable part of his thought of himself, cannot get the habit of taking his merits for granted. Hence his self-feeling is subject to great ups and downs. Let people show admiration or envy of him and he treads on air; but in a trice some slight or rebuff has cast him into the depths. His nature lacks a flywheel to carry him past the "dead points" in

18 Esther V: 9, 13.

14 Cooley, "Human Nature and the Social Order,” p. 177.

his experience. He cannot keep up his self-confidence with the CHAP. I huzzas of last year or even last month; he needs his praise fresh. Such constant dependence is a weakness and will be exploited if it is worth while to do so. The vain man who happens to be rich or powerful or influential is an easy mark for sycophants and toadies, since he swallows gratefully the flattery that buoys his scal in hours of self-distrust. One who skilfully feeds the vain man his needed ration of "taffy" makes himself indispensable. Vanity, too, may be played upon to make one a tool of others. The vain are easy to get the better of and are always burning their fingers pulling other people's chestnuts out of the fire.

Recogni

To pant for recognition, to yearn to impress one's personality Thirst for deeply upon one's people or one's time, is the essence of ambition. tion The ambitious youth thinks he thirsts to "do something" or to "be somebody," but his thirst would not be slaked by a success obody noticed or acknowledged. Really what he craves is to figure potently in the minds of others, to be greatly loved, admired, or feared. The mere notoriety-seeker is less nice and bankers to be read about or talkd about even if the self reflected is far from impressive. This type that would rather be butt than apher is kin to the lunatic with a mania for self-exhibition.

Less dependent than the ambitious is the power-seeker who lakes his thirst for self-effectuation by molding the destinies of cthers but cares nothing for recognition by them. The retiring. Enancier or unofficial Warwick, who secretly pulls the wires that ake politicians dance, finds his pleasure in seeing the puppets chey his will. Beyond him is the achiever, careless whether the public he benefits ever learns of his existence; but even he needs. an inner circle who understand and appreciate his achievement.

It is rather a fine type that is captivated by the idea of recognition by the unborn. A man who shrinks from newspaper pubScity may revel in imagining his name in a stained glass window, carved on a portal, or attached to a street. As between wide fame and lasting fame the more imaginative prefer the latter, counting it better to be remembered by posterity than to be the ular idol of one's time.

In a time like ours, when money can work wonders, men are a to exaggerate its power over souls. Just as there are fools who think they can buy true love and silly rich who actually find satisfaction in the deference paid them by their lackeys and on

The Impo-
Money to
Recogni-

tence of

Extort

CHAP. X hangers, so there are some who think to insure commemoration of themselves by paying for it. One rears himself a useless monument or leaves money to build it. Another welds his name to the philanthropy he founds or with his benefaction stipulates a memorial. The sage has no such childlike faith in the power of money, but realizes that he must leave to the unforced gratitude of his fellows the cherishing of his name and service.

of the

Mirrored

Self

Uncurbed, the passion to fix and greaten one's social image Pathology leads to such evils as pomp, ostentation, fashion, heart-burning, jealousy, fawning, and tuft-hunting. It is a paradox that the mania to impress others may lead to the worst forms of antisocial conduct as when a king brings on a war for the sake of prestige, or a proprietor squeezes his tenants in order to make a splurge on the boulevards or a splash at Monte Carlo. Shakespeare has Coriolanus slaughter the Volscians just to vindicate himself as not a "boy of tears." The scheming social climber sacrificing old friends and risking countless snubs in the hope of ultimate recognition by people of high position is about as social as a lizard; others interest her only as looking-glasses to reflect a pleasing image of herself. In the evil trinity religion bids us renounce, "the world, the flesh, and the devil," the "world" stands for the faults that spring from solicitude for one's social image, such as worldly ambition, affectation, vanity, vainglory, boastfulness, and arrogance.

Spiritual
Hygiene

The mirrored self is a poor thing to stake one's happiness on. Like one's image in a still pool one's pleasing reflection in the minds of others may vanish with a breath. Ambition, to be sure, may lift the sluggard from his bed, the clod from his rut, the sensualist from his sty; but it overstimulates the mettlesome while the sensitive fret themselves ill over their standing in the eyes of others. That is why "withdrawal from the world" has always found some favor among choice spirits. The woods, the sea, or the cell afford asylum from the sharp suggestions that prick the flanks of ambition. One wearied of perpetually scoring to keep his prestige alive, his credit from being smirched by jealous rivals, longs to quit the "world" at least for a season.

Professor Cooley observes:

To the impressible mind life is a theater of alarms and contentions, even when a phlegmatic person can see no cause for agitation—and to such a mind peace often seems the one thing fair and desirable,

so that the cloister or the forest, or the vessel on the lonesome sea, CHAP. X is the most grateful object of imagination. The imaginative self may be more battered, wounded, and strained by a striving, ambitious hie than the material body could be in a more visible battle, and its wounds are usually more lasting and draw more deeply upon the vitality. Mortification, resentment, jealousy, the fear of disgrace and failure, sometimes even hope and elation, are exhausting passions; and it is after a severe experience of them that retirement seems most healing and desirable.15

A finer remedy is to quit the game without withdrawing from that common life which is, after all, the place for most of the work that is to better the world. Thus Thomas à Kempis exhorts: "Son, now I will teach thee the way of peace and of true liberty. . . . Study to do another's will rather than thine own. Choose ever to have less rather than more. Seek ever the lower place and be subject to all; ever wish and pray that the will of God may be perfectly done in thee and in all. Behold such a man enters the bounds of peace and calm." 16 Being less aggressive in their make-up, women as a rule are Sex Conmore dependent than men on their immediate social image. They Respecting are more sensitive to present attitudes, cannot live so well on hoarded corroboration, and slow down sooner when opinion sets against them. How much gifted women will accomplish depends quite as much on the measure of encouragement they receive as on the degree of freedom they enjoy. American women have done so well, not chiefly because they are freer than their sisters in other lands, but because none cheer a woman's achievement so generously as American men.

While boys are taken up with what they are doing, girls live much in their imagination of how they appear to others. They blush more readily, until the arrival of adolescence they are more bashful than boys, and their clothes consciousness is more acute. It is no such task to get a girl in her early teens to keep herself presentable as to get a boy to do so. The girl catches subtle sha les in the personal attitude of others which the boy misses, is more subject to affectation, falls more readily into acting roles, will make greater sacrifices to convention, and lives more in terror of being "talked about." Women have too much divination to fall into certain egotistic attitudes common to men. Thus women 16 Quoted by Cooley, op. cit., p. 221.

p. cit, p. 220.

trasts

Depend

ence on the

Mirrored

Self

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