These and similar phrases suggest the instability of self- consciousness. It is not fixed, once and forever, but varies continually and within a wide range of degree. We like to think that man possesses full self-consciousness, while other creatures have none. Our minds are disposed to part off things with sharpness, but nature cares less about sharp divisions and seems on the whole to prefer subtle gradations and unstable varieties. So the self has all degrees of vividness. Of it we never have an experience barely. It is always in some condition, colored by what it is mixed with. I know myself speaking or angry or hearing; I know myself, that is, in some special mood. But never am I able to sunder this self from the special mass of consciousness in which it is immersed and to gaze upon it pure and simple. At times that mass of consciousness is so engrossing that hardly a trace of the self remains. At times the sense of being shut up to one's self is positively oppressive. Between the two extremes there is endless variation. When we call self-consciousness the prerogative of man we do not mean that he fully possesses it, but only that he may possess it, may possess it more and more; and that in it, rather than in the merely conscious life, the significance of his being is found. VII Probably we are born without it. We know how gradually the infant acquires a mastery of its sensuous experience; and it is likely that for a long time after it has obtained command of its single experiences it remains unaware of its selfhood. In a classic passage of "In Memoriam" Tennyson has stated the case with that blending of witchery and scientific precision of which he alone among the poets seems capable:-- "The baby, new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that 'this is I.' "But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of 'I' and 'me,' And finds 'I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.' "So rounds he to a separate mind, From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined."