Charles Horton Cooley

The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, thatthe mind cherishes as its own. Self-feeling has its chief scope within the general life, not outsideof it; the special endeavor or tendency of which it is the emotional aspect finds its principal fieldof exercise in a world of personal forces, reflected in the mind by a world of personalimpressions.

As connected with the thought of other persons the self idea is always a consciousness of thepeculiar or differentiated aspect of one's life, because that is the aspect that has to be sustained bypurpose and endeavor, and its more aggressive forms tend to attach themselves to whatever onefinds to be at once congenial to one's own tendencies and at variance with those of others withwhom one is in mental contact. It is here that they are most needed to serve their function ofstimulating characteristic activity, of fostering those personal variations which the general plan oflife seems to require. Heaven, says Shakespeare, doth divide

Agreeably to this view we find that the aggressive self manifests itself most conspicuously in anappropriativeness of objects of common desire, corresponding to the individuals need of powerover such objects to secure his own peculiar development, and to the danger of opposition fromothers who also need them. And this extends from material objects to lay hold, in the samespirit, of the attentions and affections of other people, of all sorts of plans and ambitions,including the noblest special purposes the mind can entertain, and indeed of any conceivable ideawhich may come to seem a part of one's life and in need of assertion against some one else. Theattempt to limit the word self and its derivatives to the lower aims of personality is quitearbitrary; at variance with common sense as expressed by the emphatic use of "I" in connectionwith the sense of duty and other high motives, and unphilosophical as ignoring the function ofthe self as the organ of specialized endeavor of higher as well as lower kinds.

That the "I" of common speech has a meaning which includes some sort of reference to otherpersons is involved in the very fact that the word and the ideas it stands for are phenomena oflanguage and the communicative life. It is doubtful whether it is possible to use language at allwithout thinking more or less distinctly of some one else, and certainly the things to which wegive names and which have a large place in reflective thought are almost always those which areimpressed upon us by our contact with other people. Where there is no communication there canbe no nomenclature and no developed thought. What we call "me," "mine," or "myself" is, then,not something separate from the general life, but the most interesting part of it, a part whoseinterest arises from the very fact that it is both general and individual. That is, we care for it justbecause it is that phase of the mind that is living and striving in the common life, trying toimpress itself upon the minds of others. "I" is a militant social tendency, working to hold andenlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity of which no one could be guilty whoreally saw it as a fact of life.

If a thing has no relation to others of which one is conscious he is unlikely to think of it at all,and if he does think of it he cannot, it seems to me, regard it as emphatically his. Theappropriative sense is always the shadow, as it were, of the common life, and when we have it wehave a sense of the latter in connection with it. Thus, if we think of a secluded part of the woodsas "ours," it is because we think, also, that others do not go there. As regards the body I doubt ifwe have a vivid my-feeling about any part of it which is not thought of, however vaguely, ashaving some actual or possible reference to some one else. Intense self-consciousness regardingit arises along with instincts or experiences which connect it with the thought of others. Internalorgans, like the liver, are not thought of as peculiarly ours unless we are trying to communicatesomething regarding them, as, for instance, when they are giving us trouble and we are trying toget sympathy.

"I," then, is not all of the mind, but a peculiarly central, vigorous, and well-knit portion of it, notseparate from the rest but gradually merging into it, and yet having a certain practicaldistinctness, so that a man generally shows clearly enough by his language and behavior what his"I" is as distinguished from thoughts he does not appropriate. It may be thought of, as alreadysuggested, under the analogy of a central colored area on a lighted wall. It might also, andperhaps more justly, be compared to the nucleus of a living cell, not altogether separate from thesurrounding matter, out of which indeed it is formed, but more active and definitely organized.

The reference to other persons involved in the sense of self may be distinct and particular, aswhen a boy is ashamed to have his mother catch him at something she has forbidden, or it may bevague and general, as when one is ashamed to do something which only his conscience,expressing his sense of social responsibility, detects and disapproves; but it is always there. There is no sense of "I," as in pride or shame, without its correlative sense of you, or he, or they.Even the miser gloating over his hidden gold can feel the "mine" only as he is aware of the worldof men over whom he has secret power; and the case is very similar with all kinds of hid treasure.Many painters, sculptors, and writers have loved to withhold their work from the world, fondlingit in seclusion until they were quite done with it; but the delight in this, as in all secrets, dependsupon a sense of the value of what is concealed.

I remarked above that we think of the body as "I" when it comes to have social function orsignificance, as when we say "I am looking well to-day," or "I am taller than you are." We bringit into the social world, for the time being, and for that reason put our self-consciousness into it.Now it is curious, though natural, that in precisely the same way we may call any inanimateobject "I" with which we are identifying our will and purpose. This is notable in games, like golfor croquet, where the ball is the embodiment of the player's fortunes. You will hear a man say, "Iam in the long grass down by the third tee," or "I am in position for the middle arch." So a boyflying a kite will say "I am higher than you," or one shooting at a mark will declare that he is justbelow the bullseye.

In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhatdefinite imagination of how one's self--that is any idea he appropriates--appears in a particularmind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude toward this attributed tothat other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or looking glass self:

As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they areours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what weshould like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of ourappearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it.

A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal element: the imagination of our appearanceto the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort ofself-feeling, such as pride or mortification. The comparison with a looking-glass hardly suggeststhe second element, the imagined judgment, which is quite essential. The thing that moves us topride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment, theimagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind. This is evident from the fact that thecharacter and freight of that other, in whose mind we see ourselves, makes all the difference withour feeling. We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardlyin the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine,and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind. A man will boast to one person of anaction--say some sharp transaction in trade--which he would be ashamed to own to another.

It should be evident that the ideas that are associated with self-feeling and form the intellectualcontent of the self cannot be covered by any simple description, as by saying that the body hassuch a part in it, friends such a part, plans so much, etc., but will vary indefinitely with particulartemperaments and environments. The tendency of the self, like every aspect of personality, isexpressive of far-reaching hereditary and social factors, and is not to be understood or predictedexcept in connection with the general life. Although special, it is in no way separate--specialityand separateness are not only different but contradictory, since the former implies connectionwith a whole. The object of self-feeling is affected by the general course of history, by theparticular development of nations, classes, and professions, and other conditions of this sort.

* "Only in man does man know himself; life alone teaches each one what he is." Goethe, Tasso,act 2, sc. 3.

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