Ideal self

“ Once formed and familiarized the ideal self serves, like any ideal only more directly, as an incitement to growth in its direction, and a punishment to retrogression. A man who has become used to imagining himself as noble, beneficent and respected has a real picture in his mind, a fair product of aspiring thought, a work of art. ”

“ The ideal world, then, to present in full summary these views, is thus built up, through personality in all its richness, by a perfected imitation of life itself, and is set forth in universal unities of relation, causal or formal, to the intellect in its inward, to the sense of beauty in its outward, aspects; and thereby delighting the desire of the mind for lucid and lovely order, it generates joy, and thence is born the will to conform one's self to this order. ”

“ And, presupposing an acquaintance with that process, as well as with the evolution of the unreflecting good will, we can content ourselves with saying very little.—The self, as we saw, objectifies its reactions in external things, and rises from satisfaction, as forefelt in this or that sensuous object, to the thought of ends, the ideas of permanent objects and pursuits, felt or known to be pleasant, and exciting desire by the ideal affirmation which they bring. ”

“ The ideal self then for morals is not visibly universal nor fully actual. It is not visibly and in the world seen to be an harmonious system, but in the world and in us realizes, it would seem, itself against itself. ”

“ Be ever willing to sacrifice the personal self to the Real Self, if need be. If the ideal is truly the desire for illumination, and not for self-gratification, the mind will soon learn to distinguish between the lesser and the greater. Have you longed for perfect, satisfying human love? ”

“ Thus self as an enduring whole becomes established as the predominating object in the mind of the Ego, towards which object or ideal [Pg 98] attainment in continuity, and in expansiveness of relation the motives of the individual turn—co-ordinating to it all the more special motives; and evolving in a higher degree the powers of self-rule. ”

“ We have asserted that if this ideal goal becomes an exclusive goal, such that no other is viewed as the possible goal of this life, and if this goal is viewed as one which, if attained through any other life than mine, would not be attained as I meant it to be attained, then my life is defined for me as the life of a unique, and so of a genuinely individual Self. ”

“ The distinctions drawn for purposes of study will be laid aside, and the Self in us will be found to be the realisation of a grand ideal being, at once individual and universal, consciously free in its individual wholeness and in its joyous participation in the Life of the Universal Whole. ”

“ The question of our future life depends upon the relation of the self to the Ego. In so far as the self is spiritually developed, and has attained to its ideal, the Ego, it will persist in the future. ”

“ Thus it is that ideals are a living, vital agency in unfolding the latent virtues of man and so shaping his character.
Hence we may perceive that in these three addresses we have, if I may use the ambitious expression, a full chart of our life — its right methods, its favourable circumstances and its ultimate realisation. Cultivate your self, sparing no pains. Seek and imbibe lofty ideals, drawing no invidious distinction between one and another. And realise that character in which alone lies the justification of human life and the gurantee of human continuity. ”

“ Here, and here first, are the contradictions which have beset us solved—here is an universal which can confront our wandering desires with a fixed and stern imperative, but which yet is no unreal form of the mind, but a living soul that penetrates and stands fast in the detail of actual existence. It is real, and real for me. It is in its affirmation that I affirm myself, for I am but as a ‘heart-beat in its system.’ And I am real in it; for, when I give myself to it, it gives me the fruition of my own personal activity, the accomplished ideal of my life which is happiness. ”

“ Turning now from the question of content to that of origin, we must consider first the genesis of the good self, not in the world in general, but in the will of the individual: and the question here is, how is it possible for the self to identify itself with what seems to be altogether outside it? How is it that I can feel pleasure in the successes of persons and causes which do not affect my private personality? how can I desire their furtherance, not as means but as an end? How can the content of my will be not myself, as this or that exclusive individual? ”

“ The prevalence of this obvious preference which we feel for everything of our own is indeed striking. Does it not look as if our dear Ego must first lend its color and flavor to anything in order to make it please us?... Is it not the simplest explanation for all these phenomena, so consistent among themselves, to suppose that the Ego, the self, which forms the origin and centre of our thinking life, is at the same time the original and central object of our life of feeling, and the ground both of whatever special ideas and of whatever special feelings ensue? ”

“ It is, firstly, the identification of yourself with the highest consciousness accessible on your present plane, the engrafting upon your entire life of the best ideal attainable, so that you may act upon it in every thought and word. If you can do no more, select in your own mind the most unselfish and pure-hearted person in your horizon, and study the workings of such gracious aspirations and deeds. Noble ideals will soon spring up within you, and by this lodestone similar minds will swiftly be attracted, until you shall collectively form a nucleus of persons identical in aim and influence. ”

“ The uses of his intellect for practical affairs are therefore subordinate matters. 'The theoretic life' is his soul's genuine concern." Nothing can be more different in its results for our personal attitude than to take sides with one or the other of these views, and emphasize the practical or the theoretical ideal. In the latter case, abstraction from the emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of human affairs would be not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; and all that makes for quiet and contemplation should be regarded as conducive to the highest human perfection. ”

“ The desire to feel that one is one's own and not the Lord's, the vanity that would say, This truth I reasoned out myself; the pride that would claim that the integrity I possess is my own, and that the merit of my good deeds belongs to me; the self-sufficiency that asserts one's self as the origin and center of what he is and feels and acquires, is the tree of knowledge sending its roots down deep within the spirit. ”

“ You want to know that somewhere he — this individual, he himself and not another — knows himself as fulfilled after his own kind; as possessed of a life that, in its wholeness, earthly and superhuman, is adequate to his ideal. ”

“ And therefore this fundamental desire it is, I suppose,—this desire in men that good should be forever present to them,—which acts in us when we feel the impulse for relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct and to our sense for beauty. At any rate, with men in general the instinct exists. Such is human nature. And the instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, and human nature is preserved by our following the lead of its innocent instincts. Therefore, in seeking to gratify this instinct in question, we are following the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. ”

“ It by no means follows because our conception of personality is derived from finite beings, that it is necessarily limited to them; and that it cannot be thought of in connection with a being, some of whose attributes are infinite and others perfect; in other words, that the idea of finiteness is necessarily involved in that of personality. What are the conceptions that make up the idea of our own personality? I reply, the power to affirm “I” of one's own being—the possession of will—the power of self-consciousness, and these in union with rationality. ”

“ He sees himself in all he sees. And this self that a man sees crystallized in all his world of sense, of society, and of philosophy, is simply his own fashion of conduct, his busy world-building temperament. ”

“ Really, however, it is my own, my deeper self, whose choice is at each moment shown to me. But, then, observe, unless I thus chose to recognize something beyond myself, I should have nothing to do, I should have nothing to resist, to fight, to win, to love, — in short, to act upon, in any way. The deepest truth, then, is a practical truth. I need something not myself, in order to be active, that is, in order to exist. ”

“ And we must notice too, what further on will engage us, that the good which the child thus lives itself into and lives in, is in the main in harmony with itself. And hence the self, which feels itself to be one and a whole, feels in the good the answering harmony of its own true nature, and divines that what realizes it as a system realizes itself, and that the jarring and discrepant is false and untrue. ”

“ You want yourself, — the Self in its completeness, in its fulfilment, in its final expression. In brief, when you talk of reality, you talk of self-possession, of perfection, and of peace. And that is, therefore, all that you mean by the Being of the world or of any type of facts. Being therefore is nothing beyond yourself. You even now hold it within you, in your heart of hearts. Being therefore is just the purely immediate. To be means to quench thought in the presence of a final immediacy which completely satisfies all ideas. ”

“ And by recommending, and still more by himself exemplifying in his own practice, by showing active in himself, with the most prepossessing pureness, clearness, and beauty, the two qualities by which our ordinary self is indeed most essentially counteracted, self-renouncement and mildness, he made his followers feel that in these qualities lay the secret of their best self; that to attain them was in the highest degree requisite and natural, and that a man's whole happiness depended upon it. ”

“ What we ought to wish to find finally saved, in our own fortune, in our own lives, or in the lives of those whom we love and honour, is distinctly moral personality, conceived as a self-conscious process aiming towards a unique goal, — a goal that cannot be conceived as attainable at any temporal moment. Such individual goals, as Idealism teaches us, must be attained in the eternal world. ”

“ We are not only conscious of ourself in them, but in each we are conscious of self in a certain character, as good against bad, bad against good. We are conscious of ourselves as willing them each in that specific character, and we recognize and refer our desires and acts, not to what seem to be certain headings, but rather each to an apparent active centre, embodied in our will, which has asserted itself and does assert itself in us, and in which we have asserted and do assert ourselves, not as a collection or series, but as a real being, as what we call our good and bad self. ”

“ He is unique, first, in that the object, namely, the Moral Goal, which he sets before himself, and with reference to which he is this self-conscious being, is for him the object of his exclusive interest; an object for which, in his eyes, no other could be substituted so long as he remains himself. ”

“ Are we not forced to look on the self as a whole, which is not merely the sum of its parts, nor yet some other particular beside them? And must we not say that to realize self is always to realize a whole, and that the question in morals is to find the true whole, realizing which will practically realize the true self? ”

“ The self whose quality is revealed in Biography and History, and judged in Ethics, has for its exclusive material our emotional interests and purposive attitudes towards the various constituents of our surroundings; of these, and of nothing else, our self is made. And the self, again, is one and individual, just in so far as these interests and purposes can be thought of as forming the expression, in the detail of succession, of a central coherent interest or purpose. ”

“ The essential character of our doing is the internal will, which does not, properly speaking, modify things, but does modify us, by bringing out in us a personality which otherwise would not have been. This is the substance of the will, 180 which we cannot deny to thought, if thought is, as I have shown, development, and therefore continuous self-creation of the personality. ”

“ In fact no one knows himself but that self's own soul. The vast and wonderful knowledge of this marvelous universe is locked in the bosoms of its individual souls. To tap this mighty reservoir of experience, knowledge, beauty, love, and deed we must appeal not to the few, not to some souls, but to all. ”

“ He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to watch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have the entire assurance of his own mind. And in this self-respect, or hearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may say, or need never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect, genius; in practice, talent;—not to imitate or surpass a particular man in his way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method, style, wit, eloquence. ”

“ We find hands untrained to practical uses, minds unequal to grasping the common wants of existence, hearts in which the high ideals of character and strong impulses toward true usefulness are over-swept by that consideration for self that makes one’s own interests seem the very centre of the universe of God. ”