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And yet this Syrian never served His mass without a thrill of something resembling fear; it was not only his knowledge of the awful dignity of this simple celebrant; but, although he could not have expressed it so, there was an aroma of an emotion about the vestmented figure that affected him almost physically an entire absence of self-consciousness, and in its place the consciousness of some other Presence, a perfection of manner even in the smallest details that could only arise from absolute recollection.
It consisted of a round tin box, eight inches in diameter, capable of boiling three pints of water in two minutes and a half; of its own self-consciousness, the sauce-pan could evolve into a frying-pan, besides other adaptations, including space for a Russian lamp a vessel holding spirit with cellular cavities for salt, pepper, matches, not forgetting cup, spoon, and plate.
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.
When Hamlet would act, self-consciousness stands in his way. The hindering process is described in the famous soliloquy with astonishing precision and vividness, if only we substitute our modern term "self-consciousness" for that which was its ancient equivalent:
The function of passing a moral judgment on Claudia's conduct at this juncture is one that the historian respectfully declines. It is easy to blame fair damsels for recklessness in the use of their dangerous weapons; and if they take the censure to heart which is not usually the case easy again to charge them with self-consciousness or self-conceit.
It is his gentle, high-bred manner and not his azure coat, which makes the bluebird; and the cat-bird would be a cat-bird in no matter what garb, so long as he retained his obtrusive self-consciousness and his prying, busy-body spirit; all of which, being interpreted, comes, it may be, to no more than this, "Fine feathers don't make fine birds."
When the greater love overwhelms the lesser, and your small self-consciousness is lost in the consciousness of the Whole, it will be felt as an intense stillness, a quiet fruition of Reality. Then, your very selfhood seems to cease, as it does in all your moments of great passion; and you are "satisfied and overflowing, and with Him beyond yourself eternally fulfilled."
Here, indeed, we find rich definitions and genetic analyses, but none that lead us any farther than to the information that consciousness is the necessary condition of self-consciousness; that animal instinct is the necessary antecedent condition of moral self-determination.
For Darius cigarettes were aristocratic and finicking; they were an affectation. He smoked a cigarette with the self-consciousness which usually marks the consumption of champagne in certain strata of society.
Therefore, since that now dim day when the Colonies acquired a self-consciousness of their own, many good Americans have chosen England and the English to symbolize whatever irked them in their own tradition. It is from England and the English that we have felt ourselves growing away, from which we had to grow away in order to be ourselves and not a shadow imitators, second-bests, Colonials.
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