The differences in our memory presentations of the "I" and the "me" are those of the memory
images of the initiated social conduct and those of the sensory responses thereto.
It is needless, in view of the analysis of Baldwin, of Royce and of Cooley and many others, to
do more than indicate that these reactions arise earlier in our social conduct with others than in
introspective self-consciousness, i.e., that the infant consciously calls the attention of others
before he calls his own attention by affecting himself and that he is consciously affected by
others before he is conscious of being affected by himself.
The "I" of introspection is the self which enters into social relations with other selves. It is not
the "I" that is implied in the fact that one presents himself as a "me. " And the "me" of
introspection is the same "me" that is the object of the social conduct of others. One presents
himself as acting toward others -- in this presentation he is presented in indirect discourse as
the subject of the action and is still an object, -- and the subject of this presentation can never
appear immediately in conscious experience. It is the same self who is presented as observing
himself, and he affects himself just in so far and only in so far as he can address himself by the
means of social stimulation which affect others. The "me" whom he addresses is the "me,"
therefore, that is similarly affected by the social conduct of those about him.
This statement of the introspective situation, however, seems to overlook a more or less
constant feature of our consciousness, and [p. 376] that is that running current of awareness of
what we do which is distinguishable from the consciousness of the field of stimulation, whether
that field be without or within. It is this "awareness" which has led many to assume that it is the
nature of the self to be conscious both of subject and of object -- to be subject of action toward
an object world and at the same time to be directly conscious of this subject as subject, --
"Thinking its non-existence along with whatever else it thinks." Now, as Professor James
pointed out, this consciousness is more logically conceived of as sciousness -- the thinker
being an implication rather than a content, while the "me" is but a bit of object content within the
stream of sciousness. However, this logical statement does not do justice to the findings of
consciousness. Besides the actual stimulations and responses and the memory images of
these, within which lie perforce the organic sensations and responses which make up the "me,"
there accompanies a large part of our conscious experience, indeed all that we call self-
conscious, an inner response to what we may be doing, saying, or thinking. At the back of our
heads we are a large part of the time more or less clearly conscious of our own replies to the
remarks made to others, of innervations which would lead to attitudes and gestures answering
our gestures and attitudes towards others.
The observer who accompanies all our self-conscious conduct is then not the actual "I" who is
responsible for the conduct in propria persona -- he is rather the response which one makes to
his own conduct. The confusion of this response of ours, following upon our social stimulations
of others with the implied subject of our action, is the psychological ground for the assumption
that the self can be directly conscious of itself as acting and acted upon. The actual situation is
this: The self acts with reference to others and is immediately conscious of the objects about it.
In memory it also redintegrates the self acting as well as the others acted upon. But besides
these contents, the action with reference to the others calls out responses in the individual
himself -- there is then another "me" criticizing approving, and suggesting, and consciously
planning, i.e., the reflective self.
It is not to all our conduct toward the objective world that we thus respond. Where we are
intensely preoccupied with the objective world, this accompanying awareness disappears. We
have to recall the experience to become aware that we have been involved as selves, to
produce the self-consciousness which is a constituent part of a large part of our experience. As
I have indicated elsewhere, the mechanism for this reply to our own social stimulation of others
follows as a natural result from the fact that the very sounds, gestures, [p. 377] especially vocal
gestures, which man makes in addressing others, call out or tend to call out responses from
himself. He can not hear himself speak without assuming in a measure the attitude which he
would have assumed if he had been addressed in the same words by others.