§ 10. Self Control. — All the cases of involuntary action which we have discussed in the last section, are cases of deficiency of self-control. Self-Control is control proceeding from the Self as a whole and determining the Self as a whole. The degree in which it exists depends upon the degree in which this or that special tendency can be brought into relation with the concept of the Self and the system of cognitive tendencies which it includes. Failure in self-control may arise from one or both of two conditions. On the one hand, the overpowering intensity of a relatively isolated impulse may prevent the due evolution of the concept of Self even when this is fully formed and organised. On the other hand, the defect may lie in the degree of development which self-consciousness has attained, or in organic conditions, mostly of a pathological kind, which disorganise the Self, and prevent the full development of its normal contents. To quote Dr. Clouston: "The driver may be so weak that he cannot control wellbroken horses, or the horses may be so hardmouthed that no driver can pull them up. Both conditions may arise from purely cerebral disorder. An imbecile or dement, seeing something glittering, appropriates it to himself. The motives that would lead other persons not to do such acts do not operate in such persons. I have known a man steal who said he had no intense longing for the article he appropriated at all, at least consciously, but his will was in abeyance, and he could not resist the ordinary desire of possession common to all human nature."* On this Professor James remarks : "It is not only those technically classed imbeciles and dements who exhibit this promptitude of impulse and tardiness of inhibition. Ask half the common drunkards you know why it is that they fall so often a prey to temptation, and they will say that most of the time they cannot tell. It is a sort of vertigo with them. Their nervous centres have become a sluiceway pathologically unlocked by every passing conception of a bottle and a glass. They do not thirst for the beverage ; the taste of it may even appear repugnant; and they perfectly foresee the morrow's remorse. But when they think of the liquor or see it, they find themselves preparing to drink, and do not stop themselves ; and more than this they cannot say." We have a good example of the inverse case in which the concept of Self is fully organised and easily developed, but finds itself impotent in the face of an abnormally intense impulse, in the case of the man who was possessed by the fixed idea of murdering his mother.

* Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, quoted by James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., pp. 540541. Ibid., p. 541.

The process of ideal construction through which the concept of Self grows, is gradual, and reaches different degrees of perfection in different persons. The more highly systematised and organised it becomes, the more effective it is. Self-Control is greatest in the man whose life is dominated by ideals and general principles of conduct; but this involves a development of conceptual consciousness which is absent in children and savages. We accordingly find that children and savages are to a great extent creatures of impulse; they have comparatively little power of deliberation, so that action tends to follow the conative tendency which is excited and supported by the circumstances of the moment. Remoter considerations are comparatively inoperative. The Self which determines action is predominantly the present Self, not the total Self as ideally represented. Thus the savage wastefully exhausts his present store in riotous indulgence, and is improvident of the future. He cannot be brought to work in a regular and persistent manner. He may be industrious enough for a time in order to gain a little money, or some other object which he happens to covet at the moment; but so soon as his immediate end is attained, he thinks no longer of working, but only of enjoying his gains. He is scarcely capable of pursuing a distant aim, which requires persistent and repeated activity continued for a long time without obvious result. Ends which are at least in part immediately attainable seem to be the only ends which effectively determine his action. For this reason he does not appreciate the value of time. The end he is pursuing at the moment has for him an absolute rather than a relative importance. He does not regard it merely as part of the great business of life which must be subordinated to the whole. He does not feel the necessity of completing the transaction in which he is interested in time to proceed to other matters. Hence he often sorely tries the patience of the civilised European by spending altogether disproportionate time and energy on relatively trivial bargains, etc. Such mottoes as "time is money" do not appeal to the savage mind. The same holds of young children, as we all know. The bird in the hand is to them worth a thousand in the bush.