" Santa Barbara Teachers Library. fittpt* Off Ice, Court llm tOOL MANUM SAS : SOCIAL AND ETHICAL INTERPRETATIONS IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT BY Till: SAME AUTHOR. HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY: Vol. I. SENSES AND INTELLECT. Second Edition. 1891. New York, Holt & Co.; London, Macmil- lans. HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY: Vol. II. FEELING AND WILL. 1892. Same publishers. ELEMENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 1893. Same publishers. MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE CHILD AND THE RACE. New York and London, Macmillans. 1895. Second Reprint of Second Edition, 1897. German Translation, Berlin, Reuther u. Reichard, 1897. French Translation, Paris, F. Alcan, 1897. IN PREPARATION. DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY. Edited (with an international corps of contributors) by J. MARK BALDWIN. New York and London, Macmillans. SOCIAL AND ETHICAL INTERPRETATIONS IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT in Social BY JAMES MARK BALDWIN PROFESSOR IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; CO-EDITOR OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW WORK CROWNED WITH THE GOLD MEDAL OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF DENMARK Santa Barbara Teachers library '( Supt's Office, Court Uo JLo THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO.. LTD. 1897 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1897, Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. XottjooD \9rnt J. 8. Cuihing * Co. Berwick ft Smith Norwood MM. I - \ 257 I, To THE MEMBERS OF THE Princeton psychological FOR THE YEAR 1896-1897 CO PREFACE THIS volume is a continuation of the studies in genetic psychology begun in my Mental Development in the Child and the Race. As was announced in the earlier work, I had intended to publish the volume of ' Interpretations ' under the same general heading of ' Mental Develop- ment ' and to include in it certain educational ' Interpre- tations ' also. It seems best, however, for the sake of unity of treatment in this volume, and also on account of its size, to omit the educational matter for the pres- ent, and also to make this volume quite independent of the former work, except in so far as the natural connec- tion requires somewhat frequent reference to it. This departure from my original plan also enables me to include in Part II. certain chapters which were written with reference to the question set by the Royal Academy of Denmark. 1 I have also endeavoured, in view of the lack in English of a book on Social Psychology which can be used in the universities in connection with courses in psychology, 1 " Is it possible to establish, for the individual isolated in society, rules of conduct drawn entirely from his personal nature; and if such rules are pos- sible, what is their relation to the rules which would be reached from the consideration of society as a whole?" A brief analysis of my essay, drawn up by Professor Hoflcling in the report to the Danish Academy, may be seen in the Comptes Rendus de fAcademie du Danemark. (Reprinted in the Philosophical Review, July, 1897.) vii viii Preface ethics, and social science, to make my essay available for such a purpose. This has led to such expansions some may call them repetitions of the fundamental ideas of the work as seemed necessary to a fairly complete work- ing-out of the social element in connection with each of the greater psychological functions. Part I. is thus made, as far as its topics are concerned, a more or less complete study of social and ethical psychology. Certain of the sections have already been printed, as footnotes of acknowledgment to the journals show. The writers to whom I am most indebted are referred to in locis. I find my opinions in the matter of the social function of imitation lying near to those of M. G. Tarde. The agreement is, however, more a coincidence than a direct connection, as readers of my Mental Develop- ment may remember. I take pleasure in recognizing a more fundamental agreement on many of the main con- clusions of both my volumes with those of my friend, Professor Josiah Royce, whose views in the general field of social psychology, I regret to say, remain still un- published in complete systematic form. The frequent references made to Professor Royce in my text and in the Appendices will show the advantage I have had from his criticisms and counsels. The general knowledge also that he was reaching similar conclusions on many points has given me the sense of social confirmation on which, as readers of my book will see, I put more than customary emphasis. The motto of Book I., the quotation from St. Luke, was suggested to me by my friend and colleague, Presi- Preface ix dent Patton, who preached from it a remarkable sermon his latest baccalaureate discourse in Princeton. In this sermon he made use of the idea of the identity of ego and alter in our thought, much on the lines on which, as I think, the social philosophy of the future will be developed. Besides the thin volume of ' Educational Interpreta- tions ' which I hope to get ready in a reasonable time, I have a more remote intention of some day gathering into another thin volume of ' Biological Interpretations ' the considerations on evolution upon which a more adequate exposition of the principle of Organic Selection l would rest. J. M. B. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, September, 1897. 1 Cf. Appendix A. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION BOOK I THE PERSON PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PART I. THE IMITATIVE PERSON CHAPTER I THE SELF-CONSCIOUS PERSON 7 I. The Dialectic of Personal Growth, 7. 2. The Person as a j Self, 9. 3. The Person as an Ethical Self, 34. CHAPTER II THE SOCIAL PERSON 57 i. Social Heredity, 57. 2. Physical Heredity and the Social Environment, 64. 3. Social Suppression of the Unfit, 71. 4. Social Variations, 82. 5. Social Judgment, 84. 6. Con- ception of the Social Person, 87. PART II. THE INVENTIVE PERSON CHAPTER III INVENTION vs. IMITATION 90 i. The Process of Invention, 91. 2. The Child's Inventions, 97- 3- Selective thinking, I2O. 4. Private Judgment, 123. xi xii Contents CHAPTER IV FACE \i. AIDS TO INVENTION 126 i. language, 128. 2. Play, 139. 3. Art, 147. CHAPTER V THE GENIUS 154 i. The Genius a Variation, 154. 2. The Judgment of the Genius, '59- 3- The Inventions of the Genius, 168. 4. Social and Imitative Selection, 181. PART III. THE PERSON'S EQUIPMENT CHAPTER VI His INSTINCTS AND EMOTIONS 185 i. Instinctive and Reflective Emotion, 185. 2. Hashfulness and V. Modesty, 195. 3. Sympathy, 220. 4. Social Emotion as Such: Personal Opposition, 227. 5. Theory of Mob-Action, 235. 6. Conclusions for Social Theory, 245. < IIAITKR VII His INTELLIGENCE 247 i. Nature of Intelligence, 247. 2. Impersonal Intelligence, 253. 3. Personal Intelligence, 257. 4. Social Intelligence, 282. < HAPTER VIII Hi^ SI-MIMKNTS 294 $ I. The Genesis of Sentiment, 294. 2. Ethical Si-ntiiiu-nt. 297. 3. Social Sentimeht as Such: Publicity, 311. 4. Practical Reason, 320. 5. Religious Sentiment, 327. PART IV. Tm Pi- RAIN'S S\v in>\^ (II MMKR IX His Pmv.vu. SANCIIONS 358 f I. The Sanction of Impulse, 363. 2. The Lower Hedonic 'iction, 368. 3. The Sanction of Desire, 372. 4. The Higher Hedonic Sanction, 392. 5. The Sanction of Right, 394- Contents xiii CHAPTER x PAGE His SOCIAL SANCTIONS : SOCIAL OPPOSITION . ... . . 405 I. The Natural Sanctions, 406. 2. The Pedagogical and Con- ventional Sanctions, 413. 3. The Civil Sanctions, 421. 4. The Ethical and Religious Sanctions, 434. BOOK II SOCIETY PART V. THE PERSON IN ACTION CHAPTER XI THE SOCIAL FORCES 449 i. Distinction of Forces, 451. 2. The Particularizing Social Force, 455. 3. The Generalizing Social Force, 465. PART VI. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION CHAPTER XI 1 SOCIAL MATTER AND PROCESS 475 I. Distinction of Problems, 475. 2. Historical Theories, 478. 3. The Matter of -Social Organization, 487. 4. The Process of Social Organization, 507. CHAPTER XIII SOCIAL PROGRESS 510 i. The Determination of Social Progress, 510. 2. Dialectic of Social Growth, 512. 3. The Direction of Social Progress, 515. 4. Conclusion on the Biological Analogy, 520. PART VII. PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS CHAPTER XIV RULES OF CONDUCT 524 i. Rules in the Sphere of Impulse, 525. 2. Intelligent Rules, 527. 3. Ethical Rules, 532. 4. The Final Conflict, 538 . xiv Contents CHAFFER XV PAGE RETROSPECT: SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 542 APPENDIX A. SOCIAL HEREDITY AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION . . 545 APPENDIX B. ON 'SELECTION' 547 APPENDIX C. THE COSMIC AND THE MORAL 550 APPENDIX D. THE GENESIS OF SOCIALITY 555 APPENDIX E. THK PERSONAL AND SOCIAL SENSE . . .557 APPENDIX F. .\MHH<>i'<>LOGiCAL NOTES 563 APPENDIX G. DARWIN'S Jt M;MENT 567 APPENDIX H. NOTE ON HEGEL 569 INDEX 571 INTRODUCTION IT is my aim, in the present essay, to inquire to what extent the principles of the development of the individual mind apply also to the evolution of society. 1 This thesis being the main one, it naturally falls into two main in- quiries : 2 what are the principles which the individual shows in his mental life, principles of organization, growth, and conduct ? and what additional principles, if any, does society exhibit in its forms of organization, progress, and activity? There are three more or less ' scientific ' 3 methods by which this general problem might be investigated, which I may name in order : FIRST, the Anthropological or Historical method, which aims to discover in the history of society the same prin- ciples as those which individual mental growth shows. Its question is : Does the individual in his progress recapitu- late, in any sense, the progress of society as shown in its history from the earliest forms of organization to the latest ? SECOND, the Sociological or Statistical method, which aims, by analytical and inductive examinations of society, 1 Compare the personal remarks (apropos of the contents of the work) in the Preface. 2 Books I. and II. respectively. 8 That is, in contrast with deductive, speculative, and philosophical in- quiries about society. B I 2 Introduction to find out the principles of its organization and the method of its growth ; the results to be compared with those of descriptive psychology. THIRD, the Genetic method, which has application in two fields of investigation : 1. The psychological development of the individual examined for light upon the social elements and move- ments of his nature, whereby he is able to enter into social organization with his fellows. This may be called the Psychogenetic method. 2. The biological forces and their results in animal life, together with the psychological phenomena of animal life, examined for light upon the antecedents of the social forces and institutions which are human. This may be called the Biogenetic method. These three methods are not strictly distinct, nor are their fields of application entirely separate ; but the de- scription of them may serve to indicate certain conver^ini; paths by which the general problem may be approached. A complete scientific research should include them all. The method of the present essay is the Genetic: the form of that method which inquires into the psychological development of tlie human individual in the earlier stages of liis growth for light upon his social nature, and also upon the social organization in ivhich he bears a part. The evidence presented in this study is therefore, in the main, Psychogenetic ; it is drawn largely from direct observation of children. The main thought which runs through it is the conception of the growth of the child's sense of per- sonality. This gives its title to Book I. The justification of this way of treating the problem must appear, if any- where, in the results. Introduction 3 At the same time, the other methods are not without evi- dent connection with the one here adopted. The anthropo- logical bearings of the genetic data which I employ are frequently indicated in the text. The analytical method is considered, and in a measure employed, in Part VI. The value of the other aspect of the genetic problem, the Biogenetic, is not so great, in my opinion, as is customarily supposed ; this may be seen in the discussions, in locis, of certain biological principles. Two of the short Appendices (A and B) also deal with biological conceptions. The advantage of the psychological genetic method is that it is constantly based upon observed facts and may be controlled by them. Psychological observations of the child fall within the range of positive science ; and their value consists in the possibility of their repeated corrobo- ration. The theoretical inferences of the work are thus made more secure ; and they may be supported, moreover, by a corresponding appeal to the facts of social life for confirmation. BOOK I THE PERSON PUBLIC AND PRIVATE "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." "And who is my neighbour? " Gospel of Luke. PART I THE IMITATIVE PERSON CHAPTER I THE SELF-CONSCIOUS PERSON i. The Dialectic of Personal Growth i. "ONE of the most interesting tendencies of the very young child in its responses to its environment is the ten- dency to recognize differences of personality. It responds to what have been called 'suggestions of personality.' As early as the second month it distinguishes its mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. It learns characteristic methods of holding, taking up, patting, and adapts itself to these personal variations. It is quite a different thing from the child's behaviour toward things which are not persons. I think this is the child's very first step toward a sense of the qualities which distinguish persons. The sense of uncertainty grows stronger and stronger in its dealings with persons. A person stands for a group of experiences quite unstable in its prophetic as it is in its historical meaning. This we may, for brevity of expression, assum- ing it to be first in order of development, call the * pro- jective stage ' in the growth of the child's personal consciousness. " Further observation of children shows that the instru- ment of transition from such a projective to a subjective 7 8 T/u Self-conscious Person ^e of personality is the child's active bodily self, and the method of it is the function of imitation. When the organism is ripe for the enlargement of its active range by new accommodations, then he begins to be dissatis- fied with 'projects,' with contemplation, and starts on his career of imitation. And of course he imitates persons. Further, persons are bodies which move. And among these bodies which move, which have certain projective attributes, a very peculiar and interesting one is his own body. It has connected with it certain intimate features which all others lack strains, stresses, resistances, pains, etc., an inner felt series added to the new imita- tive series. But it is only when a peculiar experience arises which we call effort that there comes that great line leavage in his experience which indicates the rise of volition, and which separates off the series now first really subjective. What has formerly been 'projective' now becomes 'subjective.' This we may call the subjective stage in the growth of the self-notion. It rapidly assimi- lates to itself all the other elements by which the child's own body differs in his experience from other active bodies all the passive inner series of pains, pleasures, strains, etc. Again it is easy to see what now happens. The child's subject sense goes out by a sort of return dia- lectic to illuminate the other persons. The 'project' of the earlier period is now lighted up, claimed, clothed on with the raiment of selfhood, by analogy with the subjec- tive. The subjective becomes ejective ; that is, other people's bodies, says the child to himself, have experiences in them such as mine has. They are also mes; let them be assimilated to my me-copy. This is the third stage; the ejective, or social self, is born. "The 'ego' and the 'alter' are thus born together. Both are crude and unreflective, largely organic. And the two get purified and clarified together by this twofold reaction between project and subject, and between subject and eject. My sense of myself grows by imitation of you, and my sense of yourself grows in terms of my sense of myself. Both ego and alter are thus essentially social ; each is a socius and each is an imitative creation." 1 This give-and-take between the individual and his fel- lows, looked at generally, we may call the Dialectic of Personal Groivtk. It serves as the point of departure for the main positions developed in the following pages ; and the lines of the summary sketch will be filled in as we advance. 2. The Person as a Self 2. The outcome serves to afford a point of departure for the view which we may entertain of the person as he appears to himself in society. If it be true, as much evi- dence goes to show, that what the person thinks as him- self is a pole or terminus at one end of an opposition in the sense of personality generally, and that the other pole or terminus is the thought he has of the other person, the 'alter,' then it is impossible to isolate his thought of himself at any time and say that in thinking of himself he is not 1 Quotation, somewhat condensed and revised, from the author's Mental Development in the Child and the Race, ad ed., p. 335. A position similar to this has been taken by Professor Josiah Royce. Cf. also Avenarius, Der memchl. Weltbegriff, I have indicated in the earlier work (Afent. Devel., P- 339) tne relation of my position to Avenarius' theory of fntrojection. On certain anthropological parallels suggested by Hoffding and Avenarius, see Appendix F. io Tlu Self-conscious Person essentially thinking of the alter also. 1 What he calls him- self now is in large measure an incorporation of elements that, at an earlier period of his thought of personality, he called some one else. The acts now possible to himself, and so used by him to describe himself in thought to him- self, were formerly only possible to the other ; but by imi- tating that other he has brought them over to the opposite pole, and found them applicable, with a richer meaning and a modified value, as true predicates of himself also. If he thinks of himself in any particular past time, he can single out what was then he, as opposed to what has since become he; and the residue, the part of him that has since become he, that was then only thought of if it was thought of as an attribute of personality at all as attaching to some one with whom he was acquainted. For example, last year I thought of my friend \V. as a man who had great skill on the bicycle and who wrote readily on the type- writer ; my sense of his personality included these accom- plishments, in what I have called a ' projective ' way. My sense of myself did not have these elements, except as my thought of my normal capacity to acquire delicate move- ments was comprehensive. But now, this year, I have learned to do both these things. I have taken the ele- ments formerly recognized in W.'s personality, and by imi- tative learning brought them over to myself. I now think of myself as one who rides a ' wheel ' and writes on a 'machine.' But I am able to think of myself thus only as my thought includes, in a way now called 'subjective,' 1 In isolating the thought elements ' in the self, I do not, of course, deny the organic sensation and feeling elements; but for our present purposes the lat- ter may be neglected. I add, in Appendix E, short notices of positions taken by Bradley and Royce. which may serve as an introduction to a more complete view on the psychology of self-consciousness. The Person as a Self n the personal accomplishments of W., and with him of the more or less generalized alter which in this illustration we have taken him to stand for. So the truth we now learn is this : that very many of the particular marks which I now call mine, when I think of myself, have had just this origin. I have first found them in my social environment, and by reason of my social and imitative disposition, have transferred them to myself by trying to act as if they were true of me, and so coming to find out that they are true of me. And further, all the things I hope to learn, to ac- quire, to become, all if I think of them in a way to have any clear thought of my possible future are now, before I acquire them, possible elements of my thought of others, of the social alter, or of what considered generally we may call the 'socius.' But we should also note that what has been said of the one pole of this dialectical relation, the pole of self, is equally true of the other also the pole represented by the other person, the alter. What do I have in mind when I think of him as a person ? Evidently I must construe him, a person, in terms of what I think of myself, the only person whom I know in the intimate way we call 'subjec- tive.' I cannot say that my thought of my friend W. is exhausted by the movements of wheel-riding and typewrit- ing ; nor of any collection of such acts, considered for themselves. Back of it all there is the attribution of the very fact of subjectivity which I have myself. And the subjectivity of him it is just like that of me, to the de- gree to which I have any picture of it at all. I constantly enrich the actions which were at first his alone, and then became mine by imitation of him, with the meaning, the rich subjective value, the interpretation in terms of private t 2 The Self-conscious Person ownership, which my appropriation of them in the first instance from him, has enabled me to make. So my thought of any other man or all other men is, to the richest degree, that which I understand of myself, together with the uncertainties of interpretation which my further knowledge of his acts enables me to conjecture. I think him rational, emotional, volitional, as I am ; 1 and the de- tails of his more special characteristics, as far as I under- stand them at all, I weave out of possible actions of my "\vn, when circumstances call me out in similar ways. But there is always the sense that there is more to under- stand about him ; for, as we have seen, he constantly, by the diversities between us which I do not yet comprehend, sets me new actions to imitate or to avoid in my own growth. So the dialectic may be read thus : my thought of self is in the main, as to its character as a personal self, filled up with my thought of others, distributed variously as indi- viduals ; and my thought of others, as persons, is mainly filled up with myself. In other words, but for certain minor distinctions in the filling, and for certain compelling distinctions between that which is immediate and that which is objective, tltc ego and tlic alter arc to our thought one and tht same thing. 3. I do not care in this connection to track out the dis- tinction between the subjective or immediate and the objective ; nor to ask what it is that sets the bounds in fact to the person. What concerns us is independent of these inquiries, having to do with the question : What is 1 Eren temporary affective experiences tend to be ejected.' When I have * headache I cannot tee a person riding, jumping, etc., without attributing to him the throbbing which such actions would produce in my own head. The Person as a Self 13 in consciousness when one thinks of himself or of another person ? This, it is evident, is a sufficient introduction to a number of questions of high social import ; for we may ask : When a man asserts himself, what is it that he really asserts ? When he sympathizes with another, what exactly is that ' other ' ? And how do all the emotions, and desires, and mental movements of whatever kind which pass through his consciousness involve others who are in social connection with him? I claim, indeed, that it is just this kind of in- quiries that most concern the social theorist just now, and with him the political thinker ; and the vagueness and cross-firing which prevail in some of the discussions of these men are due in great part to inadequate analysis of the psychological concepts which they use. To get such inquiries down to a psychological basis, the first requisite is to be reached in the concept of the per- son. Not the person as we look at him in action, alone, or chiefly ; but the person as he thinks of himself. We con- stantly presume to tell him what his chief end is, what as an individual he most desires, what his selfish nature urges him to, and what self-sacrifices he is willing to make in this circumstance or that. We endeavour to reach a theory of ' value ' based on a calculus of the desire of one individual to gratify his individual wants, multiplied into the number of such individuals. Or we take a group of individuals together as we find them in society and ask how it is that these individuals could have come together. All this with- out so much as consulting the single person psychologi- cally as to the view he has of his own social life, his opportunities, and his obligations ! The average individual would be ' scared ' within an inch of his life if he were for a moment obliged to put up with the kind of existence which 14 The Self-conscious Person such theorists assume him to live ; and he would be para- lyzed into permanent inertia if he had to effect by his conscious efforts what they teach us he works out. Even the later psychological sociologists, as notably M. Tarde, treat ' beliefs ' and ' desires ' as ultimate self-existent things apart from the content of thought to which they are func- tionally attached. 4. To bring our development of the sense of personal- ity, therefore, into view of these questions, let us inquire briefly into one of the main points in the theory of society which recent discussion has tended to formulate. This point is that which concerns the ' interests ' of the individ- ual. What are the interests of the individual, and how do they stand related to the interests of the community, state, social group, in which the individual lives ? 1 Popularly, a man's interests are those aspects of possib^ fortune which are best for him. What is thus best for him is in the main what he wants; but the two classes are not always identical. Yet for the sake of making our point more plain in the sequel, suppose we begin by defin- ing a man's interest as that which he wants, and is willing to put forth some endeavour to obtain. Then let us see how this tends to involve the man's self, and the selves of those who are associated with him. If the analysis given above be true, then what a man thinks of as himself, is in large measure identical with what he thinks of as another, or the others in general. So the ejecting of the thought of ' person,' which, when looked at 1 This discussion of Interests,' which has already been printed (Monist, April, 1897), is inserted here to illustrate the general application of the topic in social theory. It may be turned to again when the reader has read the chap- Suction ' I V The Person as a Self 15 subjectively, he calls 'myself,' into 'another,' this quali- fies that other to be clothed on with all the further predi- cates found to attach to the self. The so-called love of self, it is evident, is such a predicate ; it is a description of the attitude which the man takes to himself ; a sort of reaction of part of his nature upon another part. When he is proud, it is because the qualities by which he repre- sents himself to himself are such that they arouse his approbation. When he thinks, therefore, of the other in terms of the same predicates, he has to react, in some degree, with the same sense of approval. When, likewise, I go farther in thought and say, "being such and such a person, it is my interest to have such or such a fate," I must perforce that is, by the very same mental movement which gives the outcome in my own case attribute to the other the same deserts and the same fate. Viewed psychologically, we should say that the predicate is a function of the content which we call self, and that, so far as the content is the same, the predicate must be the same. But this sense of equal interest, desert, because of identical position in the evolution of selves, what is this but, in the abstract, the sense of justice, and in the concrete, the feeling of sympathy with the other ? The very concept of interests, when one considers it with reference to himself, necessarily involves others, therefore, on very much the same footing as oneself. One's inter- ests, the things he wants in life, are the things which, by the very same thought, he allows others, also, the right to want ; and if he insists upon the gratification of his own wants at the expense of the legitimate wants of the ' other,' then he in so far does violence to his sympathies and to his sense of justice. And this in turn must impair 1 6 The Self-conscious Person his satisfaction. For the very gratification of himself thus secured must, if it be accompanied with any reflection at all, involve the sense of the other's gratification also ; and since this conflicts with the fact, a degree of discomfort must normally arise in mind varying with the develop- ment which the self has attained in the dialectical process described above. 5. Or suppose we look at the case a little differently. Let us say that the sense of self always involves the sense of the other. And this sense of the other is but that of another ' self,' where the word ' self ' is equivalent to myself, and the meaning of the word ' other ' is that which prevents it from being myself. Now my point is that whatever I fancy, hope, fear, desire for self in general, with no quali- fication as to which self it is, remains the same whether afterwards I do qualify it by the word ' my ' or by the word 'your.' Psychologically there is a great mass of motor attitudes and reactive expressions, felt in consciousness as emotion and desire, which are common to the self-thought everywhere. 6. This is true just in so far as there is a certain typical other self whose relation to me has been that of the give- and-take by which the whole development of a sense of self of any kind has been made possible. And we find certain distinctions at different stages of the development which serve to throw the general idea of the social relation- ship into clearer light. Let us look at the life of the child with especial refer- ence to his attitudes to those around him ; taking the most common case, that of a child in a family of children. We find that such a child shows, in the very first stages of bis sense of himself as a being of rights, duties, etc., a The Person as a Self I 7 very imitative nature. He is mainly occupied with the business of learning about himself, other people, and nat- ure. He imitates everything, being a veritable copying- machine. He spends the time not given to imitating others very largely in practising in his games what he has picked up by his imitations, and in the exploiting of these accomplishments. His two dominating characteristics are a certain slavishness, on the one hand, in following all examples set around him ; and then, on the other hand, a certain bold aggressiveness, inventiveness, a showing- off, in the use he makes of the things he learns. But it does not take very extended observation to con- vince us that this difference in his attitudes is not a con- tradiction : that the attitudes themselves really terminate upon different thoughts of self. The child imitates his elders, not from choice, but from his need of adaptation to the social environment ; for it is his elders who know more than he does, and who act in more complex ways. But he is less often aggressive toward his elders ; that is, toward those who have the character of command, direc- tion, and authority over him. His aggressions are directed mainly toward his brothers and sisters ; and even as toward them, he shows very striking discriminative selec- tion of those upon whom it is safe to aggress. In short, it is plain that the difference in attitude really indicates differences in his thought, corresponding to differences in the elements of the child's social environment. We may suppose the persons about him divided roughly into two classes : those from whom he learns, and those on whom he practises ; and then we see that his actions are ac- counted for as adaptations toward these, in his personal development. jg T/tt- Self-conscious Person The facts covered by this distinction probably the first social distinction in the child's career are very interesting. The stern father of the family is at the extreme end of the class he reveres with a shading of fear. The little brother and sister stand at the other extreme ; they are the fitting instruments of his aggression, the practice of his strength, the assertion of his agency and importance. The mother usually stands midway, it seems, serving to unite the two aspects of personality in the youngster's mind. And it is pretty clear, when the case is closely studied, that the child has, as it were, two thoughts of his mother two mothers, according as she on occasion falls into one or the other of these classes. !!< k-.unx when, in what circumstances, she will suffer him to assert himself, and when she will require him to be docile and teachable. And although she is for the most part a teacher and example, yet on occasion he takes liber- >vith the teacher. Now what does this mean, this sorting out, so to speak, of the persons of the family ? It means a great deal when looked at in the light of the ' dialectical movement ' in the development of personality. And I may state my inter- pretation of it at the outset. 7. The child's sense of himself is, as we have seen, one pole of a relation ; and which pole it is to be, depends on the particular relation which the other pole, over which the child has no control, calls on it to be. If the other person involved presents uncertain, ominous, dominating, instructive features, or novel imitative features, then the self is ' subject ' over against what is ' projective.' He recog- nizes new elements of personal suggestion not yet accom- modated to. His consciousness is j n the learning attitude ; The Person as a Self 19 he imitates, he serves, he trembles, he is a slave. But on the other hand, there are persons to whom his attitude has a right to be different. In the case of these the dia- lectic has gone further. He has mastered all their features, he can do himself what they do, he anticipates no new developments in his intercourse with them; so he 'ejects' them, as the psychological expression is : for an ' eject ' is a person whose consciousness has only those elements in it which the individual who thinks of that consciousness is able, out of his own store of experience, to read into it. It is ejective to him, for he makes it what he will, in a sense. Now this is what the brothers and sisters, notably the younger ones, are to our youthful hero. They are his 'ejects'; he knows them by heart, they have no thoughts, they do no deeds, which he could not have read into them by anticipation. So he despises them, practises his supe- rior activities on them, tramples them under foot. 8. Now at this earliest stage in his unconscious classifi- cation of the elements of his personal world, it is clear that any attempt to describe the child's interests the things which he wants, as we have agreed to define 'interests' as selfish, generous, or as falling in any cate- gory of developed social significance, is quite beside the mark. If we say that to be selfish is to try to get all the personal gratification possible, we find that he does this only part of the time ; and even on these occasions, not because he has any conscious preference for that style of conduct, but merely because his consciousness is then filled with the particular forms of personal relationship the presence of his little sister, etc. which normally issue in the more habitual actions which are termed ' aggressive ' in our social terminology. His action is only 2O Tlie Self-conscious Person the motor side of a certain collection of elements. He acts that way, then, simply because it is natural for him to practise the functions which he has found useful. We see that it is natural ; and on the basis of its naturalness, we are prone to call him selfish by nature. 1 But that this is arguing beyond our facts really argu- ing on the strength of the psychological ignorance of our hearers, and our own is clear when we turn the child about and bring him into the presence of the other class of persons to whom we have seen him taking up a special attitude. We have but to observe him in the presence of his father, usually, or of some one else whom he habit- ually imitates and from whom he learns the lessons of life, to find out that he is just as pre-eminently social, docile, accommodating, centred-outvvardly, so to speak, as before we considered him unsocial, aggressive, and self-centred. If we saw him only in these latter circumstances, we should say possibly that he was by nature altruistic, most responsive to generous suggestion, teachable in the ex- treme. But here the limitation is the same as in the for- mer case. He is not altruistic in any high social sense, nor consciously yielding to suggestions of response which require the repression of his selfishness. As a matter of fact, he is simply acting himself out ; and in just the same natural way as on the occasion of his apparent selfishness. But it is now a different self which is acting itself out. The self is now at the receptive pole. It is made up of elements which are inadequate to a translation of the alter at the other pole of the relationship now established. 1 A good instance of this inadequacy of statement from a psychological point of view, is seen in Professor J. Sully's grave discussion as to whether infants are naturally immoral or nut (Studies of Childhood, Chap. VII.). The Person as a Self 21 The child's sense of self is now not that of a relatively completed self in relation to the alter before him ; it was that in the earlier case, and the aggression of which he was then guilty showed as much. Now he feels his lack of adequate means of response to the personality before him. He cannot anticipate what the father will do next, how long approbation will smile upon him, what the reasons are for the changes in the alter-personality. So it is but to state a psychological truism to say that his conduct will be different in this case. Yet from the fact that the self of this social state is also in a measure a regular pole of the dialectic of personal growth, it often tempts the observer to classify the whole child, on the strength of this one attitude, in some one category of social and political description. 9. I do not see, in short, how the personality of this child can be expressed in any but social terms ; nor how, on the other hand, social terms can get any content of value but from the understanding of the developing individual. This is a circle of definition, of course ; and that is just my point. On the one hand, we can get no doctrine of society but by getting the psychology of the 'socius' with all his natural history ; and on the other hand, we can get no true view of the 'socius' at any time without describing the social conditions under which he normally lives, with the history of their action and reaction upon him. Or to put the outcome in the terms of the restric- tion which we have imposed upon ourselves, the only way to get a solid basis for social theory based upon human want or desire, is to work out first a descriptive and genetic psychology of desire in its social aspects ; and on the other hand, the only way to get an adequate psy- 22 The Self-conscious Person chological view of the rise and development of desire in its social aspects, is by a patient tracing of the conditions of social environment in which the child and the race have lived and which they have grown up to reflect. 10. But the observation of the child shows us that we may carry our discrimination of his personal attitudes far- ther along the same lines. We have found him classifying his companions and associates by the shadings of con- duct which his spontaneous adaptations of himself show; yielding to some and studying them mainly by imitation, abusing others and asserting himself against them aggres- sively. This distinction gets a wider development as his experience goes on accumulating. As was hinted in the case of his attitude to his mother, one person may come to have for him the force of several, or of both of the two great classes of persons. Sometimes he tyrannizes over his mother and finds her helpless ; at other times he finds her far from submitting to tyranny, and then he takes the r61e of learner and obedient boy. Now the further advance which he makes in the general sense of the social situation as a whole, is in the line of carrying the same adaptability of attitude into his relation to each of the persons whom he knows. Just as he himself is sometimes one person and again another, sometimes the learner, the altruist, the unselfish pupil, and then again the egoist, the selfish aggressor ; so he continues the dialectical process by making this also 'ejective' to him. He reads the same possibility of personal variation back into the alter also. He comes to say to himself in effect : he, my father, has his moods just as I have. He, no less than I, cannot be adequately considered all-suffering or all-conquering. Sometimes he also is at one pole of the self-dialectic, The Person as a Self 23 sometimes at the other. And so is my mother, and my brother and sister, as they grow older, indeed, so are all men. So it then becomes his business not to classify persons, but to classify actions. He sees that any person may, with some few exceptions, act in either way : any person may be his teacher or his slave, on occasion. So his next step in social adaptation is his adaptation to occasions ; to the groups of social conditions in which one or the other class of actions may be anticipated from people generally. And he makes great rough classes in which to put his ' ejects ' - the read-out personalities about him accord- ing to his expectations of treatment from them. He learns the signs of wrath, of good humour, of sorrow ; of joy, hope, love, jealousy ; giving them the added interpretation all the time which his own imitation of them enables him to make by realizing what they mean in his own experi- ence. And so he gets himself equipped with that extraor- dinary facility of transition from one attitude to another in his responses to those about him, which all who are familiar with children will have remarked. ii. Now all these changes have meaning only as we realize the fact of the social dialectic, which is the same through it all. There are changes of attitude simply and only because, as the psychologist would express it, there are changes in the content of his sense of self. In more popular terms : he changes his attitude in each case be- cause the thing called another, the alter, changes. His father is his object ; and the object is the 'father,' as the child thinks him, on this occasion and under these circum- stances, right out of his own consciousness. The father- thought is a part of the child's present social situation ; 24 The Self -conscious Person and this situation in the child's mind issues in the attitude which is appropriate to it. If it be the father in wrath, the situation produces such a father out of the child's available social thought-material ; and the presence of the combination in the child's mind itself issues in the docile, fearful attitude. But if it then turn into the jovial father, the child does not then himself set about reversing his attitude. No, the father-thought is now a different father- thought, and of itself issues in the child's attitude of play- ful aggression, rebellion, or disobedience. The growing child is able to think of self in varying terms as varying social situations impress themselves upon him ; so these varying thoughts of self, when made real in the persons of others, call out, by the regular process of motor discharge, each its own appropriate attitude. But see, in this more subtle give-and-take of elements for the building up of the social sense, how inextricably interwoven the ego and the alter really are! The develop- ment of the child's personality could not go on at all with- out the constant modification of his sense of himself by suggestions from others. So he himself, at every stage, is really in part some one else, even in his own thought of himself. And then the attempt to get the alter stript from elements contributed directly from his present thought of himself is equally futile. He thinks of the other, the alter, as his socins, just as he thinks of himself as the other's socius : and the only thing that remains more or less stable, throughout the whole growth, is the fact that there is a growing sense of self which includes both terms, the ego and the alter. In short, the real self is the bipolar self, the social self, the socius. The Person as a Self 25 12. If we think it worth while again to raise the question as to what such a self pursues when, as we say, he identifies his interests with his wants, the answer is just as before. The growing subtlety of the dialectical process has not changed the values which the elements represent to the child. What he wants in each circum- stance is expressed by his attitude in that circumstance. 'It changes with change of circumstance. He is now a creature of burning self-assertion, eager to 'kill and destroy in all God's holy mountain' ; and presto ! change, he is now the 'lion lying down beside the lamb.' His wants are not at all consistent. They are in every case the outcome of the social situation ; and it is absurd to endeavour to express the entire body of his wants as a fixed quantity under such a term of description as 'selfish,' or 'generous,' or other, which has reference to one class only of the varied situa- tions of his life. So far, therefore, in our search for a definition of the interests of the individual, in relation to his social envi- ronment, we find a certain outcome. His wants are a function of the social situation as a whole. The social influences which are working in upon him are potent to modify his wants, no less than are the innate tendencies of his personal nature to issue in such wants. The char- acter which he shows actively at any time is due to these two factors in union. One of them is no more himself than the other. He is the outcome of ' habit ' and ' sug- gestion,' as psychology would say in its desire to express everything by single words. Social suggestion is the sum of the social influences which he takes in and incorporates in himself when he is in the receptive, imitative, attitude 26 The Self-conscious Person to the alter; 1 habit is the body of formed material, already cast in the mould of a self, which he brings up for self- assertion and aggression, when he stands at the other pole of the relation to the alter, and exhibits himself as a bully, a tyrant, or at least, as master of his own conduct. Of course his personal hereditary characteristics are on this latter side in so far as they are of an anti-social sort. And the social unit of desire, as far as the individual is taken as the measure of it, in any society, is the individual's rela- tively fixed conduct, considered as reflecting his interpre- tation of the current social modes of life. 13. It is easy to discern in the behaviour of the child, from about five years old, the blending of these two in- fluences. Two children in the same family may differ possibly by all the width of the distinction current in psychology by the terms 'sensory versus motor' in their types or dispositions ; and yet we may see in them the influence of the common environment. One acts at once on the example of the father ; the other reflects upon it, seems to understand it, and then finally acts upon what he thinks it means. The motor child learns by acting; the sensory child learns and tests his learning by subse- quent action. But both end by getting the father's essen- tial conduct learned. Both modify the thought of self by the new elements drawn from the father ; and act out the new self thus created ; but each shows the elements dif- ferently interpreted in a synthesis with the character which he already had. Or take the same process of incorporating elements of 1 Guyau makes the interesting remark that even though we were purely egoistic we should still learn to love, simply through response to the appear- ance of love in others. The Person as a Self 27 social suggestion as they are absorbed respectively by a boy and a girl of about the same age. The difference of sex is a real and fundamental difference, on the side of what is called 'endowment ' ; so we should expect that the same social suggestions given the two would be taken up differently by them, and show different interpretations when the child of one sex or the other comes to act upon them. The boy is generally more aggressive, more prone to fall into the self-pole of high confidence in his own abil- ities. We find him refusing certain forms of suggestion say those coming from a female nurse which the little girl readily responds to. Furthermore, the boy is capa- ble, just for the same reason, of standing up to the rougher elements of his social milieu which only frighten and paralyze his sister. And when the same suggestion is given to the boy and girl together, the former is likely to use it wherewith to exercise himself upon animals, etc., while the girl is more likely to use the new act strictly in an imitative way, repeating the actual conduct of others. 1 But apart from the attempt to reduce the forms of active interpretation to general classes, it is enough here to point out the extraordinary variety which the same suggestions take on in the active interpretations by differ- ent children ; and to point out with it the need of recog- nizing the fact that in this interpretation by the child there is always the fusion of the old self with the new elements coming in from the selves external to it. Every conscious interpretation of human action is, I think, essen- tially of this kind. We think the deeds of others as we bring ourselves up to the performance of similar deeds ; 1 Of course, we can only say ' more likely ' in any single instance, and in the Other distinctions betsveen boys and girls as well. 28 The Self-conscious J'crson and we do the deeds of others only as we ourselves are able to think them. In the case of the young child in the family, we may often tell how far he is learning cor- rectly ; also the particular alter from whom he has taken his lesson. But in the larger social whole of adult life both elements are so complex the solidified self of the individual's history is so fixed, and the social suggestions of the community are so varied and conflicting that the outcome of the fusion, in a particular instance, is a thing which no man can prophesy. 14. So much for the individual child and his growing social personality. We see in a measure what his inter- ests are ; that is, what elements go to make his interests up. Let us now turn to the rest of the family in which he lives and briefly state the same inquiry in respect to them, thus carrying one step further the growth of the social self. Waiving the inquiry into the interests of the family group as a whole, that is, the question of objective inter- ests apart from actual want or desire (as we did in the earlier case), our question is now about this : What can be said of the wants of the other individuals of the family in which the young hero, whose life we have so far described, and exploits himself? This seems to be answered, certainly in part, by the consideration that they have each been through the same process of growth in securing the notion of self, both the ego-self and the alter-self, that he ich has been a child. Each has imitated some persons and assaulted others. So, of course, of the other children in the family ; for they are the very specimens of the alter which have furnished to the hero his 'socii* all the way through. So we have only to make them one The Person as a Self 29 by one hero in turn to see that then all the others be- come 'socii'; and the group development replaces the in- dividual development. Even the parents are in great measure capable of the same interpretation ; since they have furnished the largest amount of personal suggestion to all the children : and the children, in imitating one another, aggressing upon one another, etc., are really perpetuating the features of social life which characterize the parents' lives. No family, of course, lives in such iso- lation as to be in any sense obliged to support itself upon its own social stock from one generation to another; and there is the further modifying influence spoken of above of the peculiar interpretations given to his social sug- gestions by each child. 1 But apart from the personal form in which the family suggestions are worked over by each child, we may say that the material of the social life of the family is largely common stock for all the mem- bers of the family. This means that the alter to each ego is largely common to them all ; and that what has been said of the wants of the ego being not egoistic in the selfish sense, nor gener- ous in the altruistic sense, but general in the social sense, holds of the family group as a whole. What each child wants for himself, he wants more or less consciously for each member of his family. While he may assault his brother, viewing him as an alter to practise on in certain circumstances, how soon he turns in his defence in the presence of the alter foreign to them both, when the larger social ego of both swells within his breast ! What boy among boys, what school-fellow among his companions, 1 The degree of ' originality,' or ' invention,' which each child shows. 30 The Self-conscious Person what Rob Roy surrounded by the clan has not felt the socius, the common self of the group, come in to drive out the narrower ego of his relatively private life within the group ? This is not to say that the interests of the group may not be more clearly seen by one member than by others, nor that direct conflicts may not arise in which some one ego will refuse to yield to the demands of the socius of the group. Those things may well be, and are. To say the contrary would be to say that the development of all the individuals was equal. For if each has his ego and his alter only by the assimilation of suggestions, then the amount of assimilation, of progressive learning of the possibilities and relationships of conduct, must indicate what the sense of social good is to each. His insistence on his interpretation, however, is no more egoistic and selfish than is the insistence by the other members of the family on a different line of conduct. His double self, giving the socius, may be in advance of theirs or behind, but it arises in just the same way ; and it is just his social nature which may compel him to fight for what seems to be a private and selfish interest. Apart from the apparent exceptions not really such now noted, we may say, therefore, that the interests of the family group are reflected in the wants of each member of the group. Hatred of society, in this primitive form of society, is pathological, if indeed it be possible. Nothing but an upheaval of the foundations of personality can eradi- cate the sense of social solidarity in every child in a family. And the ultimate sanction for family life and its only per- manent safeguard is here. No legal provisions could have originated the family, no personal conventions advanced it, nor can it be endangered by foes from without. Nothing The Person as a Self 31 but the kind of suggestion in education which would re- place the sort of socius represented in the family, by another sort, through the same process of identification of the self with its alter all the way through the history of the growth of personality, could affect it materially one way or the other. 1 15. The family is, of course, the first place in which the child finds food for his own personal assimilation ; but he does not long limit himself to the family diet. Nor is he from his early months entirely shut up to suggestions from within the family circle. His nurse comes in to stand as a member of his social company, and often the most im- portant member from the point of view of the regularity and intimate character of her ministrations. She is part of the family to all intents and purposes. And other children from abroad who come often or at critical times to play, etc., are also 'in it.' Then again certain actual members of the home circle may see the child so seldom or in such a passing way that they practically are not, as far as the child's personal growth is concerned. So while the family is the theatre of this first stage of his growth, it still represents" a rather flexible set of personal influences. 1 Moreover, it is just this fact of identity of personal and family interests which is responsible for the rise of the family considered from an evolution point of view. Animal families, if they are to survive as families, must be made up of individuals having ingrained in their instinctive life the social qualities which make the animal's own struggle for existence at once also a struggle for the existence of the family group as such; just as the child, in his personal growth, must become a person by becoming a socius. To separate the two in the child is to annihilate the individual person : just so to eradicate the family instinct in the animal is to destroy his private chance for survival, or if not that, at least to prevent the raising, and perhaps the very birth, of a second generation. The child in getting to be a person uses social means to that end in his life-history; and the animal in getting to be a species by natu- ral selection in race-history survives by his use of the same means. 32 The Self-conscious Person And his circle grows as he comes to have other rela- tionships than those of his immediate and domestic life. When he begins to go to the kindergarten or school, the teacher in the first instance, then the pupils beside him there, or some of them, come to bear on his life in the same way that his family companions do. So gradually he widens out the sphere of the exploitation of his two selves the receptive self, and no less, the aggressive self. In all the stretch of early childhood, pet animals, dolls, toys, etc., also play a part, especially as giving him now and then a more or less complete alter on which to wreak the performance of the new acts recently learned. And as he grows a little older, and the sense of personal agency arises to play its great part in the development of his ac- tivities, all mechanical tools, contrivances, building-blocks, sliced animals, etc., are valuable aids to the exercise of his understanding of the powers of himself and of others. In this expansion of his interests and with it, his en- larging sense of the sphere of personality realized in him- self and in others, gradual as it is we may mark off certain dividing lines. We may always say, no matter what the details of the boy's daily life are, that there is a circle within which his socius resides, understanding socius as we have above. His socius to repeat is the higher sense of commonalty, personal implication, mutual inter- est, which social intercourse arouses in him. This is always alive when events occur which involve persons in a larger or smaller circumference drawn about him. He has the sense of a socius, for example, when his own school is brought into rivalry with the school around the corner. A fellow-member of his own school may be bullied in the school ; that is an occurrence having only a The Person as a Self 33 one-sided importance in the economy of the school. The bullying may be deserved. At any rate, his intra-social sense gives the other and older boy in the school the right to bully the younger, though the younger be himself. He is willing even to 'fag' in his own school. All this is a part of the peculiar development which his socius has had in its internal progress. But let the bullying be done by a boy from the other school, however just it be and however powerless he be to prevent it, he is in arms at once. The other school is outside the circumference of his present social circle. But a little later we find that we may draw a wider line. Let him come into some sort of relationship with the street-boys who represent no school at all ; and let these strangers attempt to bully his enemies of the other school around the corner, and observe how the interests of the rival school at once become his own. His general school- socius is now active. And it includes all boys who go to school. And it would be only a matter of detail inter- esting, it is true to follow our little hero in the develop- ment of his socius into the broader fields of universal human interest ; that is, if he be a boy who ever does get interests which may be called universal. That, however, may wait until we are better prepared to estimate those interests ; for the present, we may try to understand the case in the narrower circles of observation. And before we pass from the family circle, before the boy gets out of his early imitative stage of self-develop- ment, we find another incident of his growth which is to him of untold importance. I refer to the rise and develop- ment of his ethical sense. What shall we say of this, as to its origin and as to its meaning in the social life ? D 34 The Self-conscious Person 3. The Person as an Ethical Self 1 1 6. Looking back over the path we have already travelled, we see the two poles of the dialectic now familiar to us, standing prominently out : the child has, on one hand, a self which he ejects into the alter. This is the solidified mass of personal material which he has worked into a systematic whole by his series of acts. When he thinks of himself, this is very largely what his consciousness is filled with. Let us now call this the 'self of habit,' or the 'habitual self,' terms which are common and which carry their ordinary meaning. But, on the other hand, we have found that the child has another self : the self that learns, that imitates, that accommodates to new suggestions from persons in the family and elsewhere. It is this self that is in part yet 'projective,' unfinished, constantly being modified by the influences outside, and, in turn, passing the new things learned over to the self of habit. Let us call this, for reasons also evident from the common significance of the term, the 'accommodating self.' Not that the child has at any time two distinct thoughts of himself existing side by side, that is not true, but that his one thought of self at any time is at one or the other pole, is a self of habit or a self of ac- commodation. Which it is to be, depends upon what kind of an alter is then at the other pole. But I trust this is now clear. It is a further result that if we continue to ask at any time for a complete notion from outside of that boy's self, we cannot say that either the self of habit or the self of 1 The substance of this paragraph has been printed in the Philosophical Review, May, 1897. T/ie Person as an Ethical Self 35 accommodation adequately expresses it. The only ade- quate expression of the boy is that which acquaints us with the whole dialectic of his progress, a dialectic which comprehends both these selves and the alter personalities which are progressive functions of his thoughts of him- self ; that is, with the self of all the rich social relation- ships, or the ' socius! It seems then a natural question to ask, whether the boy comes to have any sense of just this inadequacy of his thought of self when he is thinking of himself in either way, either in the way of the habitual or of the accommodating self. In other words, does he go on to reflect upon the 'socius,' as a larger bond of union to the different private thoughts of himself ? * This is really the question of the evolution of the ethical sense put in closer psychological terms ; and it may be worth while to see to what ethical conclusions this line of distinctions would lead. This conclusion has been anticipated in the following quotation from the work already mentioned. 2 17. "Whether obedience comes by suggestion or by punishment, it has this genetic value : it leads to another refinement in the sense of self. . . . The child finds himself stimulated constantly to deny his impulses, his desires, even his irregular sympathies, by conforming to the will of another. This other represents a regular, systematic, unflinching, but reasonable personality still a person, but a very different person from the child's own. In the analysis of 'personality suggestion,' we found this stage of the child's apprehension of persons ; his sense of the regularity of personal character in the 1 We saw that he has a sense of it, in his esprit-de-corps. 2 Mental Development, pp. 334 f., somewhat revised and condensed. 36 The Self-conscious Person midst of the capriciousness that before this stood out in contrast to the regularity of mechanical movement in things. There are extremes of indulgence, the child learns, which even the grandmother does not permit ; there are extremes of severity from which even the cruel father draws back. Here, in this dawning sense of the larger limits which set barriers to personal freedom, is the ' copy ' forming which is his personal authority, or law. It is ' projective ' because he cannot understand it, cannot anticipate it, cannot find it in himself. And it is only by imitation that he is to reproduce it, and so arrive at a knowledge of what he is to understand it to be. So it is a 'copy for imitation.' It is its aim so may the child say to himself and should be mine, if I am awake to it, to have me obey it, act like it, think like it, be like it in all respects. It is not I, but I am to become it. Here is my ideal self, my final pattern, my ' ought ' set before me. My parents and teachers are good be- cause, with all their differences from one another, they yet seem to be alike in their acquiescence in this law. Only in so far as I get into the habit of being and doing like them in reference to it, get my character moulded into conformity with it, only so far am I good. And so, like all other imitative functions, it teaches its lesson only by stimulating to action. I must succeed in doing he finds out, as he grows older and begins to reflect upon right and wrong if I would understand. But as I thus progress in doing, I forever find new patterns set for me ; and so my ethical insight must always find its profoundest expression in that yearning which anticipates but does not overtake the ideal. " My sense of moral ideal, therefore, is my sense of a The Person as an Ethical Self 37 possible perfect, regular will taken over in me, in which the personal and the social self my habits and my social calls are brought completely into harmony ; the sense of obligation in me, in each case, is the sense of the actual discrepancies in my various thoughts of self, as my actions and tendencies give rise to them." 1 1 8. Perhaps no more direct way to bring home the bearing of this present line of distinctions can be found than to cite in illustration one of the familiar social situa- tions which are ethically embarrassing in practical life. I refer to the problem of charitable relief. The dilemma of the benevolent man when a needy tramp comes to his door in a region where there are no organized agencies to investigate the status of individuals of the pauper class, the dilemma brought upon him by the prompt- ings of his sympathy, on the one hand, and the sense of his duty to society which only the refusal to help the man will fulfil, on the other hand, this dilemma, which on a larger scale is one of the critical dilemmas of all social endeavour, may be translated directly into the terms of our psychological analysis. We may say that Mr. A has two possible attitudes or courses of conduct before him. And the two are what they are according as he thinks of the tramp in one way or the other. If he thinks of him as an unfortunate, deserving man, possibly hungry, or maimed beyond possibility of self-support, then there is an alter which arouses his ' accommodating ' self, his sympathetic impulses, his desire to make an exception in this case. 1 The obligation side is genetically the motor side, as readers of the book cited may possibly recall, since, as I believe, the sense of the general is always a motor or attitude sense. But it is not necessary to develop this here. Cf. Sect. 29, note 2, and Sects. 186-188. 38 The Self-conscious Person But when he thinks of the man under the ordinary condi- tions of the profession of 'tramping,' as a worthless creat- ure of drink, who will continue to burden the community and persuade others to do the same, as long as free food or lodging is given him, or money without work, then he has before him quite a different alter ; one that calls out his habitual, aggressive self. His dilemma, therefore, is really due to the shifting of the poles of his inner dialectic. Suppose he be a man of benevolence only, or on the con- trary, a man with no willingness to take trouble for the general good ; then he acts at once on the first of the thoughts of self he has no dilemma. So, on the other hand, if he be very rational in his methods of thought, or very much impressed with the dangers of the tramp tribe, or very impecunious and willing to make law a cloak for private selfishness in any of these cases he acts promptly in terms of the habitual self ; then also he finds no dilemma. So the very fact of the embarrassment, if it arise, is witness to the//O The Self-conscious Person to say that little brother is in some way not a person, that is all. So we constantly have to explain to our children 'the dollie cannot feel,' 'the leather elephant cannot eat,' 'the woolly dog need not be beaten when he gets in the way.' "These things," in short, we say to our children, " are not selves ; they have the shapes of possible selves, it may be, and they have so far served as convenient alters for you to practise on, but they need not be ex- pected to take up with you the responsibilities of family life." So, once born in the fire and smoke of personal friction, the socius lives in the child, a presence of which he can never rid himself. It is the germ of the ideals of life, the measure of the life to come, both in this world and in the next ; for it is this self that the child thereafter pur- sues in all his development, making it his only to find that it is further beyond him. He is "ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." 25. Taking up the sense of morality, therefore, the sense that we mean when we use the word ' ought,' we now have it. Let the child continue to act by the rule of either of his former partial selves, the private habitual self or the accommodating capricious self of impulse and sympathy, and this new ideal of a self, a self that ful- fils law, comes up to call him to account. My father, says the child, knows and would say ' what ' and ' how ' ; and later, when the father-self has proved not to know all 4 whats ' and all ' hows,' then my teacher, my book, my in- spired writer, my God, knows 'what' and 'how' still. In so far as I have learned from him, I also know ; and this I expect you, my brother, my friend, my alter, to know too, for our common life together. And the sense of this my The Person as an' Ethical Self 51 7 self of conformity to what he toaches and would have me do this is, once for all, my conscience. We do not need to develop in this place a complete theory of the adult conscience ; that would be outside our topic. But no account of the development of the sense of self, or of the social conditions under which the sense of self arises and grows, as the later developments of our work go on to depict them, would be adequate which left out this highest reach of the child's constructiveness. We are wont to think that we can draw lines in the attain- ments of mind, interpret so far and leave the rest over ; but the surging activities of stimulation and response pass right over our boundary lines, and we find the germs of the higher impregnating the lower stages. The child, when once this sense of* a self which is not but ought to \ be, comes to him, does everything under its law whether his action conform to what he understands of it or whether he disobey and offend it. He is henceforth never inno- /) cent with the innocence of neutrality. He must think of *" the better with sorrow if he choose the worse, and of the worse with joy if he choose the better ; and when he ; makes his act only in response to the measure of good V which he sees, taking a step in the dark, still there is with (^ him the necessary conviction of a self that he groped for, did not find, a law behind the chaos of his struggle. 26. It is enough, in this connection, that one or two Ctruths regarding the nature of this ethical self should QDemain in mind. It is, first of all, a slow social attainment on the part of the child. He gets it only by getting cer- tain other thoughts of self first. Then it takes on various ^ forms, each held to only to be superseded in turn by some- ," thing higher and richer. The obligation to obey it is also 52 The Self-conscious Person slow in its rise. It is a function of the self this self, the socius just as the tendency to yield to the behests of habit or of sympathy are simply functions, the motor side of their respective contents. The ' ought ' comes right up out of the 'must.' Transfer the self to be obeyed from the environment to the inner throne, make it an ego instead of an alter, and its authority is not a whit changed in nature. Something of its executive compulsion is gone; it is one of the very intimate differences between an ego and an alter, that the ego is its own impulsion while the alter brings compulsion ; and as the alter aspect of the new self becomes more and more adequately assimilated, this difference grows more emphatic. The developed ethical sense needs less and less to appeal to an alter self, an authority, a holy oracle, to sanction the ought of con- science ; it gets itself more and more promptly executed by its own inner impulsion. A history of the great world- religions, or of the inner form of their deities, might be written on the basis of this movement in the form of the ethical self, which also implicates the social Zeitgeist^ 27. And a second point to be borne in mind : that as the socius expands in the mind of the child, there is the constant tendency to make it real to eject it in some concrete form in the social group. The father, mother, nurse, are apt to be the first embodiment of social law, and their conduct, interpreted through obedience and imitation, the first ethical standard. And as the child finds one man or woman inadequate to the growing complications of the case, other concrete selves are erected in the same way. The popular voice, the literature of the period, the king, 1 Compare what is said on the ' Religious Sanctions,' Chap. X., 4. The Person as an Ethical Self 53 the state, the church, all these are choice repositories of the ejected ethical self. Public opinion is our modern expression for the purely social form of this spirit. 28. Then a third point : we may ask what the law is which we find this self embodying. And we get a two- fold answer. Most comprehensively it may be said that the law is in one sense always the realized self of some- body. Apart from a self it can be nothing, because nobody would understand it. It must come out of somebody's apprehension of the social situation and the requirements of the case. The parents themselves are usually the source of family law over against the rest of the family. But that they are held to the actual socius to the relationships existing between them and the others is seen in any attempts they make to transcend these relationships. Sup- pose that the father commands each of the family to dance the highland fling and then to write a book. Whether the first of these commands be obeyed, would depend upon whether he has had a right to include in his sense of the alter personalities of the family the accomplishment in question. And, as to the second, it is likely that he would get a laugh for his pains. But further, the law, thus tempered by the thought of the other selves involved, is a function of the socius-con- sciousness in each of its two aspects. It is 'projective' to the child when he first receives it and submits himself to it. He does not yet understand it ; it requires him to act blindly. He, in his individual capacity, is not a judge of 'the wisdom or appropriateness of it. The other person sets it, the self in whom he is then finding his socius real- ized ; and the child is properly social only if he submit, even if he have to be made properly social by being 54 Tlie Self-conscious Person compelled to submit. And the other aspect of the law is equally important, that set by the other thought of self which the socius includes, the ' ejective ' embodiment of the law. After the child has obeyed, and learned by obe- dience, he himself sets the law of the house for the other members of it. And the law then becomes ' common law, 1 inasmuch as it is engrained in the very thought of the better self of every member of the social group. All com- mands and behests which are not thus embodied in the spirit of the whole, are yet to a degree really only the reflection of the highest thought of self in the group, that of the father ; if to the others these have not yet become 'common law,' the common dictates of the common social self, that is because the individuals are yet immature mem- bers of the circle or family. Put briefly, all law must arise somewhere in the family from the legitimate development of the social self ; and it is realized, or obeyed as law, only as the members of the family come, each in his turn, to mould his social self into intelligent observance of it, and intelligent enforcement of it. And the family is typical of the community. 29. A final observation is this : there is, as was inti- mated above, a sense in which the socius, the social self, and with it the ethical self, is a self of habit. If this thought of self which we are calling the ' socius ' really be, in so far as the child understands his own thought of it, a sense of his denials of both his lower and less social selves the self of private habit and the self of accommodation in favour of a law set him by an alter, then this very attitude must become in some degree a habit, a tendency to look for a higher law, a moving toward a higher authority. But it is a habit of acting, not a habit of action. It involves The Person as an Ethical Self 55 the most acutely painful and difficult violations of old habits of action. It is a habit of violating habits that is the relation of morality to habit. And it is an inter- esting side-light on the method of the rise of the suc- cessive selves by imitation and submission, that in the lower stages of evolution we find the organism working under the same subtlety. The organism develops only by cultivating the habit of imitating ; while the very value of imitation is that by it the organism acquires new accom- modations by breaking up habits already acquired. The organism must be ready, by a habit of acting, to impair the habits of action it already has. 1 And the origin of the moral sense by this method shows it to be an imitative function. We do right by habitually imitating a larger self whose injunctions run counter to the tendencies of our partial selves. 2 1 This amounts to what Mr. Huxley describes as nature combating herself (loc. fi(., p. 35), and considers so surprising. It is the same point of view, on the ethical plane, that Mr. Romanes has taken on the biological plane {Ment. Evol. in An., p. 20) in saying that heredity cannot provide in ad- vance for its own modification. I have shown that nature does produce just this state of things in biology (cf. Mental Development, Chap. VIII., 5) ; Professor Lloyd Morgan has published {Habit and Instinct, p. 264) a sim- ilar criticism of Romanes. In the ethical sense we find nature combating herself in the same way; combating by a higher adaptation a lower law of her own making. It is not necessary to say that such an adaptation is ' con- trary to nature' and not a part of evolution; for, as Mr. Huxley himself says in a note, it simply requires a larger way of looking at the process of evolution itself. See further allusion to Mr. Huxley's position in Sect. 194 and in Appendix C. 2 The question of the psychophysics of the moral sense cannot be discussed here; yet the foregoing position would seem to indicate that the sense of obligation must be accompanied in the brain with a process which represents a partial inhibition of lower motor syntheses (representing habits, impulses, etc.) by a higher and more unstable motor integration, into which the lower tend to be brought. This second synthesis stands for the general or ideal self which sets law to the lower partial selves. This view has much in common 56 The Self-conscious Person The more refined phases of ethical emotion, together with their influence on social conduct, are considered under the headings of 'Sentiment' and 'Sanction.' 1 with that developed by Guyau (Esquisse a"unf Morale}. He says {Educa- tion and Heredity, p. 79) : " Thought, action they are at bottom identical. And what is called moral obligation or constraint is, in the sphere of the intel- lect, the sense of this radical identity; obligation is an internal expansion, a need for completing our ideas by making them pass into action. Morality is the unity of the being." 1 Chaps. VIII. 2, 4, IX. 5, and X. 4. The ethical is so intimately bound up with the social as it is one of my main purposes to show that the later chapters of the essay will all be found to contain ethical matter. CHAPTER II THE SOCIAL PERSON THE expositions so far made of the child's progress toward the complete equipment of himself for social life, lead us now to see a principle ruling his development which should have more adequate formulation ; indeed, we are now in position to estimate the factors which enter into his social development. In this inquiry we come to formu- late, on the basis of the development of the preceding chapter, the principle of 'Social Heredity.' 1 I. Social Heredity 30. We have found that the social sense of the child grows constantly with his personal acquisition of new func- tions, activities, etc., through the influence of his social environment. And further, his process of acquisition is always complex. It always involves two standards of ref- erence. The measure of the child's capacity at any time is referable to his past ; he can do only what he has learned to do. This is what we may call the measure of his attainment by the standard of 'private reference.' He is a single individual person only in so far as we agree, 1 The facts of the indebtedness of the individual to his social environment and antecedents are well stated by Mr. Leslie Stephen in his Science of Ethics, Chap. III. Other writers who have emphasized the general truth of social transmission by tradition are, in biology, Weismann and Lloyd Morgan, and in philosophy, Ritchie, Mackensie, S. Alexander. 5? 58 The Social Person more or less tacitly, to estimate him by this standard ; by what he can do, with no account of what he can further learn to do. If we go back and take into account the few functions which his natural heredity gives him ready- formed, his reflexes, private instincts, etc., these too come in here as part of the person viewed with this private reference alone. But as soon as we come to ask what he can learn to do, we find that the private reference carries us no farther; we have then to take a wider point of view, the point of view of ' public reference ' or ' social reference. 1 We have found that the prime and essential method of his learning is by imitative absorption of the actions, thoughts, expres- sions, of other persons. He has grown up in a setting of social functions of a type higher always than that of his private accomplishment ; and his elevation to this higher plane, at each stage, is just by his gradual absorption of ' copies,' patterns, examples, from the social life about him. And again as soon as we come to ask genetic questions, questions pertaining to the origin of his activities, con- sidered one by one, we find that, at each stage of his progress, it was only by a process which brought in the public or social reference that he could gain the functions which he afterwards considers private to himself. We have traced this dependence upon the social environment in the matter of his ' interests,' and we will learn further on that even in his originalities, his inventions, he is by no means independent of the scheme of social activities which are current in his environment. So the sphere of the private reference grows smaller and more contracted the farther we go back in his life-history, until we reach the bare naked presence of the infant endowed only with Social Heredity 59 what he has inherited, together with the magnificent capacity, which he so soon begins to show, of learning by the absorption of social ' copy,' and of gradually growing into conformity to this copy both in his thought and in his conduct. Even farther back than this also, do we find a similar state of things. In the instincts of the animals we see a series of functions which could have arisen only as fitting the animal to maintain a gregarious and co-operative life. The actual adaptations which the possession of such charac- ters gave the parent animals whatever theory of physical heredity we may hold is the only justification of them in the offspring ; so we may say that even the infant's private physical self the organism with which he is born is the reflection of a state of living which involved a more or less complex system of social relationships. Now, waiving the question as to the degree in which it is true that an exclusively private reference of an individual, be he child, animal, youth, man, is impossible in any case whether he does anything or whether he does nothing in securing growth, or progress, absolutely by himself, waiving this, and contenting ourselves, at this stage of the inquiry, with the smaller fact that there are many things that he cannot learn to do without help from his social environment, let us call this general fact, that in much of his personal growth he is indebted to society, the fact of ' Social Heredity.' We may then go on to draw the lines of definition and description more narrowly. 31. It does not much matter how far the animals have functions which they learn only through the stimulus of gregarious existence. It is an interesting biological question on which light has lately been thrown. But 60 The Social Person here we may limit the inquiry to the human person's de- velopment, and so keep in the line which leads up to hu- man social organization. Several things may then be said about Social Heredity. (1) The first thing to be said is that it is in a true sense ' heredity.' J The child, apart from the defective in mind or body, learns to speak, write, read, play, combine force with others, build structures, do book-keeping, shoot firearms, address meetings, teach classes, conduct business, practise law and medicine or whatever his line of further develop- ment may be away from the three ' r's ' of usual attainment just as well as if he had received an instinct for that activity at birth from his father and mother. His father or mother may have the accomplishment in question ; and he may learn it from him or her. But then both the father and mother may not have it, and he then learns it from some one else. It is inheritance ; for it shows the attain- ments of the fathers handed on to the children ; but it is not physical heredity, since it is not transmitted physically at birth. (2) It is heredity also in that the child cannot escape it. It is as inexorably his as the colour of his eyes and the shape 1 The use of the term ' heredity ' in this connection has been objected to, especially by Professor Lloyd Morgan, Habit ami Instinct, p. 183, and Professor 1. I'. < "ope, American \atnralist, April, 1896, p. 345. He-sides the justifica- tion of the phrase ' Social Heredity ' ^iven in the text, the reader may consult my papers in the American Naturalist, May, 1896, p. 422, and July, 1896, p. 355 f. I do not find it possible to adopt Professor Lloyd Morgan's exclusive use of the term 'tradition,' since that word denotes the matter handed down, while 'social heredity' indicates the imitative process of absorption of this matter of tradition by individuals, whereby its continuity from generation to generation is secured. The social heredity of individuals differs with sex, temperament, etc., while their tradition may be the same : social heredity is the outcome of a personal reaction ufon tradition. Social Heredity 61 of his nose. He is born into a system of social relation- ships just as he is born into a certain quality of air. As he grows in body by breathing the one, so he grows in mind by absorbing the other. The influence is as real and as tangible ; and the only reason that it is variable in its results upon different individuals is that each indi- vidual has his physical heredity besides, and the outcome is always the outcome of the two factors, natural tem- perament and social heredity. The limits of the relative influence of these two factors I shall speak of again ; here it is enough to say that the development of the natural disposition is always directed more or less into the channels opened up by the social forces of the environment. The union of these two factors leads us, however, to observe a further point. (3) The influence of social heredity is, in a large sense, inversely as the amount and defmiteness of natural hered- ity. By this is meant that the more a person or an animal is destined to learn in his lifetime, the less fully equipped with instincts and special organic adaptations must he be at birth. This has been made so clear by recent biological discussion that I need do no more than refer to it. The interpretation of a creature's infancy turns upon the ques- tion how much the exigencies of future life are to call upon him to learn. If a great deal, then we find him born prac- tically helpless and requiring artificial support and atten- tion during a long infancy period. 1 If the young creature is to have a life of relatively unchanging activities with little need for the acquisition of functions not already possessed by the species as instincts, then he comes into the world 1 Cf. Fiske, Cosmic Evolution, and Baldwin, Mental Development, pp. 28 f. 62 The Social Person with ready-made instinctive activities, and can take care of himself independently very early, or even at birth. The two organic tendencies seem each to have had exceedingly wide independent development in the different forms of life. In the insects we find the instinctive apparatus marvellously complete ; much of the life-history of the insect being pre- pared for in the equipment which he brings into the world. The other extreme is realized in the human infant. He has very few instincts, and these are almost all fitted to secure organic satisfaction. Many of them terminate with the rise of volition. The insects have remarkable instincts, but cannot learn to do new things ; the baby, on the con- trary, has no complete instincts to speak of, but can learn to do almost anything. Now the learning capacity is the capacity to which social heredity appeals and which it calls into play ; on the other hand, the instincts are the result, in their method of acquisition by the individual, of natural heredity ; so it is plain from the simple state- ment of these facts that the two kinds of heredity are in inverse ratio to each other. The insect pays dear, there- fore, for his early 'start ' on the infant toward maturity ; and the infant gets a royal reward for the toil and trouble of his early months and years. It is interesting also to note as another way of consider- ing the same contrast between the gifts of natural heredity and the acquisitions of individual life, that the latter in- volve the presence and activity of a very high form of consciousness as contrasted with the former. In order to learn to do new things with his hands, for instance, the child must be capable of wide-awake, sustained attention and repeated effort. This experience of effort, with the great mental concentration which it requires, is about Social Heredity 63 the most acute and intense experience which conscious beings ever know ; and if we describe this as ' high,' or personal, or strong, consciousness, then on examination we find that the reflex, more instinctive, and automatic processes and actions are lacking in it. They go on very largely without supervision ; they do not even require at- tention ; so far from calling out effort, they are in many cases not brought into our consciousness at all until they have actually been performed. 1 They have then as reactions very 'low,' obscure, weak consciousness attached to them. And the same antithesis holds throughout the series of organic forms in the animal kingdom ; the animals which are given over almost altogether to instinctive activities have least of this high consciousness. They do not need the assistance of conscious effort in getting adapted to the world, since, by reason of their inherited adaptations, they are sufficiently equipped already for the life which they are to lead. 32. Further, the same distinction has its counterpart in the nervous system and its variations in the animal series. The reflex, automatic, and instinctive activities are regu- lated by the spinal and lower cerebral plexuses ; while the higher and more complex activities involving conscious supervision, volition, and all that is involved in the process of the learning of new lines of action, go out from the gray matter of the cortex of the brain. This gray material represents the more unstable and plastic substance ; and it is in the organization of this material that the new actions acquired by the individual in his lifetime get their registra- tion. From this it follows as an easy inference that the 1 This after-consciousness of the effects may be very vivid and so also may the stimulating sensation which releases the instinct. 64 The Social Person creature which is born with most of this unorganized gray matter, characteristic of the brain, will be the creature capable of most education during his lifetime, and so capable of sustaining the most complex system of those social relationships which call this process of acquisition into play. On the other hand, this creature will also lack the elaborate system of fixed instinctive actions which his less brainy rival will possess ; since the use of his brain in learning requires the varied and free use of muscle and limb brought into play in the new activities. These members then, as he learns to use them, come to perform, in an in- finitely more varied and effective way, the functions of personal life performed by the lower creature's instincts through a few fixed self-repeating reactions. Plasticity, therefore, on the one hand, and fixity, on the other hand, sum up the differences between natural and social heredity on the side of the organism ; while high con- sciousness, seen in attention, voluntary imitation, concentra- tion, on the one hand, and low, dreamy, diffused, subconscious processes, on the other hand, serve to define the distinction on the side of the mental life itself. 1 2. Physical Heredity and the Social Environment 33. With so much attention to the general definition of what is called ' social heredity,' and with a further word of emphasis upon the phenomena of the child's develop- 1 For the influence of ' Social Heredity ' upon organic evolution, and especially its bearings on the questions of 'Determinate Variations' and 'The Inheritance of Acquired Characters, 1 see Appendix A. Later on in this chapter also (Sects. 42, 43) we find that the phrase has further appropriate- ness from the direct influence which social conditions have upon physical heredity through the ' personal selection ' of mates in matrimony. Physical Heredity and Social Environment 65 ment upon which the doctrine has been found so far to rest, we may now turn to a closer examination of certain phases of the topic which come up as soon as we attempt to make any application of the position to the affairs of mankind at large. It will be remembered that a page or two back I had occasion to say that even the so-called ' private reference ' of the individual's attainments have, when their origin is in question, a strain of 'social refer- ence ' as well ; and that even the instinctive functions of the individual creature the activities which seem most private of all are in an important sense the outcome of social race conditions. And in the definitions just given the same point appeared ; the statement was made that in each case there are two factors involved in a person's equipment : his physical heredity and his social heredity. The question raised by these remarks is the traditional one covered by the antithesis between 'heredity and environment ' ; and while the discussion which follows will be found not out of touch with the contributions made to this topic by Galton and other distinguished investiga- tors, I yet hope that the point of view which I am incor- porating in the doctrine of ' social heredity ' and the final view that we get of the human ' socius,' may add something of more or less value to the elucidation of this problem. It goes without saying that by environment in this con- nection what is meant is social environment. The question of the influence of the physical environment, on the other hand, is a biological one, involving what is, in an exclusive sense, the private business of the organism, its private accommodations, and its chances of selection and survival among these physical conditions. Here we have a distinc- tively human problem ; and in case we take a man's moral 66 The Social Person stature as the instance for investigation, we have to ask : What elements in his life does he owe to his association with his fellows, and what, on the contrary, does he owe to his physical heredity ? This is the first question. And the second is like unto it : What part of his physical heredity does he owe to the social influences in which his father and mother lived ? Or, seeing that such social influences would act in great measure upon all the individuals alike, how far is a man's physical heredity common property to others with himself ? 34. The first of these questions concerns a matter of fact which we have had already before us in our investiga- tion of the child's processes of learning to be an adult man. Our definitions of social heredity have covered just the relation to which this question refers. The growth of human personality has been found to be pre-eminently a matter of social suggestion. The material from which the child draws is found in the store of accomplished activities, forms, patterns, organizations, etc., which society already possesses. These serve as ready stimulating agencies, loadstones so to speak, to his dawning energies, to draw him ever on in his career of growth into the safe, sound, useful network of personal acquisitions and social relationships which the slow progress of the race has set in permanent form. All this he owes, at any rate in the first instance, to society. His business is to be teachable. He must have the plastic nervous substance known popu- larly as a brain ; he must have organs of sense and sufficient organic equipment to enable him to profit by the methods of personal reaction necessary in the presence of his social fellows ; he must be able to imitate, to attend, to invent. Taking all this now for granted, we may rest in this matter- Physical Heredity and Social Environment 67 of -fact answer to the first of our questions ; and so formu- late a statement which throws the burden of further in- vestigation upon the other problem stated above ; and this with the less hesitation since the facts are not generally in question. All theories will admit that the child does actu- ally begin without many personal acts of skill ; and that he does actually learn his further acts of skill from his fellows ; moreover, it is also admitted that he learns in the long run only those acts of skill which his social environment already possesses and illustrates before him. Even when he learns more, making inventions which are completely new, and so instructing his associates, instead of being instructed by them, it is by some variation of the material which he has learned from them, and is an invention of which his own and their social judgment is liable to see the meaning in terms of the already familiar ways of action of the social group. Leaving this possible case of the genius in any case for a later discussion, in which it is shown that the genius does not, after all, escape the laws of human prog- ress as embodied in the social acquisitions of his tribe and time, we may now consider the average man, and pass on to the next inquiry. This I have put in alternative terms above ; we may take the more social emphasis as the more critical, and discuss the form of it stated in these terms : how far is a man's heredity, physical and social, common property in the community in which he is born ? 35. The force of this form of statement is seen as soon as we realize the terms of the older statement which con- trasted 'heredity' sharply with 'environment.' If that contrast is to be made and if it be a question of the divi- sion of a man's equipment into two parts, one due to his endowment or physical heredity, and the other due to his 68 The Social Person environment, there is no question of a third category. It supposes that these two agencies are opposed forces, and that each element of the man's entire character must be due to one or the other of them. The alternative, that most of the mans equipment is due to both causes working together, is not recognized ; and the resulting dualism or strife between the two supposed influences at work has no way of reconciliation. The very statement of the ques- tion in the terms given above, however, is itself the admis- sion of such a third category ; and we should expect, if the affirmative answer to it should be established by the facts, that a modified view of the relation of these two traditional factors would be justified. For we should then be obliged, in some degree at least, to identify the two influences which thus serve to produce results in com- mon, but to which in their extreme forms we give differ- ent names. It is hardly an anticipation to the reader who has fol- lowed the earlier chapter of this essay to say that it is the affirmative answer to the question thus stated which seems to the present writer to result from an adequate examination of the facts on both sides or on either side. And it is to the presentation of the evidence of this that the remainder of this chapter is to be devoted, as far as the case is not covered by the classes of facts already pre- sented in the earlier pages. 36. Taking up the case first from the point of view of the individual's experience, we may cite the evidence available to show that the acquisitions of each person are constantly made by slow progress toward standards of excellence already established in the society about him. He has a teacher all through his education just that he Physical Heredity and Social Environment 69 may be led by one who has already trodden the path of development upon which he is constantly advancing in his own personal growth. As far, therefore, as we are concerned in tracing the method of that more formal training covered by the word ' education/ there can be no doubt that we may safely say, as an element in our conclu- sion, that what the individual learns, the teachers of that individual have also learned some more, some less; so that it is true that the social heredity which thus bears in upon the one, has before borne in upon the others by a similar process of teaching; and the elements of social inheritance which each gets in his education are common to the group in which he is reared. This holds of the great sphere of personal accomplishment represented by literature, art, the established forms of social organization, etc., which are made a formal part of the instruction of children and youth. In the same manner, also, do we find the child learning those more fundamental activities which serve, in our later phrase, as 'social aids to invention.' 1 Speech, reading, writing, the elements of correct personal deportment in the family, in the school, in social gatherings, etc., these are impressed upon him, even by force if he show any reluctance or incapacity to take them in of himself. The most direct and severe punishments are laid down for breaches of social etiquette in the family and school discipline of the youth. And all this, of course, being so fundamental to the existence of the social organization of men together, has also been learned by the parents in much the same way, and under much the same social sanctions as the next generation after them. So again 1 Cf. Chap. IV. 70 T/ie Social Person we may say that with regard to these more definite and stereotyped utilities of social life, it is true that the single individuals get them similarly, and what is true of one such person is true in its main lines of all. The only other sphere of personal influence of man upon man is that which may be represented by the current phrase 'unconscious' influence, to which, from the fact that it is obviously typified by the more or less approximate reproduction of opinions, styles, etc., of one person in others, the name ' plastic imitation ' was given in my ear- lier work. All influence of this unconscious kind is clearly to be classified under the term ' suggestion ' ; and inas- much as it notoriously belongs in that department of col- lective psychology which finds its most striking instances in the matters where social opinion is most acute and social criticism most dreaded, it is no stretch of evidence to say that, as for the learning of the individual in these unconscious ways, it is common, par excellence, to the whole social group. 37. Having now gone so far, we are at once confronted with the following state of things : Here are a number of beings all pursuing the same activities in a system of re- markably complex relationships with one another. Each one in turn has been born with none of these activities in any advanced state of development ; but has depended by the inflexible conditions of his organic make-up upon finding just this system of relationships there beforehand, prepared to hail, embrace, and educate him. All were born helpless ; all have been educated. Each has been taught ; each is to become a teacher. Each learns new things by doing what he sees others do ; and each im- proves on what the other does only by doing what he has Social Suppression of the Unfit 71 already learned. Each teaches simply by doing, and each rules the others by his example. This, it will be re- membered, is the state of things when we consider soci- ety as an organization of common men ; we have left the consideration of the candidates for the great name of genius over for separate treatment. 3. Social Suppression of the Unfit What shall we then say about the physical heredity of these toiling, playing, teaching, learning individuals? What must we say? The very least we can say seems to me worth saying ; for its bearings are in some respects critical for the theory of society, (i) The individual must be born to learn; and (2) all the individuals must be born to learn the same things. This may seem but the statement of platitudes ; but their commonplace character indicates their truth. For, as commonplace as they are, and as true as the common- place character of them would lead us to expect, they are still the two points upon which, as I think, the entire system of truths in the relation of the individual to his kind depend. Their importance may be seen from the remark that the historical development of social and eco- nomic theory which goes by the name of ' Individualism ' J directly contradicts them. I need not stop to make good this statement now ; our later outcome involves it : but the more immediate bearings of the principles before us will suffice to show their meaning. 38. I. Man is born to learn : how does this define his J Defined strictly in opposition to ' Collectivism.' 72 The Social Person physical heredity ? It defines it in several ways, and I shall try to make them cumulative in their statement. If a creature is to come into the world fitted to learn, he must not to state a negative requirement /if must not have hereditary tendencies which ivill make him anti- social, to wliat may be called a snppressive degree. This means simply that he must not develop activities or per- sonal qualities so counter to the true line of conformity to the teachings and relationships of the common social milieu, that society and other individuals will not let him live to do them harm, or to set them a bad example. What these actions and qualities are which an individual must not be born to perform, it is not necessary to define in detail. That is for the particular society to say ; and his- torically different societies have said many things very different in detail. It is for the community to say ; and that is only another way of stating the point already made, that the other element of the person's entire equipment is the common social standard of the ' social heredity ' of the group. Society it is which addresses the anti-social man, saying to him : " Dear sir, your physical heredity has overstepped its bounds ; to tolerate you and men like you would endanger the social heritage which our fathers have given us ; you must go. You have the making of a crimi- nal, and although we may have to wait till your potencies actually show you up a criminal, still, as far as in us lies, criminals shall be suppressed." I know that there are several questions which may arise in the mind of the reader especially the biologist - regarding this formulation. One of them concerns the standards of society with reference to which its judgments are rendered. Another concerns the sphere of possible Social Suppression of the Unfit 73 variations in the social worth of individuals with reference to this standard ; this I can only define here by the relative limitation indicated by the phrase 'suppressive degree.' And then, of course, the biologist rushes in with the ques- tion what relation this term ' suppressive ' bears to natural selection 1 in the organic world. The general relation of social facts to organic facts cannot be profitably discussed in this connection ; but the remarks which follow in eluci- dation of the 'suppressive degree' which the individual's anti-social tendencies may not reach may serve to quiet the oversensibilities of the biological enthusiast at this point. 39. But before we go further, it may be well to illus- trate the method which society adopts to suppress the individual who is unfit. I have said that the level of social heredity of the group or society, as a whole, repre- sents the voice of this society in pronouncing sentence upon its unworthy members. This, in our developed society, is embodied in the real institutions and laws which aim at the correction, isolation, and punishment of the social offender. If a man is born with too strong an egoistic tendency, with, let us say, uncontrollable passions, with abnormal emotions, such as jealousy, malice, unre- flective self-assertion, or what-not of tendency which, when he grows up, leads him to commit crime, the arm of society, acting through its institutions of justice, takes up his case. If you kill, say the people in most instances, you shall be 1 The biologists say that a character has a 'selective degree' of utility when its utility is sufficient to preserve the life of the animal possessing it, in the ' struggle for existence.' The phrases ' suppressive degree ' and ' suppres-*- sion of the unfit ' used in the text suggest a parallel which will become clearer as we proceed. 74 The Social Person killed ; and he is. If he shows by his thefts that he has a strain of heredity which leads him to disregard the claims of society to the mutual respect of property-rights as society defines them, then he must be put where he can find no property, says the social spirit ; and he is. If he is born with an intellectual nature out of proportion to his social nature, and thinks to circumvent the regulations of the social spirit by wily cunning and well-laid schemes, then society seeks one who is as smart as he and more loyal, to track him out, that he too may be socially sup- pressed. And so the cases go. Society it is that formu- lates in what we call laws the truths which it knows about itself ; and society it is that says in this case or that : ' You have proved yourself anti-social and you must leave society.' So what we have to say about the negative sort of selection called ' social suppression ' may take its point of departure here. 40. It is probably clear to the reader from these illus- trations what is meant by suppression in this social realm. Certain individuals are singled out or selected for special treatment. The great peculiarity of this negative selection is that it selects the most unfit rather tlian tlic most fit, and instead of selecting for preservation, it selects to remove or to destroy. In the organic world it is the organic causes themselves which work with the environment to secure a race progressively better as individuals ; in the social world it is the social whole which applies social criteria for the eradication of what is harmful. This contrast may be pointed out here, simply to clear up the meaning of the concept of social suppression ; not to exhaust the biological analogy from natural selection ; for there are other phases, both of contrast and of similarity between the two kinds Social Suppression of the Unfit 75 of selection, which would demand more extended treat- ment. 1 Understanding, then, that we are dealing with the social selection of the unfit with a view to their suppression, we have to ask, farther, what constitutes the ' suppressive degree' of unfitness? This question we will find answered in the second clause of our formulation of the kind of natural heredity which the eligible social personality must have ; and further remarks may be made under the con- sideration of that factor. I have stated it above in these words : 'All must be born to learn the same things' 41. This is the second positive requirement. It sets the level of social attainment in the community in which each individual is born. The social inheritance is not an arbitrary requirement devised by an individual, nor by a 1 The various cases of natural and other selection need more discrimination than biologists usually give them. In a changing environment or where com- petition is sharp, natural selection 'selects' the fittest (Darwin, Spencer); while in a stationary environment or where competition is lax or adaptation gen- eral and good, only the very unfit are eliminated (Eimer). Both of these are always at work, and every degree of selection is found between these extremes. So general contrasts are unsafe. For example, the contrast made by Pro- fessor Lloyd Morgan {Habit and Instinct, Chap. XII.), who thinks 'conscious selection ' selects the best, while natural selection eliminates the poorest, is true only under certain well-defined conditions. The working of ' social suppres- sion,' for example, is quite the reverse of what he attributes to ' conscious selection,' although it is ' conscious.' There is a conscious selection of the best going on in society, both of individuals and of experiences, thoughts, plans, ideals; these might be called respectively 'social selection' (through competition), and 'imitative selection' (through the imitative propagation of ideas from person to person). Cf. Sects. 120, 305 f. And there is also another form of conscious selection, of person by person where preference and liking or aversion of whatever kind come in, as seen conspicuously in matrimony, spoken of immediately below (Sects. 42, 43), which is not of the best, but of what may be described as the 'socially available.' This might be called 'per- sonal selection,' leaving ' sexual selection ' to the animals, where immediate reproduction is the motive. See note to Sect. 307, and Appendix B. 76 The Social Person class ; nor is it a convention by which each or any indi- vidual agrees to give up his so-called private rights. On the contrary, there is a possible standard of general recog- nition, and a possible recognition of the existing standard with social progress in both of these, only in so far as the physical heredity of the individual sets toward the learn- ing of just the sort and variety of relationships which the social tradition imposes. A community is impossible in which the majority are born so anti-social that they resist the social tradition or cannot absorb it ; since the factor of personal heredity, tending to individual idiosyn- crasy, would then swamp the factor of social heredity, tend- ing to social organization. The principle of ' suppression of the unfit ' would cease its operation ; there would be no established representative of social utility to prevent the indulgence of the personal as against the social factor, and society would be ipso facto abolished. Such a state of things is in sight in the opinion of Max Norclau : the physical heredity of the degenerate represents a strain of social decay, and the appeal must be made to the possible existence of a larger community whose physical heredity is still so unified in its tendencies that its representatives keep alive the social tradition, and so select out and frown down or print down, to adopt the method of the prophet, Herr Nordau the degenerates by birth. In saying, therefore, that in any social community the natural heredity of the individuals must be such that they all may learn the same things, I simply mean that the limits of individual variation must lie inside the possible attainment of the social heritage by each person. In the actual attainment of this ideal any society finds itself embarrassed by refractory individuals, all too numerous ; Social Suppression of the Unfit *jy the variations which overrun these limits are always many. But social progress and even social stability de- mand that this tendency to chaos shall never actually annul the operation of the requirement which represents the social life as such. It is the duty of each individual to be born a man of the social tendencies which his com- munal tradition requires of him ; if he persist in being born a different sort of man, then, as far as his varia- tion goes, he is liable to be found a criminal before the bar of public conscience and law, and to be suppressed in an asylum or a reformatory, in Siberia or in the potter's field. 42. I think we are able now to see somewhat more clearly the relation of the two factors ordinarily called heredity and environment. Apart from the presence of variations, they are both common property. For the natural heredity of the individual must in its develop- ment lift the individual into participation in the social store and in the tradition administered by the organization called the environment ; and on the other hand, the envi- ronment, being only the general sphere of the operation of the collective heredities of the individuals and of their fathers, must draw out, confirm, establish, the individual in these natural inherited tendencies which all have in common. The social influences which act upon the individual, therefore, do not and cannot represent, in the language of a recent writer, 1 'a cycle of causation' quite apart from that represented by the physiological processes which operate in physical heredity. They constitute, it is true, separate spheres of causation; we cannot substi- tute a social cause for a physical cause, or the reverse. i William James, Atlantic Monthly, 1888. 78 The Social Person But they are not disparate, in the sense that each runs its course without interference from the other ; on the con- trary, social life acts as a constant check upon ' sports ' as such, and upon unsocial hereditary tendencies in general. 1 43. But not only is there this suppression of the unfit individuals after they are born, and the consequent check- ing of their influence both physical and moral ; there is a more direct interference of social with physical heredity. The sphere of physical heredity is encroached upon, and the direction of its issue changed, by every influence in the environment which comes to throw possible parents together or to separate them ; and these influences are often the social barriers or inducements which the ' social environment ' prescribes. This I may illustrate by an example. In the southern United States there is a social barrier to the intermarriage of blacks and whites. It is part of the unwritten law of polite society. The result is that there continue to be a white population and a black population existing side by side, the mixed element of the population being for the most part of illegitimate origin from black females. This keeps the white race pure, while there is a growing race of mulattoes and a diminishing race of blacks. The cycles of causation represented by these different races are distinctly held in physical bounds by the social cycle. Suppose, on the contrary, a generation of whites should be born who should forget the social sentiment now ex- isting, or that a sufficient number of Northern whites, who do not regard such a barrier, should migrate to the South and marry freely with the blacks ; then the only 1 At the same time it may well be an undertaking of the social reformer to render this sort of control much more effective. Social Suppression of the Unfit 79 future society would be one of legitimate mulattoes. In this case we should have to say that the series of terms representing the causes and effects in the physiological cycle had become different simply from a change in social sentiment, or from the inrush of men and women of dif- ferent social heredity. It is not needful to cite instances from history, although many might be cited ; for the reasons already suggested for believing that neither series of phenomena can be free from constant action and re- action with the other are sufficiently convincing. It is only necessary to put a single corollary in a little clearer evidence to make the bearing of this identity of tendency in the two orders of heredity quite clear, for the average activities of ordinary individuals. 44. This general corollary, or rather restatement, of a position already reached in our study, concerns the individ- ual, considered as one in a number the same, therefore, being true of each who live and act together in society. It concerns the results of his social learning all the way along through the different stages of his education for his place and work in life. These results, at whatever age or in whatever condition we find the person, must mean that he has substantially the same standards of social value, personal and ethical worth, and in general the same sense of fitness in all the variety of meanings which this term can have in its application to human beings, their institutions, and their inventions, which he finds reflected also in the social group in which he moves. His opinion of others must be referred to the same standards by which he judges himself; and their opinion of him must, for the same reasons, agree with his, in both these directions of its application. This is the saving rule of all organizations 8o The Social Person of a social kind which have any call to live. For if we admit that the average individual's judgments are in the main and intrinsically at variance with the social judg- ments of his time and place, how can there be any social judgments? For the social judgment is in some way the judgment of the individuals, acting in a social way ; and if there be no area of common judgment among the indi- viduals, then there can be in so far no social standards. This follows without doubt from the considerations already adduced concerning the respective limits of social and physical heredity. 45. It also follows from another line of considerations which have been presented at some length. I refer to the method of growth of the individual in attaining his sense of himself as a personal and social agent. His progress, i.e., the child's, has been dwelt upon at some length just to make clear this point, his absolute de- pendence upon the continual presence of suitable personal environment. These suggestions which come to him from others are realized in himself, and his thought of another is not stands for, or represents, or anything else than is his thought of himself, until he adds to it a further interpretation ; the further interpretation is in turn, first himself, then is again nothing short of this is his thought of the other. And so the play goes on, and so he grows. But all the while here is the essential thing : he has not two persons to think of, his ego and the other man's, the alter; not at all. He has only one body of personal data. This he reads one way for himself and the other way for the other. And so how can he have two classes of judgments to pass upon this one personal thought ? In condemning, approving, loving, hating, com- Social Suppression of the Unfit 81 mending, reviling, in all the judgments passed on per- sonality as such, he criticises personality, and all he says holds for himself as for his neighbour ; for the two selves are but terms of opposition in the movement of his per- sonal growth. And this is true of the other man's per- sonal growth as well ; so he must also include my person in his judgments. His personal data are identical in the main with those by which I grow. His judgments, then, both of himself and of me, must be in the main the same as my judgments both of myself and of him. 1 46. So the conclusion seems quite safe. It follows both from the theory of social heredity, and also from the theory of the individual's personal growth. This collateral argumentation is in itself the strongest proof of the truth of the conclusion. For it is the first re- quirement of a theory of society that it shall have ade- quate views of the progress of the social whole, which shall be consistent with the psychology of the individual's per- sonal growth. It is this requirement, I think, which has kept the science of society so long in its infancy ; or, at least, this in part. Psychologists have not had sufficient genetic theory to use on their side ; and what theory they had seemed to forbid any attempt to interpret social prog- ress in its categories. As soon as we come to see, how- ever, that the growth of the individual does not forbid this individual's taking part in the larger social movement as well, and, moreover, reach the view that in his growth he is at once also growing into the social whole, and in so far aiding its further evolution then we seem to have found a bridge on which it is safe to travel, and from which we can get vistas of the country on both sides. 1 This anticipates detailed conclusions reached later on. G 82 The Social Person 4. Social Variations 47. Ever since Darwin propounded the principle of 'natural selection,' the word 'variation' has been current. The student in natural science has come to look for varia- tions as the necessary preliminary to any new step of progress and adaptation in the sphere of organic life. Nature solves the problem of selection in the simplest of ways. The young born in the same family are naturally unlike ; ' variations ' occur. If all cannot live, the best of the variations live, and the others die. Those that do live have thus, to all intents and purposes, been ' selected.' Now, this way of looking at problems which involve aggregates of individuals and their distribution is becom- ing a habit of the age. Wherever the application of the principles of probability do not explain a statistical result, that is, wherever there seem to be influences which favour particular individuals at the expense of others, men turn at once to the principle of variations for the justification of this seeming partiality of nature. And what it means is that nature is partial to individuals in making them, in their natural endowment, rather than after they are born. Of course the resources of this doctrine of variations are available for social questions in so far as natural inheri- tance is still the bridge from generation to generation of social men. However we may limit the influence of physi- cal transmission and emphasize that of social transmission, yet the great fact that men are born dissimilar, mentally and morally as well as physically, must have a place in all theories of social life. A word may be in order here in the way of description of some of the more marked social variations. Social Variations 83 48. First, there is the idiot. He is not available, from a social point of view, because his variation is too great on the side of defect. He shows from infancy that he is unable to enter into the social heritage because he cannot learn to do social things. His intelligence does not grow with his body. Society pities him if he be without natural protection, and puts him away in an institution. So of the insane, the pronounced lunatic ; he cannot consistently sustain the wide system of social relationships which society requires of each adult individual. Either he is unable to take care of himself, or he attempts the life of some one else, or he is the harmless unsocial thing who wanders among us like an animal, or stands in his place like a plant. He is not a factor in social life ; he is not to share the inheritance. Then there is the extraordinary class of people whom we may describe by a stronger term than those already employed. We find not only the unsocial, the negatively unfit, those whom society excludes with pity in its heart ; but there are also the anti-social, the class whom we usually designate as criminals. These persons, like the others, are variations ; but they seem to be variations in quite another way. They do not represent lack on the intellectual side, always or alone, but on the moral side, on the social side, as such ; for morality is in its origin and practical bear- ings a social thing. The least we can say of the criminals, is that they tend by heredity, or by evil training, to violate the rules which society has seen fit to lay down for the general security of men acting together in the enjoyment of the social heritage. So far, then, they are factors of disintegration, of destruction ; enemies of the social prog- ress which proceeds from generation to generation by 84 The Social Person just this process of social heredity. So society says to the criminal, also, ' you must perish.' We kill off the worst of them, imprison the bad for life, attempt to reform the rest. They too, then, are excluded from the heritage of the past. Then finally, with all these, and with the countless cases of less prominent variation in one direction or another, we find a type of variation which, though taking different forms, presents one of the most critical and interesting topics of social study, the genius. With him we have to deal later on. 5. Social Judgment 49. There grows up, in all the interchange of sugges- tion among you, me, and the others, in all the give-and-take between us now described, an obscure sense of a certain social understanding about ourselves generally of a. Zeit- geist, an atmosphere, a taste, or, in minor matters, a style. It is a very peculiar thing, this social spirit. The best way to understand that you have it, or something of what it is, is to get into a circle in which it is different. The common phrase 'fish out of water ' is often heard in refer- ence to it. But that does not serve for science. The next best thing that I can do in the way of a preliminary rendering of it is to appeal to another word which has a popular sense, the word 'judgment.' Let us say that there exists in every society a general system of values, found in social usages, conventions, institutions, and formulas, and that our 'judgments' of social life are founded on our habitual recognition of these values, and of the arrange- ment of them which has become more or less fixed in our society. For example, to say ' you are welcome ' to a dis- agreeable neighbour, shows good social judgment in a small Social Judgment 85 matter. Not to quarrel with the homoeopathic enthusiast who meets you in the street and wishes to doctor your rheumatism out of a symptom book that is good judg- ment. In short, the man gets to show more and more, as he grows up from childhood, a certain good judgment ; and his good judgment is also the good judgment of his social set, community, or nation. The psychologist might prefer to say that a man ' feels ' this ; perhaps it would be better for psychological readers to say simply that he has a ' sense ' of it ; but the popular use of the word ' judgment ' fits so accurately into the line of distinctions I am making that I shall adhere to it. And so we reach the general position that the eligible candidate for social life must have good judgment, as represented by the common standards of judgment of his people. 1 It may be doubted, however, whether this sense of social values is the outcome of suggestion operating through- out the term of one's social education. That we have endeavoured to show in the earlier chapter on the child's personal growth. It will appear true, I trust, to any one who may take the pains to observe the child's tentative endeavours to act up to the social usages of the family and school. One may then actually see the growth of the sort of judgment which I am describing. Around the funda- mental movement of his personal growth all the values of 1 " An interesting phenomenon under this head is that usually described as the influence of example on personal belief. What we call persuasion is largely the suggestion of the emotion which accompanies strong conviction, with the corresponding influence which the emotion suggested has upon the logical relationships apprehended by the victim." Baldwin, Mind, Jan., 1894, p. 50. Later discussions show in more exact terms what this implies psychologically. The statement in the text is preliminary and purely objec- tive. Cf. Chap. III., i, 3. 86 The Social Person his life have their play. So I say that his sense of truth regarding the social relationships of his environment is the outcome of his very gradual learning of his personal place in these relationships. 50. We reach the conclusion, therefore, from this part of our study, that tJie socially unfit person is the person of poor judgment. He may have learned a great deal in some directions ; he may in the main reproduce the activities required by his social tradition ; but with it all he is, in some degree, out of joint with the general system of esti- mated values by which society is held together. This appears to be true even of the pronounced types of unsocial individuals. The criminal is a man of poor judgment. It may be that hie has a bad strain of natural heredity, what the theologians call 'original sin ' ; he is then an 'habitual criminal ' in Ferri's distinction of types. Any sense of his failure to accept the teachings of society may be quite absent, crime being so normal to him. But the fact remains that in his social judgment he is mistaken ; his normal is not society's normal. He has failed to be edu- cated in the judgments of his fellows, however besides, and however more deeply, he may have failed. Or, again, the criminal may commit crime simply because he is carried away in an eddy of good companionship, which represents a temporary current of social influence ; or yet again, his nervous energies may be overtaxed temporarily or drained of their force, so that his education in social judgment is forgotten. In all these cases he is the ' occasional crimi- nal ' ; but it is yet true of him also, that while he is a criminal, while he has yielded to temptation, has gratified private impulse, he has then lost his social balance, he is no longer socially sane. In it all he shows the lack of that Conception of the Social Person 87 sustaining force of social consciousness which represents the level of righteous judgment in his time and place. Then as to the idiot, the imbecile, the insane they, too, have no good judgment, for the very adequate but pitiful reason that they have no judgment at all. 6. Conception of the Social Person 51. It may be well at this stage of our inquiry to em- phasize the main conclusion to which our discussions have led, although the repetition may be unnecessary to many readers. Yet for the clearer understanding of the general positions involved in the further expositions of the essay, I venture to make this further statement. All our thought has led us to see that one of the histori- cal conceptions of man is, in its social aspects, mistaken. Man is not a person who stands up in his isolated majesty, meanness, passion, or humility, and sees, hits, worships, fights, or overcomes, another man, who does the opposite things to him, each preserving his isolated majesty, mean- ness, passion, humility, all the while, so that he can be considered a ' unit ' for the compounding processes of social speculation. On the contrary, a man is a social outcome rather than a social unit. He is always, in his greatest part, also some one else. Social acts of his that is, acts which may not prove anti-social are his because they are society s first ; otherwise he would not have learned them nor have had any tendency to do them. Everything that he learns is copied, reproduced, assimilated, from his fellows; and what all of them, including him, all the fellows, the socii, do and think, they do and think be- cause they have each been through the same course of 88 TIte Social Person copying, reproducing, assimilating, that he has. When he acts quite privately, it is always with a boomerang in his hand ; and every use he makes of his weapon leaves its indelible impression both upon the other and upon him. It is on such truths as these which recent writers 1 have been bringing to light that the philosophy of society must be gradually built up. Only the neglect of such facts can account for the present state of social discussion. Once let it be our philosophical conviction, drawn from the more general results of psychology and anthropology, that man is not two, an ego and an alter, each of which is in active and chronic protest against a third great thing, society ; once dispel this hideous un-fact, and with it the remedies found by the egoists, back all the way from the Spencers to the Hobbeses and the Comtes, and I submit the main barrier to the successful understanding of society is re- moved. 52. Perhaps no better illustration of the point of view which I wish to leave prominently in the reader's mind can be reached than to cite its contrast with that of the recent book by Mr. Kidd on Social Evolution. His whole conception hinges on the view that the individual can get no 'rational sanction ' for social life. He must then either rebel against society or strangle his 'reason.' According to Mr. Kidd he does the latter and, by espousing a super- natural sanction found in some religious system, acts by inference irrationally. But why are his selfish and anti- social impulses the only rational part of the man ? Does not the most superficial consideration of the origin of man, to say nothing of the teaching of the first principles of psychology, show that the indulgence of these impulses is l Stephen, S. Alexander, Hoflding, Tarde. Conception of the Social Person 89 in many instances irrational ? Action on his real, most complex, richest thought, is rational, as a later chapter (on ' Sanctions,' Chap. IX. 1 ) aims to show in detail ; and if the author of Social Evolution is right in saying that religion serves as the mainspring of this kind of action, then re- ligion has here, in some degree, its rational justification. 1 See also Sect. 178. PART II THE INVENTIVE PERSON CHAPTER III INVENTION VS. IMITATION 53. THE recent literature of the social life in which the imitative functions have had so much emphasis, has tended, in the minds of some, to obscure the great facts of inven- tion ; while the same tendency has prevented others from giving the facts of imitation due weight. In the pages above I have tried as far as may be to keep to the natural history standpoint, tracing what seemed to be clearly imita- tive and giving a genetic view of the rise of the notion of self without raising the question one way or the other as to the mind's initiation of what is new and inventive. This question cannot be put off permanently, however; and I now propose to take it up for direct discussion. How does the mind invent anything new ? Or, put conversely : How far is what we call invention really the creation of something new? This question may be approached, I think, most profit- ably from the side of the child's early development. And this approach to it has the advantage of giving us results in direct relation to those already reached in the discussions of the imitative factor in the growth of the personal sense. If the child is inventive at all, he must show it in connec- tion with the attainments which he makes everywhere; even 90 The Process of Invention 91 in those attainments which we find reason for calling imita- tive. We cannot divide the child into two parts, two realities coming up to the facts of life with different capabilities, one fitted only to imitate, and the other fitted to invent. Of course it is the same child whatever he does ; and if he be gifted with the power of invention at all, this power should show itself in all that he does even in his imitations. This general claim may be enforced by the examination of the child's very imitations. Such a direct appeal to fact, if adequately carried out, should be worth any amount of abstract discussion of the merits of imitation and inven- tion in the mental life generally, in which as is so often the case the two types of function are considered by definition at the start as far removed from each other as the letters 'vs.' put between them would suggest. In the opinion of many, an act is either imitative or inventive, and in performing it the child is either a creator or a slave. The phrases ' divine creation ' and ' slavish imita- tion ' are common enough. i. The Process of Invention 54. Yet before we go to the child, our inquiry may be abbreviated by a little more definition of the term ' inven- tion,' as the present state of psychological knowledge ena- bles us to set its limitations from the outset. There is no question in psychological circles to-day of the absolute men- tal creation which was formerly assumed. The newer doc- trine (i) of 'mental content,' on the one hand, which holds that no elements of representation can get into conscious- ness except as they have been already present in some form in presentation ; and, on the other hand, (2) the doctrine that the activities of consciousness are always conditioned 92 Invention vs. Imitation on the content of presentation and representation present at the time these positions make it impossible to hold that the agent or the mind can make anything for itself 4 out of whole cloth,' so to speak. The former of these views, held now by everybody, leads us to look in all cases of imagination even in all cases of invention for ele- ments of construction themselves more or less familiar beforehand to the thought of the person who makes the invention. The phrase ' imagination is constructive, not creative' has crept into all the text-books, even into those whose authors find some other ground for holding that absolute initiations may be possible to consciousness itself. We have the right, therefore, to draw our lines somewhere inside this view of current psychology. The other doctrine referred to is, I think, equally well established, although not so generally known in popular statement as the former. Psychologists look upon the activities felt in consciousness as being in some way involved with the mechanism of movement either the movements of the muscular system or with the phases of the attention and then find these movements of both kinds expressions of the content then in consciousness. What we do is always a function of ^vhat we think ^ If these principles be true, there is a certain way in which consciousness might still be inventive. We might say that the activities of consciousness in some way give a new shape, form, synthesis, sifting, to the very contents out of which they themselves arise. 55. Even with this narrow limitation, there are again 1 See The Power of Thought, by J. D. Sterrett, for a detailed popular state- ment of this. Ciuyau, Education and Heredity, Chap. I., also draws impres- sjve lessons from it. The Process of Invention 93 two directions in which we might look for novelties in the mind. These two ways differ, however, in the ' locus,' so to speak, of the effective novelty or invention in the train of processes involved in a complete section of con- sciousness. We might say (i) that the novel or original idea came into consciousness just from the mingling together in memory, imagination, etc., of the disjecta membra of earlier thoughts, perceptions, etc., in new and varied combinations : that on one hand. Or we might say (2) that the novelty was introduced among the forms into which the actions, the endeavours, the efforts, of the life of conduct tend to bring the earlier memories, imagina- tions, and thoughts. i. In the former case, we should find all the various forms in which our fancies unite struggling to get place in our apperceptive systems and to discharge themselves in action ; and the valuable ones would get their value from their success in bringing about satisfactory results. The criteria of an invention, as opposed to a mere accidental and worthless fancy, would be its subsequent selection, and there would be no way of discounting beforehand the chances of any of them. 1 The great question would be 1 This would seem to be the position of W. James in his admirable Chap- ter XXVIII. in Vol. II. of Principles of Psychology. His main contention is that in their origin the forms of thinking are variations ' independent of experience.' I do not find that he takes up in detail the question as to how these variations are subsequently selected, although he admits that for natural scientific knowledge they must be (loc. cit., II., p. 636). If it be by experi- ence that this selecting is done as it must be and if the individual's selected variations are reproduced in subsequent generations through natural and organic selection (see Appendix A) as well as by social transmission, then we have mental evolution directed by experience after all even as regards the pure and 'elementary' categories in a way which escapes the criticisms cogently urged by James against the ' race-experience ' hypothesis 94 Invention vs. Imitation left over : How do the real inventions get selected as permanent and valuable acquisitions ? This question it is which would force us to review the whole theory of the origin of thought and its utility in organic and mental evolution. This cannot be done here, 1 but we may assume the general result that it is by action that their value is to be tested. If it be said with some that con- sistency with earlier thought is the test, then we may say that it is by action that all this earlier thought has been tested, and it is through action that the thoughts already acquired as valuable are held together in a system. The very test of consistency means synergy, or unity of action. It is, then, a short step to the view that it is preferably from the basis of the active achievements already secured that the new combinations or interpre- tations which are real inventions arise. This leads us to the second possible view. 2. On this view the new combinations secured for the inventive life are not the chance outcome of the revived fragments of memory and fancy ; they are rather the new forms into which the materials of our thought are cast as the result of variations in our actions in the process of adaptation to the ends of utility. It is by adapted action that our mental life is held together in great con- sistent thought-systems ; and it is by new refinements upon these adapted and correlated actions that new varia- tions are introduced into the systems of our coherent of Spencer : and this even on James" suppositions. There would thus he a progressive coincidence between what is a priori to the individual (arising as variation, then selected and inherited) ami what is true to experience in the evolution of the race. 1 I have already considered this topic in detail in my earlier volume on Mental Development. The Process of Invention 95 thought. The criteria of the value of these new elements of thought are again their issue in action ; and they have to be actually tested : but that they issue from the plat- form of accomplished systems and accomplished accom- modations renders their good quality the more likely from the start. On this second view, which I give as the true one, the process of selection goes on from a level of earlier mental attainment, 1 while, on the other view, each inven- tion is a casual outcome from among all the possible creations of fancy. The question of the actual opera- tion of the selection, both in its objective tests and in the brain-processes involved, is left for a later page. 2 Both views, however, assume the existence of variations in brain-processes ; one places them on the receptive or sensory side, and the other in the motor or active side. One says, we are liable to all sorts of imagina- tions ; some of these prove valuable and true. The other says, we are capable of thoughts which are valuable and true because they are held in a system by the processes of action and attention ; when these processes vary, some of the variations give better and truer thoughts. 56. It is true, the latter would also say, that we do imagine all sorts of things, but it is not to these imagin- ings that we often look for the valuable inventions. 3 1 This, it is evident, makes the determination of mental evolution in the lines of experience as indicated in the note on page 93 still more direct, seeing that the variations from which the selections are made are themselves distributed about the mean of earlier adaptations. 2 3 of this chapter, on ' Selective Thinking.' 8 Since this was written, the article of W. M. Urban {Psych. Rev., July, 1897) nas appeared, with an interesting discussion. Dr. Urban agrees with the position taken here to the extent of holding that new thoughts arise 96 Invention vs. Imitation This last position is proved from the comparison of the two fields of fancy and thought respectively. We rarely come upon a valuable combination in our revery, or in our dreaming, or in our rumination in subjects which we have not studiously explored. The inventions come from hard thinking, steady application, casting about of attention, trained and conscious direction of the opera- tions of mind. The valuable variations, therefore, are already more or less determined, as a whole, in their direction, by reason of the particular system in which they occur. These systems have arisen under the rule of certain objective marks or coefficients of belief in the different spheres of truth. 1 57. This general view, I may also add, is consistent with the psychological requirements already laid down. We saw that a new invention must be made out of old material, and must come just through the activity which it is the function of this old material to arouse. The view presented fulfils both these requirements. It makes the new thought in each instance one of the possible synthe- ses of earlier thoughts ; and then it has just the advantage over the other view spoken of, that it makes the variation which issues in the invention, a variation in the legiti- mate active processes arising from approximately similar thoughts. The whole process is a circular one. Here, let us say, are thoughts which issue in movements adapted to these thoughts. Variations in these movements react to from the platform of the earlier apperceptive (his ' imaginative ' ) processes, which he likewise makes imitative. His views are noticed again below, where the selecting processes are discussed (Sect. 78). 1 For the discussion of these criteria of belief see the psychologies. In my Handbook, II., Chap. VII., they arc classified under the term ' coefficients.' The Child ' s Inventions 97 produce variations in the thoughts. Some of these thought- variations are selected. 1 These are the inventions. So with the formula : what we do is a function of what we think; we have this other: what we shall think is a function of what we have done. 2. The Child's Inventions* 58. This latter view, then, if it be true and if, as was said, both the content and the activity are conditioned upon 1 The view has been current (Bain, James) that thought is due genetically to the obstruction, or damming back of movement, the energies which would otherwise have discharged in movements being thus used in building up the mechanism of thought. I have never seen this position adequately defended on psychological grounds. It seems to me to offer insurmountable difficul- ties. The question may be asked : How do the existing correspondences arise between the thoughts about the external world, let us say, and the actual conditions existing in the world as discovered by movement ? In other words, how can thoughts be true? It is quite natural to suppose that the existing adapted or fact- revealing movements have gone before, and that thought is in some way a form of inner re-establishing, without constant depend- ence on real objects, of the system of values first revealed by such movements. On this view the growth of thought would be by a series of brain- variations which produced in the mind a ' copy-system ' of the actual relations of the world first reported, or at least contributed to, by movement. The move- ment-variations would go ahead of the thought-variations, and the growth of thought would depend upon successful movement, rather than upon its obstruc- tion and damming up. On the ' obstruction ' view, on the contrary, the thought- variations could prove their value, or get to be judged true, only through their issue in movement; and besides the difficulty of doing this under the con- ditions of obstruction (whatever that means), there would have to be the same selecting process acting upon movements, which would have been in- voked in case the simple movement-variations went ahead. It seems to me to involve, when we reflect upon it, a sort of cart-before-the-horse all through the evolution of mind. It is much truer to the facts to say that simple motor adaptations in thinking they are adaptations of attention go before thought, and that the brain-variations which perpetuate and stand for these adaptations are ipso facto selected in the selection of the movements; with them come the true thoughts. 3 Most of this paragraph has appeared in The Inland Educator, July, Aug., 1897. 98 I live n I ion vs. Imitation the growth of experience, ought to get some support from the careful examination of the growth of the child's experi- ence at the very time when he seems to be most clearly illustrating both of the limitations imposed by psychology upon his originality. In childhood he is most clearly sub- ject to these limitations, because then he is mainly a learner. He does not turn out many startling inventions then ; at least, they are not startling to others, however they may seem so to him. As a matter of fact, we can usually see whence he has derived most of the material of his thought, and by what kinds of reaction upon his mate- rial he has come to get it into the forms which his little inventions present. The task, therefore, to which we bring ourselves is a very plain and simple one: to detect in the inventions, the games, sand-piles, toy-houses, statements, beliefs, etc., of the child, any contributions he has himself made to the examples, situations, events, shapes of tool or thing, or what not, which stand ready at his hand and which he comes to perceive, think about, or act upon. In short, what does he as an individual contribute to the complexion of his own thought ? 59. There are two general principles apparently involved in all a child's originalities ; these two principles have grown up in my own mind as necessary interpretations of the observations which I have made of children in the last few years, and in the course of the meditating which I have done on the varied doings of childhood. I shall venture to state one of these principles at a time, in the form of a somewhat dogmatic-sounding opinion, and then go on to cite the evidence and give the illustrations upon which it is based, as far as space may permit. The Child's Inventions 99 1. 77/i? child's originalities are in great part the new ways in wJiicJi he finds his knowledges falling together in consequence of his attempts to act to advantage on what he already knows. Or, made more brief, his originalities arise through his action, struggle, trial of things for himself in an imitative way. 2. The child's originalities, further, are in great measure the combinations of his knowledges which he feels justified in expecting to hold for others to act on also. 60. These two statements I do not mean to make as two distinct principles operative apart or in opposition to each other, nor are they the expression of a chronological order in the child's development ; they rather present phases of the one fact of invention, and for convenience for reference we may call them respectively the ' personal phase' and the 'social phase.' There is a further statement, also, which I may make of both of them before going on to consider them separately ; a statement which it is well to make in advance of its clearer formulation from the evidence, since it brings the topic well into connection with our earlier distinctions in the child's development. This statement is to the effect that the child's inventions are, in these two phases, reflec- tions of the twofold aspects of. his own personal growth. It will be remembered that we found the child growing by the imitative absorption of material from the persons about him, in the first instance ; and then, in the second instance, by legislating his own personal growth the facts which he has found out about himself as a personal being back into the persons around him again. Now the first phase of his inventive activity is shown in connec- tion with the first of these personal movements : he is ioo Invent ion vs. Imitation original in tlic way lie learns from otliers by taking in personal elements from them. And the second phase of his originality is a function of the other process of his personal growth, he is original in the way he treats others, the way he disports himself in his intercourse with them. And the latter is a sort of test or proof of the value of the former to the child himself. 61. I. We may now take up for fuller treatment the ' personal ' phase of the child's inventions. In order to avoid repetition, use may be made of the results of the earlier pages devoted to the development of the child's sense of his ego or personal self ; and we may draw from the details the great fact that all his personal absorption from his immediate associates is through his tendency to imitate. The interesting character which draws him to this element or that in the man, woman, or child from whom he learns, is itself due to imitation ; for his interests are really only the intellectual reflection of his habits, and his habits are the motor phenomena which have resulted from his earlier activities of the same imita- tive type. But quite apart from theory, we are constrained by the facts to say that the method of his personal progress is imitation. For if we say that he cannot do anything without some approximate ability to apprehend what he is to do that is, without a content of revival of something already apprehended on an earlier occasion ; and if we go on to enforce the other psychological truth put in evidence just above that no action can take place which is not, in greater or less degree, the proper outcome of the motor energies of the revived content : admitting these two points, then the action which the child performs in any case must have an imitative character just in so far as The Child's Inventions 101 the habit which it tends to stimulate is true to the situa- tion outside him which the child observes ; that is, in so far as he succeeds in learning. For example, say a child sees me finger a ring. He has certain habits of action. The content of his conscious- ness my fingers tends to start the one of his habits of action which is attached to other contents most nearly like this one, i.e., his own fingers. But this movement of his fingers thus brought about is imitative ; and the fact that it is imitative, that is, that it is the motor expression of a presentation like the one set before him his finger sub- stituted for mine this is the reason, and the only reason, that a movement takes place by which he learns. In other words, he can only learn by imitating ; for if he only acts strictly on the revived elements of content which come up in his own consciousness from within, then he is acting strictly as he has acted before, and that teaches him noth- ing. On the other hand, he cannot act in ways absolutely new, for they come into his consciousness with no tendency to stir up any appropriate kinds of action. He cannot act suitably upon them at all. Hence it is only new presenta- tions which are assimilable to old ones that can get the benefit of the habits already attached to the old ones, and so lead to actions more or less suited to the new. But this is imitation. We have just been giving, as may have been evident, the basis of what is usually called the ' instinct of imitation.' The instinct to imitate operates by the use of the move- ments required to do the thing imitated. But unless the child has a sense of what movements will do it, he cannot produce them. This sense of the proper movements can only have come from the earlier performance of those IO2 Invent ion vs. Imitation movements in connection with some other mental content. And the movements associated with another mental con- tent can be available for this content only if this new content can take the place of the old one in the motor scheme. 1 62. Now the reader asks at once : Does the child learn anything by such imitations ? Is he not simply acting out his habits just the same whether it be the thought of his own fingers directly, or only the thought of them in- directly as suggested by the sight of some one else's fingers, which brings out the movement ? To this last question we may answer, yes, at once. The child may not learn anything important simply by the movement, since it is very largely a movement which he has made before. But let us put the question more broadly and ask whether he learns anything by the situa- tion as a whole ; that requires a very different answer. The question put by the reader may then be stated in general terms : How can the imitative situation operate to instruct the child ? 63. We must at once see that his own movements, his imitative actions, bring new elements into the situation. He has, just after he acts, three things in his mind let us say in the case of the imitation of the movements of the fingers. First, he sees the movements of the other person ; then he has the memory of his own finger-move- ments (probably indeed both of his fingers as they look and of the movements of them as felt) ; then finally, the sight of his own finger-movements. Now two different things may happen, and which of the two it is to be will 1 The mechanism of imitation is described in detail in my Mental Develop- ment, Chap. X., I, and Chap. XIII., 2. The Child's Inventions 103 depend largely on the age of the child. He may learn something, and he may not. If he have already attained what is called 'persistent imitation' the try-try-again tendency or the more developed exercise of volition which comes through the exercise of persistent imitation, then he will learn. Indeed, then he cannot help learning. For he will see the inadequacy of his attempt in the first instance and then rally his forces to do better. This means that he will act again ; but not as before simply upon the old sense of his own earlier finger-movements, but upon the whole threefold complex content which is now surging in his consciousness for expression. And added to it all, will be certain extraneous elements result- ing from his action : strains due to his attention, twitch- ings from his other limbs, rushings of blood to the head, pleasant emotional excitement, fatigue presently in the muscles used, etc. Now let us say he acts a second time. Here is again a new complexity of content, more varied, and as strange as the former one. Let him go on trying till he 'hits it' succeeds in making my finger-movements after me and then ask whether this movement is all that the child has learned ! 64. Apart from the acquisition of the finger-combination which is his immediate object, he has learned a variety of things. Only the principal features of his learning may be mentioned here : the essentials of the fact of learning itself apart from the details of this particular finger-exer- cise. He learns we may say, first, a great number of combinations which are not those he is after. Each of the single efforts which he makes is a novelty to him, and each has its interesting features. Indeed, if we watch him, and especially if we withdraw the 'copy' which our finger- IO4 Invention vs. Imitation combination sets before him, we may find his becoming so absorbed in the single efforts which he makes, the partial successes which crown his efforts, that he forgets to go on trying. He begins to reproduce his own combinations again and again, and so to learn them. So in each of his efforts, no matter how far remoyed it may be from the copy he sets out to imitate, in each of them he finds a possible combination of fruitful pursuit for his training and in many cases also fruitful for his utilities of movement. Then, again, another very valuable lesson ; he learns the method of all learning. He begins to see that it is he who varies the copy by trying to reproduce it ; that he turns out interesting combinations which are his own peculiar property. He stops in wonder before his own doings, and runs again to his elders or to his companions saying, ' See what I can do.' He thus grows to recognize himself as more than a mere imitator. He begins to see that it is just by this method of exercising themselves that the other persons from whom he is accustomed to learn get their facility in giving him new things to learn ; and so he gradually apprehends that after all he is not entirely dependent upon them for the setting of new lessons to himself. He begins to be in a measure self-regulative in the tasks of his daily life. These are the two great aspects of his learning both much more important than the mere acquisition of the single action which he sets out to do. In regard to that latter he is imitative, he is constrained by the copy, he is in a sense a slave, so far as it is legitimate to look at him as in any wise merely learning that one thing. The weak- minded are, in this sense, merely imitators ; they learn only one thing at a time, and learn it by the direct com- The Child's Inventions 105 pelling force of the copy set up before them and driven into them. For them alone is it a sign of slavery to imitate. And to them it is so, merely because they have no capacity to be anything but slaves. Remove the bonds of their limi- tation the bonds to imitation and far from becoming free, they would perish. But the normal child the child of restless attention, absorbing interests, the dawning sense of an agency of his own which is destined to set law in its turn to the world as well as to himself he is never a slave even in his most strenuous imitations. And the further examination of his learning will show us as much. 65. First, we may say that each of the situations which arises from his effort to reproduce the copy is an invention of the child's. It is so because he works it out; no one else in the world knows it nor can reproduce it. He aims, it is true, not at doing anything new ; he aims at the thing the copy sets for him to imitate. But what he does differs both from this and from anything he has ever done before. It is a new synthesis of old material, of his old pictures of finger-movements, in this case, with the new picture presented to his eye, and his old strains of muscle, shortness of breath, rushing of blood, setting of glottis, bending of joints, etc. But the outcome that is new, both in the new picture of finger-movements and in the setting together of the strains, organic sensations, and all. He has a new thing to contemplate and he is withal a new person to contemplate it. The plane of his being and contemplation is now a grade higher. 66. We have already seen how it is that his sense of himself grows by these accretions from the elements of personality taken in by imitation. It is thus that the projective in the personal life of father, mother, etc., are 106 Invention vs. Imitation incorporated in his thought of his own subjective self. This new self, at each new plane, is also a real invention. The child not only becomes a self, not only acquires the sense of higher power, mastery, goodness, or whatever aspect of his personal growth the particular instance may illustrate ; he does more. He makes it ; he gets it for himself by his own action ; he achieves, invents it. And the same is true of all his knowledges. He never simply takes the knowledge of some one else. This it would be impossible for him to do. Even the weak-minded of whom I have spoken must have enough self-control to imitate, and enough assimilative capacity to hold together, in a new form, the elements which surge into his con- sciousness through and with his imitative act. But the active healthy child brings a new self up to a new object every time he acts in a way not entirely dictated by habit ; and the result ensuing, the second construction which then again follows his new act, is another invention for him to take delight in. The growth of self is seen in the growth of his demand that his results shall show constantly more independence of the external copy. The growing com- plexity and utility of the invention which he turns out is a new premium put in his thought upon the need of con- sidering himself more than an imitator. So he comes to view himself as a free man who, in an ever-increasing degree, bends nature and his fellow-man to his will, and to view what he does as a contribution to the arrange- ments and utilities of things. 67. To illustrate how this works practically, we may take this instance from my child's use of her building blocks. She sits on the floor and I ask her to make a church like the one she sees pictured in her book. The Child's Inventions 107 She begins, lays the foundation of the church : a long line of blocks laid straight, with another line crossing the first about two-thirds of its length. Then suddenly her face lights up and she quickly takes more blocks and lays a third line parallel with the second and crossing the long line at one-third of its length. " What are you doing that for, I ask ; I never taught you to make a church with two cross lines." " Oh, no ; I am making an animal," says she, "with a head and a tail and four legs." She has, to my knowledge, never made an animal like this before. And she certainly did not set out to make an animal. It had come to her in her progress with the church that the arrangement might be altered so as to make an animal. That is, her mental picture had come, in her action upon it, Especially in laying the cross-line of blocks, to be assimilated with her old mental picture of an animal ; and forthwith, by the addition of another line like the former, the church turned into an animal. Now this is an invention in the strictest sense. It is peculiar to the child. Who ever before made an animal out of a church ? What external influence suggested to the child the similarity between the essential lines of the two objects ? What former single mental picture of her own adequately explains this sudden outcome ? If none of these, then all the sources are exhausted, and we must say that she is an inventor as much as any historical genius is who has enriched the world by his thought. 68. But now the child does something further ; she calls on everybody in the room to come and see the animal which she has made ; she, no less than the first Maker of whom we are told, looks upon the thing that she hath made and, lo ! it is very good. And then she io8 Invention vs. Imitation amuses herself by making the animal again and again, and saying also "it is not a church, for a church doesn't have these two ends " (the third line across). " I have made it into an animal!" So and this is her second invention she has changed her thought of herself. To herself she is now a person who can make animals out of churches. She is in a new sense or at least from a new point of view an agent; her growing sense of her own originality, power over things, freedom to depart from the thraldom of imitation, has received an impulse. The next time she comes to play with the blocks, the splendid invention of this occasion is full in her mind, and the blocks, together with the suggestions which I make for their use, are to her things for her domineering ego to trifle with, despise, and 'utilize as never before. She has, therefore, come to a new thought of herself, and this is also a discovery, an invention. 69. So numerous instances might be cited from the lives of my children, many more complex than this one, but all the same in the essential elements of the situation. And the great fact to be remarked is that which we formulated in the beginning : that the result is the out- come of the child 's action, of his personal struggle, in the first instance ; and then, second, that the nature of his struggle is seen to be that of strenuous exercise of the habitual imitative activities which lie has already acquired. The child's originalities are not bolts from the blue, nor earthquakes from below ; they are simply his own interpretations, through his own action, of the situation which spreads its elements about him in the matter-of- fact doings of the life of habit. By exercising his habits in the new and original ways which strenuous imitation The Child's Inventions 109 allows, he finds out more both about himself and about the world. Then we observers find ourselves inquiring, from the point of view of our ignorance of the processes going on in his consciousness, how such a beautiful, true, useful thing could have come to be his discovery. So much may be said of the facts of the child's originali- ties from the point of view of their origin ; it remains to consider the second aspect of the case already pointed out above under the phrase ' social phase ' of invention. It will be remembered that the aspect now put in evidence in some detail was described as the ' personal phase ' of invention. 70. II. Coming to take up the so-called ' social ' aspect of this question, we may again state the general principle which the following pages are to illustrate : the principle that the child now, after having made his discovery, does not treat it as an individual possession, but considers it common property, for others as for himself, and then, withal, considers others subject to the same need of find- ing it true that he is. The first phase of originality we have found to have its mental motive in the child's absorption of new elements of the personal and generally projective environment ; he imitates, as has been made clear, and proves himself an inventor in the very midst of his imitations. The process is that of the first movement described in the theory of what was called in the earlier chapter a 'dialectic of personal growth.' The projective becomes subjective, and by so doing it becomes in each event an invention. But it will be remembered that the child understands others better by coming to better knowledge of himself. He reads out of himself the facts learned of himself ; and so no Invention vs. Imitation lodges the richer thought of self also in the persons of others. This has been enlarged upon sufficiently in the earlier connection. Now this second aspect of his treatment of the material of his personal thought adds an interesting phase also to the meaning of his originalities. Whatever his construc- tions are, he reads them into the appropriate escort, con- nection, setting, in the world of persons and things around him. And the degree of success in this process, the degree of what we call truth which he finds his new syntheses attaining under this exaction, this is the measure of his learning. 71. As to the method which the child pursues here, perhaps an example of what we call ' inventive lies ' may serve us best. H. was guilty of the first lie of this kind, which I discovered, in her twenty-first month. On May 27, 1891, I was busying myself with some students' ex- amination papers which were tied up in bundles of a size to weigh about one to two pounds each. A number of these bundles had been piled up in the passage-way out of sight from where I sat ; and as H. came in at the door I told her that she might help me by bringing them into the room. To this she gladly assented and began bringing them in one by one to the floor before my chair. Pres- ently she tired of the task, and I could see that she wished to leave off ; her step grew slow and her countenance grave. Then, after bringing one of the bundles, she stopped before me, hesitated a moment, and then said 'no moi' ('no more,' meaning, 'there are no more'). Knowing the real number of the packages, I suspected a certain kind of obliquity and so looked somewhat severe as I asked 'are there really no more ? ' She was evidently discomforted The Child 's Inventions 1 1 1 by the question and perhaps also by the manner of it ; and after hesitating a moment or two looked out in the direction of the remaining packages and said ' moi ' (' there are more '), and ran out to bring in another to show me. This is an instance of what I have called an inventive lie; and it will throw light on the point which I wish to make. 72. When we come to ask how it was that H. resorted to this device to avoid further work, we see that it is neces- sary to make certain presuppositions of what was going on in her consciousness. In the first place, there was in her mind a thought which went farther than the facts ; she had to picture a situation in which the essential ele- ment was the absence of more of the packages in the original pile. This is at the outset an invention of the ' personal ' sort already described and explained in the fore- going passages. It has been through her action in bring- ing some of the bundles in from the passage that she has got what reason she has for the imagination that there are no more ; that is, that she has brought them all. This we may suppose becomes a very familiar thought to her as she begins to grow fatigued ; the thought of the situation when all should be done and she should be re- lieved. But now, in addition to this thought, there is of course the continued thought of the presence of the father, myself, as the director, the inciter, the one whose commendation is to be gained ; and with this there is the further invention, arising also through her activities in social situations preceding this, the thought of the situa- tion when, the bundles all gone, her new self receives commendation from the parent whose work has been done for him. So far, clearly, we are proceeding on the 1 1 2 Invention vs. Imitation rules of construction by action given in the first principle stated above. What is necessary, besides, to explain the child's lie ? This, I think : the thought that her construction of the situation is also my construction of the situation, or would be if my thought went forth to the end of the task as hers does. All that is needed to effect this in my mind is the information that the bundles are all gone. That would make the invention true just as true as if she went on with the work and finished it. The essence of the lie is just the adoption of this social device to produce convic- tion as a substitute for the ordinary actual facts. And this mental movement, on the part of the child, apart from its use in deceiving others as in this case, which is taken only as a case of the broader phenomenon, not as the only or the most frequent case of children's lies, is an clement in all originality viewed as truth. As I have said above, it is the need which the child feels that others as well as himself think his original thoughts and act upon them as he does. In this case the child adopts a conscious social method and adults do in their lies to get this sec- ond element artificially attached to mental constructions which really lack it. Without it both her invention of the new situation and her thought of her new self, as having wrought the situation, are not true. 73. Let me explain a little further what I conceive this second factor in invention to be. We may get at it pos- sibly better by looking at the child's mental constructions negatively. Let us ask what distinguishes his inven- tions, his originalities, the things of some dignity and worth and truth, from mere imaginations or fancies as such ? Certainly he has vain imaginations, no less than The Child's Inventions 113 we adults ; and the real originalities, the truthful ones, must have some distinguishing mark. This question presents itself in a very broad way to general psychology ; and I may at once assume the result that in the criterion established by our first principle i.e., that it is by action and thought upon real things, copies, events, that the true inventions arise we have confirmed the conclusion reached theoretically above, which rules out the vagaries of mere fancy, or so-called ' passive ' imagination. The outcome of fancy, or in general of imagination uncontrolled by present reality or by the atti- tude of strenuous thinking and action upon a real situa- tion, is generally worthless. So when I ask how the ordinary creations of the mind, in its normal pursuit of truth, and in the midst of its full struggles for consistent and enlightened conduct, fall short of being true inven- tions, it is a closer question, the very necessity for which is often overlooked. It is this, in the terms of my child's lie ; what is the value, to the child's construction, of the further acceptance of it by me which she tells the ' lie ' to secure ? Is it a true invention before this, or does the child's sense that I must accept it illustrate a real and necessary requirement ? I think it does represent a real requirement, and this because this factor, when it is secured, brings into the very construction itself new elements, the assimilation of whicJi revises and purifies the construction itself. It will be remembered that we found the child- constantly reading his subjective experiences into others, trying to make all his thought of himself 'ejective.' He constantly practises upon his little brother, seeing how he will act, planning situations based on what he thinks the little fellow will do T 14 Invention vs. Imitation in this circumstance or that ; in it all putting to the test of experiment the features of himself that he now enter- tains in his thought ; seeing, by the unconscious tests of action, whether he be not like others. This we have seen to be an insatiable demand of the child, and no less an essential movement in his personal growth. By this series of tests he learns what is really true of personality in gen- eral, and so has his ' socius ' consciousness built up. Just in so far as the alter responds differently from his expecta- tion, that is something new in the alter ; and he then shifts about again to the learning pole of the dialectic, takes up the imitative attitude, and so aims to realize in himself a larger revised thought both of himself and of the other. It is a part of his constructive tendency that his inven- tions should be tested in just the same way. It is impos- sible for the child to rest in them as mere thoughts of his subjective self. His very confidence in them is contin- gent upon the successful imposition of them upon the alter. " He is like me," we can fancy the child saying, " he will think as I do ; this result that I get by my action is fit for his action too. I, an ego, do this ; if he be any- thing of an ego, let him do it also." So he sets this trap for the alter, by asking that he act also upon the inven- tion. And just in so far as his thought does not stand this test, so far as other persons do not accept it and act on it, just so far does it become impossible for the original thinker to adhere to it ; for the action of the other in departing from expectation is now a reacting factor upon the thought of self. My sense of attraction he might go on to say toward what he does act on, conflicts with my very thought of my former invention ; I must forth- The Child's Inventions 115 with invent a new thought of myself in the light of his action, and then to this new self the former invention is only a half-truth, to be supplemented by new lessons, and then, in turn, to be again tested by the same social test. 74. To deny this would be to surrender, it seems to me, one of the main lessons which we seemed to learn from the growth of the personal and social sense ; the lesson that the suggestions constantly received from the persons around us are elements in the thought of self, and through the thought of self, elements also in the valuation passed on all persons and things. In the case of the child's invention of an animal out of the outline plan of the church, as narrated above, her exhibition of it to others and her sense of their acceptance of the figure for an ani- mal, is a real and necessary part of the true invention. Suppose those to whom she appealed had told her " No, that will not do for an animal ; it has no head, but only a neck," she would have accepted the amendment and scouted the construction in which she before took pride. So when we do accept it for an animal, agreeing with her that she has made a happy thing, that is the confirmation which it is a necessary movement of her personal devel- opment to require. It is in the same sense a part of the invention as the other materials of it were in the first instance. The child's sense of reality or material truth, when she has once departed from the purely mechanical facts which her native reactions guarantee for her, involves this very element of social confirmation. While we cannot say that the construction which the child makes, considered simply for himself, is not in a sense an invention, still we can say that it is not a com- plete invention. The very attempt to put the question in n6 Invention vs. Imitation that way is mistaken. The child himself never attempts to make this artificial distinction between what he is and what he does, and again between what he does altogether alone and what he does with the help of others. His world of reality is one, and he is there in the midst of it. He knows only the one personal experience in which the two phases are united in one superb series of progressive advances. To stop him off short without the social con- firmation for his constructions is to leave him in that condition of permanent hesitation, doubt, and anxiety, which produces, when forced, all sorts of personal isola- tions and often, as a matter of fact in the cases of adult patients, ends in certain forms of mania known as the 'insanities of doubt.' 1 75. The relative importance of the two factors now described that called ' personal ' and that called ' social ' differs greatly in different children, and also at different periods in the life of the same child. We find the one child at times some children constitutionally develop- ing very fast in the direction of an exaggerated sense of personal agency, independence, self-confidence, trust in the outcome of his own processes of thought with a mini- mum of social confirmation. This tendency is seen in the phenomenon which has been lately called 'contrary suggestion.' 2 The child seems to rebel against instruc- tion, to insist upon his own understanding and use of things, and to try to impose his individual thought, whether 1 This position brings to mind that of Royce (Pkilos. Jfev., September to November, 1895), wno nn ds a social ingredient in the knowledge of external nature. My conclusion would support this, provided we mean judgments of nature in distinction from the mere brute contacts with it which do not im- plicate the sense of the personal self. Cf. Appendix E. * Mental Development, Chap. VI., 6. The Child's Inventions 117 or no, upon the persons who touch his life. This is, when not too insistent, a healthy sign. It betokens the rapid progress of the assimilation of elements to his nucleus of 'subject,' which carries with it the sense of agency, power, and freedom. 1 The 'contrary* boy is a very promising boy, provided he be not allowed to domineer when he should be made to obey. But this spirit should be con- fined within very strait limits ; for it is evident that the indulgence, in the boy or girl, of the sense of self- sufficiency, will itself tend to dwarf and impoverish that very sense of self on which it is based. For the stopping up of the avenues of imitation which it involves, cuts off the supply of higher personal suggestion upon which the growth of the self-sense depends. For instance, how can the ethical sense, which is essentially a subordination of all private thoughts of self, grow more competent, when the suggestions which stand for law are not humbly received, nor obediently ? On the other hand, also, there are many and periods again in the life of all in whom the second aspect of the whole process of invention takes on an exaggerated impor- tance. The need of social confirmation becomes so great to the child that his distrust of his single-handed per- formances becomes excessive and abnormal. He meets so often the overriding lessons of the alter, finds his small meed of understanding so insufficient for his life, grows so accustomed to see the larger wisdom of his adults victorious over the objects and events of nature by which, when alone, he is piteously overcome, that he dare not stand up without a social arm about him. This period of timidity in most children follows that of aggression. 1 Cf. Sects. 148 f. on ' Social Opposition.' Ii8 Invention vs. Imitation In my two little girls both periods have been well marked, and the order has been the same despite very great differences in general disposition. They both had the period of aggression, or of exaggerated personality with contrariness in the third-to-fifth half-year ; and this we should expect from the fact that it is then that the period of organic bashf ulness 1 is coming to an end. The child is losing his constitutional fear of persons, and the bond of restraint to the rapid development of his sense of his own subjective importance is being released. But then followed in each of these children though much more marked in the one, E., than in the other a period of extreme social dependence. In the child E. this was still very marked in the fourth year. She was never comfortable in any thought of her own until she found some one to agree with her in entertaining it. And in her case this went to such an interesting extreme that she invented persons out of inanimate objects, if need be, in order to convince these imaginary beings of the truth of her thought or to try upon them the working of a fancied situation. In this latter fact, indeed, we come upon a tendency which is found fully developed in the play-instinct, so called, to which I shall return later for additional illustrations both of the general growth of the social sense and also of the varied aspects of the child's invention. 2 76. Further, as between the two general types of mind which psychology nowadays finds it safe to distinguish, the 'sensory' and the 'motor,' I think the balance be- tween the two phases of invention is pretty well divided. 1 Ment. Devel., Chap. VI., 6, and below, Chap. VI., 2. * See below, Chap. IV., 2. The Child's Inventions 119 The motor child is impulsive, imitative, self-confident ; his self-sense takes the lead in the progress of his invention, and he is apt to be unsafe in the practical working out of his thought. This tendency, if uncorrected in the educa- tive stages of his growth, is likely to issue in the forms of idiosyncrasy which we find in the men whom we find 'opinionated,' intolerant, hasty, and unreliable in mat- ters requiring careful reflection. These are the persons, however, who ' show up ' best in emergencies ; they arrive at decisions quickly, and enforce them promptly. The other type, the sensory individual, is likely to be inventive in the more profound and finished sense required by the second principle put in evidence above. His habit of getting social confirmation becomes really a sort of second deliberation to him, which issues in a revised and more mature thought of the situation before him. His constant question is : ' What will my fellow-men think of this ? ' and ' Will this work in society or in the mechani- cal sphere of its intended application ? ' This brings a further mass of content back upon his first construction, and so leads to a further grouping or apperception of the situation as a whole. He thus gets beyond the mere primary dependence, characteristic of the child, upon the actual pronouncement of society, and finds in himself the means of anticipating the voice of his social fellows. His final confidence thus reached, although always more slow in coming and less defiant in its bearing, is still better grounded than that of the other type, and is, in so far, more prophetic of a truthful outcome. 77. We may sum up the descriptive account of the child's originalities under a term which is sufficiently general on the one hand, and on the other hand suffi- I2O Invention vs. Imitation ciently popular, by calling them in all cases the child's ' interpretations.' The imitative copy within himself or out in the world is what he interprets ; and into his inter- pretation goes all the wealth of his earlier informations, his habits, and his anticipations. The first interpretation is the synthesis which he effects, by his own action, of the new data with his personal growth. But with this first interpretation, as we have seen, he does not rest satisfied. He makes a second interpretation through an appeal to his social fellows, or to his own social judgment. On the basis of the response which he gets, a new synthesis arises constituting his present invention. This is held until the whole mass of elements going to make it up is again pre- cipitated for another interpretation by some new sugges- tion from the sources of his knowledge. So he never rests, never ceases to invent. 3. Selective Thinking 78. The question which still remained over after our theoretical determinations was that of the actual ground of the selection of the valuable variations which remain as truthful thoughts in the mind of the child and the man. This was deferred until we should have examined the actual inventions of the child. I think the result of our examination justifies in a measure the expectation that some light would come to us. For we have found the child making his selections of the things which he will finally think to be true under certain leading rules. i. /// tin- realm of social suggestion we find that the new thoughts are functions of the personal self. Only those things which the child can assimilate, by imitation, in his own personal growth become true to him ; he can Selective Thinking 121 hold true of others, and of persons generally, only those things which he can master by his own imitative action, and make true of himself. 2. Of other truths, whether directly attributable to persons or not, only those come to be real and valid to him which hold for others also. This means that in all his thinking, if his thoughts are to be of value, and to be selected as true, his thought of self is so far implicated that it is a personal achievement ; it must stand liable to incur the inspection of the alter whose existence is ejectively guaranteed by the thought of self. This demand for social confirmation is what we should expect from the dialectic of personal growth in all cases in which the con- viction involved is in any sense an expression of a per- sonal attitude. 3. These results fall in with the analyses of belief and judgment made by recent writers. In an earlier work the outcome of such an analysis has been expressed in these words : " Belief is the personal endorsement of reality"; 1 and belief and judgment are there considered different phases of the going-out of the motor processes of impulse and 'need' upon their objects. 2 Without assum- ing this view with reference to all judgments, although I think it is true, we may yet say : in so far as a per- sonal attitude is involved in a judgment, in so far the organization of the personal self is the ground of the selection of the particular thought as true? And, further, 1 Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and Will, p. 158. See Ormond, 'The Negative in Logic' (Psych. Rev., May, 1867); also the newer logicians, Brentano, Sigwart, who tend to identify judgment with the belief attitude of mind. * Ibid., p. 171 ; also Bain and Stout. 8 This is intimated jn the treatment of my Handbook in the.se words: 122 Invention vs. Imitation when the self-thought is thus the nucleus of organization, there the social criterion of truth must also be in force. The general conclusion is, therefore, that there is a great sphere of truth, of selective thinking, of inventions judged true, of mental constructions believed, in which the criterion of selection is all along availability for imitative social assimilation in the growth of the thought of self ; and unless in some spheres we be able to find other com- pelling criteria of truth, we shall have to say the same of all selective thinking. 1 " Amid the variations of composite and varying reality, the most fixed point of reference is the feeling of self. All reality is given us through our own expe- rience, and the centre of experience is self and its needs." (Lot. fit., p. 170.) 1 This last clause expresses the probability, in my personal view. The further interesting question arises (and would demand discussion but for our limitation to social interpretations), what relation such a principle of selec- tion in the realm of thought bears to the ordinary utility-selection as operative in organic accommodation. Dr. Urban's paper already referred to (Psych. Review, July, 1897) discusses the question of utility briefly. Without going into details, I may say that the criterion of utility is preserved in both of the aspects of selective thinking pointed out in the text. I. In thinking, the agent of accommodation is the attention, which has its own pleasure and pain tone, and in the production of the variations from which the true thoughts are selected, the attention represents the motor habits in which according to the general point of view developed above ( 55) the variations primarily take place. Cf. my Mental Development, pp. 312 f., 331 f., for evidence of varia- tions in the attention complex. Accommodation of the attention is necessary to all thinking. It is by restless and energetic attention upon old knowledges that the new thoughts come. The variety of attention modes dictates the variety of new thoughts. It is this accommodation which constitutes the child's reception and absorption of relatively abstract and theoretical new material. It is the more formal utility element, which we might conceive to be still present in case further social ratification were not available. But, 2, the social criterion is also a direct utility requirement. His need of learning is to the child his most strenuous need; and social sources are his first and last, in Irnrning the lessons of his life. I should say, therefore, that selective thinking does fall under the law of utility-selection. The selection of true thoughts of the external world is made by the accommodation of organic movement, which proceeds by the ' functional selection of overproduced movements ' Private Judgment 123 4. Private Judgment 79. In the earlier chapter we had reason, from an objec- tive point of view, for finding a certain 'social judgment ' current in each society, represented by public opinion, and coming out in the attitudes of individuals in situations of social moment. We called its exercise in the individual 'judgment' by a certain license, and in deference to popu- lar usage. It seemed to us well to say that the socially eligible and competent person was a man of 'good judg- ment ' in the relations and circumstances of his social life. In what has gone before in this chapter we have now seen something of the rise of selective thinking in the mind of the individual. It has seemed to proceed, at least in those cases which involve the implication, to however slight an extent, of the personal thought and interest of the man or child, by imitation. And this examination, conducted from the point of view of the conditions of the rise of selective thinking in the person himself, led us to see that his criterion all the way along is necessarily in so far as he reaches mature convictions of truth a social criterion. Further, this sense of personal security in a (Ment. Devel., p. 179). This, then, has its identical principle in the accom- modation of the attention in thinking; and in thinking, in so far at least as it proceeds by social stimulations, we find the further selective function of judgment, in the way we have described. Dr. Urban thinks that the utility principle gets no application to the theoretical relationships discovered inside a whole of knowledge, although the whole, as a concrete whole, is selected on the utility principle. But it would seem that the parts are themselves possible wholes, and could not have been established otherwise, and the relations have already been ' selected.' I see no other possible natural history account of theoretical knowledge. I think Dr. Urban's view on this point is influenced by his acceptance of the ' obstruction of energy ' theory of the origin of thought, which I have criticised above ( 57, note). 124 Invention vs. Imitation thought, of personal endorsement of it, is what is called in psychology ' judgment.' 80. It is now a simple matter to let these two points of view give to each other a certain mutual confirmation. The ' social judgment' is, when looked at from the side of its currency in society, and named therefor, one and the same with the private judgment of the individuals which make the society up. The social criterion of selec- tion in private judgment is just the bridge between the two sets of values, public and private. The social judgment gets its competence from the common absorption of the same imitative copies by all the individuals ; and the indi- vidual's private judgment gets its social validity from the conditions of its social origin. It is only then in a relative sense that the private judg- ment is private ; and it is only in a relative sense that the public judgment is public ; for in the main they are the same. 1 81. But it may be asked: Is it true that our private judgments have the social ingredient attributed to them ? Are we not competent to solve problems by sheer private thinking, and then to know that the solution is true by sheer private conviction ? both with no reference to any- body else ? The fuller answer to this question will appear as our development proceeds ; but it may be well to make two general statements in reference to this possibility. i. However independent one's private judgment may be, and however strenuously in opposition it may seem to the views current in society, yet he who thus judges as- sumes, all the way through, the common standards of 1 This might be called in a sense a ' social deduction of the category of universality/ to speak in a Kantian phrase borrowed from Professor Royce. Private Judgment 125 truth and error which society also assumes. The position taken above does not result in detracting in the least from the competency of the individual's judgments. It only seeks to state the influences which have worked to enable him to build up his competent judgments. Here as else- where habit comes to rule. Good habits of judgment tell in individuals. Hereditary differences are great. And it is no argument against the position taken above, to cite cases of private judgment which seem competent. That I shall myself do later on. 2. I have admitted the possibility of the establishing of other criteria of truth in other fields of knowledge. At least we do not need to pass on that question now : An a priori philosopher may say that mathematical knowledge is not at all subject to social confirmation. Let him believe it. What is essential for our position is that, so far as the individual's knowledge is subject to a process of selective development in experience, so far that knowledge is not reached exclusively by private tests. The development is guided in part by sociaV tests ; and the judgments of truth which arise in the individual in the progress of it are, in so far, social judgments. CHAPTER IV SOCIAL AIDS TO INVENTION 82. WITH the view which we have now reached of the nature of invention in the child, we are prepared to trace its growth with his, and to point out the main aids to its progress in his life-history. The child differs from the young animal mainly in this feature : the thought of himself as a personal being. It is in those functions through which his personal growth proceeds that we should expect to find his life mainly dif- ferentiated from the brutes. If the foregoing account be true of the method of the personal growth of the child, of his progress in his thought of himself, the means which his environment offers for the satisfaction of his demands should stand out most prominently, both in the contrast with the animal's environment, and also as prominent per se. There should be a premium put, in society, upon the formal or conventional modes of action which give constant patterns and supports to the child's need of progressive realization of himself and of knowledge of the world ; and there should be equally a general mode of social expression, a method of bringing his acquisi- tions to the social test ; these two features of the social whole being in their origin themselves the outcome of the very demand to which at every stage of progress they are found to minister. The child must at every 126 Language 127 stage have some general imitative copies before him, already realized in society ; he must reproduce these in his own growth. And the extent to which he can go, with the vis a tergo of heredity behind him, depends upon the degree in which his social environment is itself a thing of set and formulated convention. On the other hand, the active method, both of his learning amid the conventions of the family, school, etc., and of the setting of his habits in the forms of social warrant and utility, must have some general modes of issue also common to the social group as a whole. Both these functions are served pre-eminently by speech; and in them, taken together, I think the true philosophy of speech is to be found. Not only is this true of the development of speech in the individual child, its ontogenetic phase ; but it holds also of the origin and development of speech in the race its phylogenetic phase. 1 We may confine our inquiry for the present to the social function of learning and expression in the child, by means of the acquisition and use of spoken language. First, we may consider the acquisition of language by the child and the lessons of it in his progress as a personal and inventive being ; and second, the use which he makes of speech, and its lessons as well. These two topics, it is plain, carry farther the distinction between ' imitative ' and ' social ' invention already dwelt upon. 2 1 Avenarius makes speech the great means of ' introjection ' in its historical development : Mensch. Weltbegriff, p. 44. 2 The consideration of speech, as well as of play and art, as social instrument, must be very sketchy in a single chapter, and the following general indications should be considered only as suggestions. 128 Social Aids to Invention i. Language 83. I. The Method of Learning Language. All the theories of the child's procedure in acquiring language are based upon the very evident fact that speech is an imitative function. This is so evidently true that the temptation is strong to use speech in all cases to illustrate imitation at its purest. The process of association by which the child gradually gets the sounds of words heard connected with his own lip and tongue sensations in speaking the same words, and then uses his own sounds to control the muscular movements, instead of still wait- ing for the voices of others, these processes are also commonly recognized, and I shall not delay upon them. Neither do I propose to institute an inquiry into the phonetics of the infant's progress with language, ask- ing what letters he learns first, last, and between. All that is beside the present problem, interesting and impor- tant as it is in itself. The aspect of the case to which attention is now directed is a different one and one not so commonly discussed ; indeed, I do not know of any dis- cussions of just the function of the child's particular imita- tions of speech-sounds, in enabling him to come first into the language tradition and through that into all the social heritage of his people. 84. The use made by the child of the language of those about him is at first quite unreflective ; that is, the use for his own direct imitations. He gets, it is true, a large and varied sense of the meanings of words, such as 'papa,' 'mamma,' 'spoon,' 'baby,' 'chair,' etc., as used by other per- sons before he shows at all the tendency to acquire speech for himself. He learns also a great variety of associations Language 129 between words which he hears and things which lie about him ; all this is part of the general system of sugges- tions which his passing life-panorama of things and events impresses upon him. This indicates on the organic side the great readiness of his nerve machinery to undertake the tasks of life. His active life is somewhat behind the receptive ; that is, somewhat less formed at the begin- ning of his career. So he brings to his first lessons in active imitation a certain mass of informations which are ready to cluster up upon his further acquisitions and assimilate them. Here we find in the child himself, therefore, a certain body of well-knitted meshes or nets ready to catch his newly acquired ' copies ' as he repro- duces them from out the environment, and to give them meaning in terms of safe knowledge. This is the sort of first interpretation or personal invention already signalized above. 85. But as soon as the child begins to imitate things seen or heard, he strikes into perfect gold-mines, of the richness of which he knows nothing ; mines in which the wisdom and growth of ages of ancestral life are hidden in nuggets of purest intellectual ore. His efforts, it is true, merely scratch the surface. All his learning is but find- ing out the deeper and ever-deeper meaning of the surface- exposed strata. This we have seen in tracing the very gradual development of the sense of self. He has to go through a series of very remarkable insights, directed now outward, now inward, now outward again, all bring- ing him to a fuller and fuller apprehension of what people are and what their actions mean. So it is with every category of his learning ; and most of all so of his learning to speak. 130 Social Aids to Invention The case of this function is the more important and interesting since not only is it the way of his learning language in itself, but it is then through speech that he goes on to learn almost everything else. Speech has its main value not as an exercise in itself, but as an instru- ment ; yet it has first to be learned as any other function has to be it has to be first itself an acquisition in order then to be available for the uses it goes on to sub- serve. And the way of getting to speak by imitation is itself perhaps the profoundest pedagogical influence in the child's mental history. His instinctive imitation of word-sounds opens a door to the entrance of word-meanings. His rapport with the per- son who speaks to him is a little fuller, a little more sym- pathetic, when the child can utter the same word. His utterance of it leads to the common observation of the thing the word denotes ; to the common doing of the act which it describes. Further, the rapport thus established now extends away from the individual thing, at first pres- ent at the learning. The distant object, the past or future event, can now be referred to. So the basis is laid for a new word-lesson : the lesson of the relation of the object which is now here on one hand, to that on the other hand which, though not here, yet can be brought here in its meaning and memory by the use of the word which has been earlier acquired. So also can the relations of space be spanned by thought through this wonderful instrumen- tality, just as those of time are. Not that the child does not remember his past without uttering his memories in speech or before he can utter them ; but that he does not make these memories of his past the basis of the further extension of that personal understanding with the others Language 131 from whom his learning proceeds and by which his own thought of himself and the world must grow. It is because the parent or teacher has more lessons for him to learn because they are familiar with the relations of time, space, cause, etc. that it is important for him to learn the pres- ent words. His progress in thinking is to be like their progress before him, and, as a matter of fact, their prog- ress is embodied in their language. They cannot impart their learning except in the moulds in which they have learned ; so in his learning he must get the meaning of the word now set before him before he can grow into a further set of meanings. 1 The essential function of language, therefore, on the side of its acquisition by the child, is this pedagogical or 'leading-string' function. The child does not have to explore the relations of things for himself ; this his ances- tors have done for him, and their discoveries have been embodied in language. Then he comes upon the scene with the hereditary capacity for speech, and the tendency, also hereditary, to imitate. So of course he falls into the speech of his social elders and so finds himself, before he knows it, and without any necessity of understanding it, right in the midst of a most intricate network of social relationships directly available to him by the use of the words picked up by pleasant and playful imita- tion. For example, he learns the word ' knife,' perhaps, from his table experiences repeated daily ; then he is told ' the 1 The truth of this is seen in the difficulty found in teaching deaf and dumb children. Methods have to be devised which are foreign to the teacher's own normal modes of expression. Instead of natural social relations, these are conventions which are artificial, in the first place, to the teacher himself. 132 Social Aids to Invention knife cuts,' when, by a slip of his fingers, he has come in the way of his nurse's brandishments of that instrument. Now, by holding on to these two words ' knife cuts,' he is enabled to do at once what probably represents a long series of race experiences in the learning of meanings and relationships in nature. He 'conceives' the thing knife, since he is able to put into it, by means of his own per- sonal growth, a general meaning or expectation. Speech is his means of doing this, because it is, in the first instance, the race's means of doing this, and unless the race had developed some general way of doing it, neither could he. It prepares him at once for the further understanding of the increasing and differing instances of both the ideas thus crudely learned. And his knowledge then proceeds from the more general, the safer, to the less general, the concrete, the more risky. What I mean by this last remark may be brought out a little more fully. 86. Suppose the child beginning with no tendency to generalize his experience with the knife ; he would then not expect other knives, hatchets, tools with sharp edges, to cut him. He would put them all to the same test, either intentionally or by the accidents arising from his failure to apply the lesson of the earlier knife, and the result would be that he would be cut again and again. And should he extend this haphazard experience of learn- ing for himself to all the provinces of his action, it becomes plain that his life would not suffice to teach him the things he most needs to know. He would be forever falling by the wayside from the shock of evils which, as it is, he readily anticipates and avoids. We may call this a sort of generalization, and see in it, as we do, a case of personal accommodation by the use of a single copy of great gener- Language 133 ality for a group of similar experiences. It seems to dis- tinguish the child from the young animal ; not, indeed, merely as the perception of resemblance (Morgan), or asso- ciation by resemblance (James) both of these, I think, many animals clearly have and not indeed by any im- passable gulf in nature ; but as indicating the direction which development has taken, whereby the child's kind have become animals which reflect, while the others have not. I think that Romanes is right in holding it possible that the direction given to development through the first rude uses of movements for personal expression was really the direction taken by man, the reasoning creature, in dis- tinction from the lower animals that do not speak nor reason. 1 Speech is the crown and climax of expressive movements, and by it development took on its highest social and personal phase. 2 87. The child's main business with words is the absorp- tion of meanings, rather than the discovery of them. The discovery is a matter of social usage, which comes to him in great generalizations. The child has thrust upon him words used in their general significations ; he invents general situations or meanings to interpret the general speech which he hears ; in this he shows all the aptitude arising from his hereditary readiness for the race progress which the speech he hears itself embodies ; his happy responses are encored and he clings to them as useful 1 And he is also in accord with the text (see Sects. 78, 82) in the position that the essential distinction between man and the brute " truly consists . . . in the power to think which is given by introspective reflection in the light of self-consciousness" {Menial Rvol. in Man, p. 175), and he finds this "in its simplest manifestation . . . in judgment " (ibid., p. 178). 2 In another place {Mental Devel., Chap. IV.) I have reached the conclu- sion that right-handedness originally served purposes of expressive movement. 134 Social Aids to Invention things. Indeed, one of the most striking phenomena of infant speech is the way in which the child uses a newly acquired word to cover objects which present only the most vague and incidental resemblance to the right one. The books on child-psychology are full of instances, and I need not cite more. The boy learns that my knee is a 'knee.' He forthwith begins to look upon the corner of the table as a ' knee ' ; so is the end of the stick of fire- wood a ' knee ' ; the mountain becomes a ' big knee,' and the pencil should have its 'little knee' sharpened. All this is his first interpretation, the generalization which he falls into by all the force of race history and habitual reaction. These objects fulfil the conditions of the first apprehension of ' knee,' which issued in the fortunate utterance of the word ; so all of them also become it. So far we now understand: this is the 'leading-string' function of language, just to lead him forward into this error of generalization. The power to generalize is a part of his endowment ; it is his gift of originality, in so far. 88. II. The Uses of Language. We may say at the outset that the child's uses of language illustrate very plainly the second kind of invention described above as 'social.' It consists in a series of second interpretations of words on the basis of the first interpretation made in the way already described. The child's progress is by delimitation of the areas over which he may apply words. This comes about in his further experience in the applica- tion of his newly acquired terms. He finds himself strain- ing the meanings of them in his efforts to make himself understood by others. When he speaks of the 'knee' of the table, I fail to understand him, perhaps, and he sees that his first apprehension is in some way not that Language 1 35 which gets social confirmation. So he abandons his first interpretation, and either asks me why a table-corner is not a knee, or shows me by pointing what he means in speaking of the table's knee, or waits to hear in my further conversation the distinctions which resolve the puzzle for him. His tise of speech is a constant test of the inventive interpretations already made through imitation. His progress is the reverse of that of the ordinary psychological doctrine of conception, i.e., that it proceeds from the particular to the universal. It is from the more to the less general constantly. 1 He circumscribes his meanings by the very necessity of the use of language the necessity of being understood. This leads him on then to the second interpretation found in all valid invention. Speech of all things must work in society. And just in so far as, after each test, the meaning given to a word is found to be wrong, too inclu- sive, and in so far as he then gets a new sense of the right conditions for a new sense of the meaning, to that degree he makes a new meaning, a new invention, only to find it subject, as the old one was, to the tests of actual usage in his social group. 89. We find that when he does this, when he uses a word with a question on his face, waiting to see its fate in the understanding and critical treatment of others, then the first function of language, the 'leading-string' function, gets a new chance. The parent or teacher may now avail himself of the child's error to lead him into all truth. I hasten to inform the child that the table has no knees, 1 And prevailingly at this early period ; of course the other process is also real, but it characterizes a later period, i.e., that of logical rather than verbal instruction. Cf. the process called ' erosion ' in Mental Development, p. 328. 136 Social Aids to Invention and why. I make the occasion which reveals his wrong interpretation the occasion, also, of a new lesson whereby he takes up new elements of social suggestion for the refining of his words, and through them of his knowledge. There is no end, of course, to this give-and-take between the child and me ; he takes what I give, and gives it back in his own form of assimilation or invention, only to have his construction rejected by me with further directions whereby he may make it conform better to the demands of the developed system of meanings which I have already acquired by precisely the same process. So his second interpretation becomes in turn a first interpretation for another second. And so on indefinitely. So speech is genetically an aid of the first importance in the development of knowledge, and illustrates well the social factor which we have called 'judgment' above. Fur- ther I need not go in this connection. Yet the point should not be overlooked that in this development, the method of the acquisition of language is that of the organic growth of the person as a whole, considered in his social relation- ships. The child learns himself and his alter, as we have seen, by reacting upon constant suggestions from the alter personalities about him. We now see that speech is, after the first year or more of his life, the great vehicle of such suggestions, and consequently the great engine of his per- sonal development. When it is no longer a matter of learning speech, it is yet a matter of learning through speech. Both the process of taking up the projective into the subjective ego, and that of ejecting the subjective into the alter-ego, get their principal material through language. By their speech he learns of others, and by his speech he teaches others of himself. Language 137 90. III. The Uses of Reading and Hand^vr^t^ng. The position now assigned to speech in the social evolution of the child gets farther confirmation from the examination of those variations of this function found in reading and handwriting. In reading we find the receptive state of mind necessary to imitative invention very greatly empha- sized. Handwriting, on the other hand, and with it all the forms of inscription, printing, etc., into which it has developed in the advanced social organization of civilized peoples, represents the other pole, that of expressive utility. Handwriting is to the writer in the first instance as printing and publishing are to the author the means of submitting the results of his invention to the social tests, the nature of which we have already dwelt upon. The child writes in his copy-book for the criticism of his teacher. He writes to his friend, both as a child and later as an adult, for the expression of his thought ; but his expression is worthy and represents invention only as his friend's criticism tolerates and exploits it. If he thus become an author and his productions be fixed in the permanent form of print or archives, he is then appealing to a larger constituency of critics, and for a judgment extending over a longer period of time. This then is literature. It is the permanent series of recorded inven- tions in form and matter by which society has gradually enriched itself, and to which society has subjected itself as to a great series of limitations put upon its inventive power. Then as to reading the child not only learns to read, but he learns to assimilate the thoughts he reads. In learning merely to read, he is learning to reinvent for him- self the forms of language, just as we have seen him doing 138 Social Aids to Invention it also in learning to speak. But in reading, the ' copy- system,' so to speak, the gauges, controls, relationships, are richer than in his speech. For in the former he is no longer compelled to wait for the presence of his father or mother to give him the forms of correct discourse, and to give them to him in forms not always correct. His books are a graded series of wisely arranged forms of increasing complexity, and in them he has the slow processes of acquisition set out for his development as fast as the growth of his inventive powers enables him to utilize them. And having thus transcended the forms of usage in his own social circte, he goes on, by the supply of literature in the library to which he has access, to transcend as well the commonplace thought of daily life, in the community in which he lives. So by his reading and his writing he assimilates, on the one hand, and expresses himself socially for the judgment of his fellows, on the other hand. And these are the two fields, assimilation and expression, in which we have seen invention to have its place in the development of personality. This whole series of functions, therefore, which cluster about the use of language, constitute the most important of all the agencies of personal development ; not indeed because of any intrinsic peculiarity of them considered as personal performances, but entirely because in them the social Gcist, the socius, comes to ever-clearer and more adequate expression. 1 In the instrumentalities 1 In the general position of the paragraph I may be under unconscious indebtedness to the following sentence from a ' Syllabus of Lectures ' kindly sent me by Professor Royce: "It is true that Thought is greatly, although not wholly, dependent on Language; but this is due not to any peculiar magi in language, but rather to the importance of the latter as a socially Imitative Function." Play 139 of written discourse, the social conditions of the past are crystallized and made available ; and in them, as we have had occasion to see, the new individual, from the time that he is born into the world of independent action, finds much of his social heritage directly available. 2. Play 1 91. The place of the play-instinct in the general equip- ment of the young of animals and of man has had much discussion recently from a biological or phylogenetic point of view. 2 Apart from questions of origin, however, we may inquire into the meaning of play in relation to the social and personal development of the individual in short, its ontogenetic value in the somewhat summary way which the necessary omission of details requires. Among the more important functions of play, in the edu- cation of the individual for his life-work in a network of social relationships, the following may be indicated with some reference to their natural order. 92. I. Play is a most important form of organic exercise. In so far as the tendencies involved are instinctive, the ex- ercise is secured to the individual directly in the channels set by heredity, and required for the adult activities of the species. On the organic side, we find what it is our main object to show also for the mental that the ac- tions into which the young of animals tend normally and spontaneously to indulge, are those which the finished ac- 1 Since this section was written, I have fallen in with the very able work, Die Spiele tier Thiere, by Professor K. Groos. His theoretical conclusion as to the function of play, from the biological point of view, is the same as that favoured here. 2 Cf. Groos, /of. cit. 140 Social Aids to Invention tivities later brought into operation are to require. This is an important indication regarding the meaning of play from an historical or phylogenetic point of view, i.e., that the play-instinct as such has arisen to afford a sort of artificial recapitulation of the serious and strenuous exer- tions of race progress, and thereby to subserve the need, that the individual creature has, of training in the same exercises, before the time of storm and stress comes upon him. 1 As to the individual's advantage from play, it is shown so plainly in the illustrations cited from the life of young animals by other authors, that I need not stop to do more than recall some of these illustrations. It will be remem- bered that young dogs play at biting, chasing, fighting, clawing, etc., up to the limits of safety. This is inter- preted as showing that the play-instinct had its race-origin in the actual forms of struggle and competition by which the species has maintained and developed itself. We now see that these play-activities of the dog are also of direct value to him as a schooling in the life of self-support which he has to live as an individual dog. Another case the play of a kitten with a mouse after catching it is 1 See the abundant examples given in the work of Groos already referred to : I have discussed Professor Groos' book at some length in Sciente, Febru- ary 26, 1897. Two other indications of the function of play /'// race dn'thp- ment may be suggested. It serves, first, as an index of the organic devel- opment already secured to the species; it reveals something of the amount and direction of the hereditary impulse before it is actually developed in the individual. The plays of animals are particular, according to the species; just as much so as are their full-developed instincts. Second, by the ex- ercise involved in play the animal enlarges the scope, strengthens the force, and so aids the further development of the hereditary impulse in the species in the direction of the functions thus brought into play, through the operation of organic selection (the preservation of the better adapted or accommodated individuals under natural selection). Play 141 a still more striking instance of the schooling of the young into the stock-in-trade of the adult's method of support and of defence, when in a wild state. And so on through an infinite catalogue of instances. 93. II. Play is a most important method of realization of the social instincts. The summary consideration of the organic utilities of play prepares us for the part which the same group of activities play on the side of the conscious and social equipment of the young. Here the phenomena are seen in very marked form in the animal world, since in the brutes the phenomena of instinct are not compli- cated with those of the higher mental faculties to the same extent as in man, and the immediate urgencies are more pressing. So I may first speak with more reference to those higher animals which have well-developed social and collective methods of action. The kind of social preparation which the young of ani- mals get from their playful activities together is just the experimental verification of the benefits and pleasures of united action. The maternal and filial instincts involve a strain of play, in animals no less than in the human species. Dogs in their play at fighting often set numbers against swiftness or force, and exchange parts in the midst of the game, the chaser being chased, etc. Birds in the same flock will unite to storm a tree where a fancied enemy is perched, just as they combine against a real enemy when he has the tree to himself. Ants have sham battles with op- posing hosts ; thus getting the effects of military manoeuv- ring without bloodshed. 1 The extended ' make believe ' of animals for example in pretending to bite one another, with the elaborate responses of pretended anger and 1 I have lost my authority for this illustration but have the citation noted. 142 Social Aids to Invention attack shows invaluable practice in varying and under- standing quasi-social relations and situations. Mock fight- ing, sometimes very elaborate, is widespread in nature : ducks play at fighting on the water, birds in the air, animals injure one another in their playful zeal. 1 The remarkable phenomena of leadership show just the results to be ex- pected from game exercises. In certain packs of dogs, in the words of Hudson, "from the foremost in strength and power down to the weakest, there is a gradation in author- ity ; each one knows just how far he can go, which com- panion he can bully when he is in a bad temper . . . and to which he must yield in his turn." 2 Cases of division of responsibility between individuals in trapping prey, etc., are recorded, in which it is very difficult to see the possi- bility of the united action becoming fixed as an instinct unless the repetition of the situation in some such artificial way as the play-instinct would seem to give opportunity for enabling the animals to learn their part ; this might be of enough importance to shield the individuals for some gen- erations against natural selection. 8 1 Cf. Hudson, The Naturalist in La Plata, p. 308. The reader may con- sult Hudson's extended account of the social plays of birds and mammals (loc. '/., esp. Chap. XIX. "Music and Dancing in Nature") and Groos' Spiele, p. 202. It is a defect, I think, of Herr Groos' treatment that he does not make adequate recognition of the social function among the utilities of play. (Cf., however, p. 71, "dahcr ist die sociale Bedeutung der Spiele ausserordentlich gross "). I should say that it is notably in view of the social life of the higher orders and of man that this neat sentence, propounded by Groos as something of a paradox, gets much of its truth : " Die Thiere spielen nicht weil sie Jung sind, sondern sie haben einer Jugend, weil sie spielen mussen " (lof. ft/., p. 68). 2 Lot. fit., p. 337. " This masterful and domineering temper, so common among social animals," he thinks it is that "leads to the persecution of the weak and sickly." * This is only a suggestion, but if facts should warrant it, it might be a re- source in some of the discussions of congenital endowment, heredity, etc., in which the origin of a once-functioning or periodical instinct is in question. Play 143 From the anthropological point of view also the instinct to play would have the same utility. Primitive man, we are told, indulged to a remarkable extent in games, dances, amusements of a co-operative character. This must have been a constant training to him in the benefits of sociality and a constant stimulus to the pursuits of peace. 94. But it is in the human young that this type of utility attaching to play-activities comes into greatest prominence ; and here it is a matter of such importance that I may be excused for going into some detail in the following points, in order to join up this topic with the method of social development of the child in general. The child is destined to a life of personal self-consciousness which is realized in all its richness only in the social re- lationships into which he is reared ; and the indications that in his games he has one of his most important means of schooling in personal development should, if it be true, be given the emphasis which both its theoretical and practical importance would seem to warrant. III. Play gives flexibility of mind and body with self- control. There is a certain plasticity of function secured by exercise which is in striking contrast to the plasticity of crude unformed movement. To do things quickly and well is more than to do them quickly or well. Just as the grace of the trained horse can be contrasted with the awk- wardness of the colt, so the ready use of the mental facul- ties by a trained scholar may be contrasted with the mental movements of the rustic. I think all games, from the nursery to the athletic field, have this virtue. 95. IV. Play gives the child a constant opportunity for imitative learning and invention. It is evident to any one who has observed children at play that the instinct to 144 Social Aids to Invention imitate comes strongly out in many ways in the disposition of the players, in the following after the leaders, in the learning of successive situations, in the division of parts, in the novel variations and improvements which are intro- duced in the progress of the several games performed. There are usually in each group of children some of greater inventive faculty than the rest ; they are more restless than their fellows, fond of leading, constantly proposing novelties. The others, on the contrary, follow these by more or less ready imitation. It matters little, of course, how valuable or how lacking in value the new elements of the game may be. The fact that the children imitate it and, by so doing, learn how to realize for them- selves the new combinations of movement, new varieties of social relationship, new dispositions of persons for united co-operation and effort this is enough to make the disci- pline of the game a matter of the greatest interest and importance in the origin and development of the personal and social sense. The stimulus to imitation is thus felt in the circle of the child's own equals, and action upon such a stimulus is most unreserved and natural. Besides, the child has in such cases only relatively simple and easy novelties to which to accommodate himself ; and he is not embarrassed by the failure to understand what is required of him, as he so often is in the case of the interpretations which he is called upon to make of the actions of his elders. In this learning by imitation during his games, the child is exercising himself in the art of invention as well as simply gaining new insights into situations of social value ; for by imitation, as we have already seen, the first exhibi- tions of originality are made possible. Play 145 96. V. But it is no less true that the social aspect of in- vention is also well realised in tJie games of childJwod. It will be remembered that we found the child and the adult as well constantly bringing his thoughts, interpre- tations, inventions, to the social tests represented by the judgments and sentiments which his creations meet with in society about him. Now this testing, essential to his growth as it is, finds a field of exploitation in all his games. And I may distinguish again two ways in which this advantage is secured to the young heroes of the play. In the first place the game is essentially a thing of activity ; it calls the player into action. He must make strenuous, varied, and repeated trial and effort. The end in view, the winning of the game for himself or for his 'side,' involves a series of steps, each putting him to the test in all the ways of action which the particular sport involves. It is natural to suppose, therefore, that as such a game progresses the child comes to understand himself better through his own actions and their limitations than he did before. He finds out how fast he can run, how much he can lift, how dexterous he is in dodging, how skilful in eluding pursuit, etc. He thus comes directly to a larger and more adequate sense of his personal and social fitness for the common activities which the game represents, and with them for the real duties and undertakings which his actual life calls upon him to perform. This power to estimate self, with the self-reliance which goes with it, constitutes one of the essential constituents of sane and healthy social character. At the same time, second, the same revelation of the personal quality of the hero who thus learns to understand himself, is made regarding him to each of his playfellows. 146 Social Aid* to J They also learn what he can do in the various exercises of mind and body, ho\v ingenious he is, how supple, ho\v in- ventive, how swift, how strong. And the progress of the game depends, or comes to depend, upon the preserving of some degree of balance between him and them. He is given his part by a quick judgment of what he can do or what he is liable to choose to do. He must be combined against if he be strong, supplemented if he be weak*, in- structed if he be dull, circumvented if he be bright. All this then reacts upon the particular boy again to stimulate him to better and better judged effort for himself, and to more concerted effort for his party. 97. The outcome of it all, we may then go on to say, becomes, or tends directly to become, socially important. A premium is put upon united action just by the fact of united knowledge. To exhibit what I can do alone, is to exhibit my importance as an ally. The sense of my weak- ness in myself is a revelation to me of my need of you as my ally. The presence of a stronger than either is a direct incitement to the quick alliance between you and me against him. And the victory which we win over the stronger by the alliance is both a confirmation to us of the utility of social co-operation and a convincing proof to him that society is stronger than the individual. The spirit of union, the sense of social dependence as set over against the spirit of private intolerance, the habit of suspension of private utilities for the larger social good, the willingness to recognize and respond to the leadership of the more competent, in short, all that constitutes a person a dif- ferent person, a new self, a socius, all this grows grandly on the playground of every school where the natural instincts of the scholars arc unmolested by ill-judged Art 147 interference and artificial restrictions. Many of the or- ganizations of developed society are exemplified in the spontaneous play-organizations of large schools ; and it is only a due recognition of these facts to say that because of them the games of childhood and youth are an engine of great social value. 1 8 3. Art O *J 98. The beginning of the art-instinct in children seems to appear in the occupations which serve to bring out the imagination ; and by imagination in this connection we mean the function of invention understood in the wide sense, as including both the aspects of originality now set out in some detail. 2 For the beginning of a career which is to be artistic even in the most meagre way, the child must make for himself new combinations of the copy-materials of his imitation. This is, of course, the first requirement. But it is evident that this does not, when taken alone, sat- isfy the requirements of art-production. Others may pro- nounce our imaginative productions grotesque, indeed we may do so ourselves. It is this appeal to others and to the matured opinion of his own better and second self that constitutes a claim on the artist's part to the appreciation which serves to bring the work of his invention into the area of art. I do not intend in this connection to propose even the 1 If all these utilities, as well as direct organic utility, are subserved by play, we seem justified in considering it a true instinct, and in discarding entirely the view which confines it to the using up of 'surplus energy.' On this also see Herr Groos' book, Die Spiele der Thiere, Chap. I. 2 That is, so-called ' constructive imagination,' by which invention pro- ceeds; not passive imagination, often called 'fancy.' Groos fails to make this distinction, both in his interpretation of art and in his criticism of others (as of the present writer, loc. ci(., p. 307). 148 Social Aids to Invention rudiments of a theory of art ; but it is a common element in many theories of art that they require more than the subjective putting of materials together and the making of new shapes, if the producer is to be an artist and his work artistic. This second something we must look for, therefore, in the judgments of others than the individual, even though the individual may come by education or by heredity to have the criteria of such judgment all within himself. In other words, the judgment in which art-appre- ciation rests is a social judgment, whether the individual be able to rise to it or not. And the fact that an artist gets the praise of mankind for his work is just the evidence that here is a man who, in his private sense of values, does in some adequate way realize the social judgment. His work pleases mankind. If this be true, and its truth becomes more evident from the synthesis it enables us to make of certain current doctrines in aesthetic theory, we find that art, like lan- guage and play, becomes capable of interpretation through its connection with the social consciousness. The per- sonal element in art, the mere creation, in the imagination, of new but private combinations, is invention in its early imitative aspect ; the appeal then made to a wider social judgment for the sanction of the beauty of the construc- tion, illustrates the second aspect of invention which we have now found present in so many activities of both child and adult : ' social invention ' I have called it. Let us see how the child gets the rudiments of art started in him on this basis. 99. It is clear, when we think of it, that the only way that the child has of getting the appreciation of others is through action. We have seen how this works in his Art 149 games. The general way, therefore, of getting the kind of social judgment which artistic appreciation renders, must also be through action ; and the child must exhibit himself on all occasions, if he would turn his imitative imaginations into things of social worth. Upon these acts, whereby he more or less explicitly exhibits himself, and upon the social recognition of the inventive thoughts which inspire them, the beginning of all art-interests in the community must have originally rested, and must rest in the child in so far as he is left to his own devices. So we should expect to find children very fond of exhibiting themselves, of ' showing off ' as the saying is a phrase which, in its ordinary usage, may be taken to give some evidence at least of the reality of the phenomenon itself. The point thus established may be made evident to an observer of children not only in their games, but in all the affairs of their life. No invention pleases them, as we have seen, until it is socially confirmed by mother or sister. No attainment drawing, new speech-combination, hand- manipulation, or what-not of youthful pride is of much value, or held in high esteem, until father has seen that his boy can do it and do it by himself. His sense of agency and originality seems to feed and grow fat upon just the sort of recognition which comes through his exhibition of himself in his social circle. His judgments are directly modified and controlled by the social effects which his attainments call out. The exhibition of his new drawing in the home circle is as much to his budding genius as is the exhibition which the artist makes in the Salon or at the World's Fair ; and, I take it, his develop- ment is dependent upon it in very much the same sense, and to a greater degree. 150 Social Aids to Invention 100. Originality in art, therefore, as is originality every- where else, is an affair both of individual endowment and thought and of social recognition and confirmation. It is not that the art-impulse is exhausted in self-exhibition; that is to take the later aspect for the whole, to confine ourselves to the social point of view, and to make genius out of vanity. But it is to say and this is my essential point that the social judgment, which a work of art has to sustain, finds its correlative impulse in the self-exhibition of the producer. Only thus can his own judgment be instructed. The reaction of this social recognition upon the producer is not alone the fountain of his stimulus and the test of his success ; it is also the very source of his sense of values. For the growth of the self-thought it is which gives the judgment of values, and that growth is by these two essential movements. This is carried out in detail in the consideration of sentiment (Chap. VIII.), where we find that a full ethical or aesthetic judgment cannot be con- stituted as long as the thinker resolutely excludes the sense of the knowledge or judgment of others. 101. If it were my purpose in this connection to attempt a general survey of the arts from this point of view, certain evident sources might be cited from which confirmation could be drawn. We might say that song (with the dance) is the first attempt at art, and both from an archaeological point of view and from an infantile point of view, it is one of the first instruments of personal show and the attempt at social effect. The serenade of Hamlet commends Hamlet ; the evening circle draws closely about the indi- vidual who entertains the company with song. The birds make love with notes, and the notes seem to express the Art 151 excellence of the emotions by which they are inspired. In short, the idea of commending self to mate, companion, friend, seems to attach to song as a remnant of the utility which must have been great in the animal world, and to point to the time when song was the only art, and when the only function of art was that of attracting attention. In music generally, the plastic arts, and painting, the self-exhibiting impulse is more difficult to detect ; but the outcome of it, the appeal to social recognition which they all make, is what remains of it. This is what I desire to leave in the mind of the reader as my immediate thought on the subject ; the actual ground on which the art- impulse is identified, in so far, with the self-exhibiting impulse has been well indicated by another. 1 1 02. It may be well to point out, in including the con- sideration of art as an aid to social development, that the view now given serves to free the theory of Spencer from its most embarrassing criticism. Spencer has long held that the origin of art is to be found in the play-instinct. But he fails to see the utility of the play-instinct, and so opens himself to the criticism that in the doctrine of the genesis of art he deserts the evolution hypothesis alto- 1 Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, and Esthetics. As to the general genetic theory of art, that is not in place here ; hut I may take occasion to suggest that the antithesis between decorative and imitative art may find its ground in the two psychological principles of self-exhibition and imitation by which personal invention proceeds. By imitation, the new interpretations are secured; this is the principle of the imitative arts, which spring from this need of man to reach new results by the imitative handling of materials. Then by expression, in the form of self-exhibition, decoration, social display, the second need is realized; so there arises the other great class of artistic products, the decorative and ornamental, coming out earliest in the painting of the person, the decking out of the body with bright feathers, etc., on the part of rude peoples. As culture advances, these two great motives are united in the fine arts. 152 Social Aids to Invention gether. If play be merely a surplus activity, as he seems to hold, then the outcome, embodied in the art-impulse, is a by-product merely, and is to be considered without utility from first to last. The theory, on the other hand, which identifies the art-impulse with the self-exhibiting instinct, is consistently evolutionary ; but it has failed to find, in my view, that the self-exhibiting instincts have either the important function or the degree of exercise which the derivation of the art-impulse from them would demand. They have been connected mainly with sex. The present view seems to avoid these criticisms, I think. It makes the essential element of art-production the syn- thetic or creative imagination working by imitation. The social control and limitation necessary to the value of these creations are secured by the self-exhibiting impulse ; and finally the self-exhibiting impulses find their field of exer- cise notably in the playful tendencies. Art-production falls, therefore, under the general function of 'selective thinking' in which the same two phases and the same utility have been discovered. 1 Both the selective criteria, however that of social confirmation, as well as that of imitative construction 1 Above, Chap. III., 3. It may have been noticed by the reader that this social determination of the selective principle in the case of the aesthetic judg- ment is an application of the general determination of the same principle above under the larger head of selective thinking. We will find another such case in the similar treatment of the ethical judgment. All the special instances in which selections are made, with the mental attitude of belief or judgment or sense of ' sufficiency,' should illustrate the criterion found above to be general. The further question as to the differentiation of the respective domains, as for example between the aesthetic and the ethical, concerns the objective qualities or ' coefficients ' in accordance with which the matter of experience serves in this case or that to arouse this general attitude. That we cannot discuss here ; but the reader may turn to the remarks made on the same dis- tinction in the earlier connection (Sect. 55, 2). Art 153 forbid our identifying art creations with the products of play, and finding the essential feature of the aesthetic consciousness in the ' make-believe ' 1 or Schein which dis- tinguishes play from strenuous activity (v. Hartmann, Groos). The element of truth in that theory seems to be that in ' make-believe ' which is at its best in play the sense of personal freedom and creation is strong : the sense of exaggerated self which we have found in all in- vention. But the need of selective criteria in judging these creations appears in both the contrasted facts that (i) the veriest 'make-believe,' seen in fancy and play, is oftener grotesque than beautiful, and (2) that the arrange- ments of nature, which have in our perception no elements of ' make-believe,' are beautiful as often as grotesque. 1 A phrase used by Stout {Anal. Psych. II., p. 262) ; its happy social reference is at once evident. CHAPTER V THE GENius 1 i. The Genius of Variation WITH the outcome of the preceding chapter in mind, the problem of the genius becomes somewhat easier. The first requirement is that we state the social man in the fewest terms, in order that we may then estimate the genius with reference to the sane social man. What he is, we have seen. He is a person who learns to judge by the judgments of society. What, then, shall we say of the genius from this point of view ? Can the hero-worshipper be right in saying that the genius teaches society to judge ; or shall we say that the genius, like other men, must learn to judge by the judgments of society ? 103. The most fruitful point of view, no doubt, is that which considers the genius a variation. 2 And unless we do this, it is evidently impossible to get any theory which will bring him into our general scheme. But how great a vari- ation ? and in what direction? these are the questions. The great variations found in the criminal-by-heredity, the insane, the idiotic, etc., we have found excluded from society ; so we may well ask why the genius is not ex- 1 Cf. Popular Science Monthly, August, 1896. - See the notable treatment of the genius from this point of view in James' Will to Belifi'e, pp. 216 ft"., which first appeared as an article in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 1880. '54 The Genius of Variation 155 eluded also. If our determination is correct of the limits within which society decides who is not to be excluded, then the genius must come within these limits. He cannot escape them and live socially. The directions in which the genius actually varies from the average man are evident, as matters of fact. He is, first of all, a man of great power of thought, of great constructive imagination, speaking as psychologist. So let us believe, first, that a genius is a man who has, occasionally, greater thoughts than other men have. Is that a reason for excluding him from society ? Certainly not ; for by great thoughts we mean true thoughts, thoughts which will work, thoughts which bring in new eras in the discovery of principles, or in their application. This is just what all development depends upon, this at- tainment of novelty, which is yet consistent with olde-r knowledge and supplementary to it. But suppose a man have thoughts which are not true, which are not ' fit ' for the topic of their application, which contradict established knowledges, or which result in bizarre and fanciful combi- nations of them ; to that man we generally deny the name 'genius.' He is a visionary, a 'crank,' an agitator, or what- not. The test, then, which we bring to bear on the intel- lectual variations shown by different men, is that of truth, practical workability in short, to sum it up, 'fitness.' Any thought, to live and germinate, must be a socially fit thought. And the community's sense of the fitness of the thought is their rule of judgment. Now the way the community got this sense that is the result we have reached above. The sense of fitness is just what we called above their judgment. So far at least as it relates to matters of social import, it is of social 156 The Genius origin. It reflects the outcome of all social heredity, tradition, education. The sense of social truth is their criterion of social thoughts, and unless the reformer's thought be in some way fit to go into the setting thus made by earlier social development, whether, indeed, the people of his generation see it or not, he is not a genius, but a 'sport.' 104. I may best show the meaning of the claim that society makes upon the genius by asking in how far in actual life he manages to escape this account of himself to society. The facts are very plain, and this is the class of facts which writers like Mr. Spencer urge, as supplying an adequate rule for the application of the principles of their social philosophy. The simple fact is, say they, that without the consent of society, the thoughts of your hero, whether he be genius or fool, are practically valueless. The fulness of time must come ; and the genius before his time, if judged by his works, cannot be a genius at all. His thought may be great, so great that, centuries after, society may attain to it as its richest out- come and its profoundest intuition ; but before that time, it is as bizarre as a madman's fancies and as useless. What would be thought, we might be asked by writers of this school, of a rat which developed upon its side the hand of a man, with all its mechanism of bone, muscle, tactile sensibility, and power of delicate manipulation, if the remainder of the creature were true to the pattern of a rat? Would not the rest of the rat tribe be justified in leaving this anomaly behind to starve in the hole where his singular appendage held him fast ? Is such a rat any the less a monster because man finds use for his hands ? The Genius of Variation 157 To a certain extent this argument is forcible and true. If social utility be our rule of definition, then certainly the premature genius is no genius. And this rule of defi- nition may be put in another way which renders it still more plausible. The variations which occur in intellect- ual endowment, in a community, vary about a mean ; there is, theoretically, an average man. And the differ- ences among men which can be taken account of in any philosophy of life must be in some way referable to this mean. Variations which do not find their niche at all in the social environment, but which strike all the social fellows with disapproval, getting no sympathy whatever, are thereby exposed to the charge of being ' sports ' of nature and the fruit of chance. The lack of hearing which awaits such a man sets him in a form of isolation, and stamps him not only as the social crank, but also as the cosmic tramp. Put in its positive and usual form, this view simply claims that man is always the outcome of the social move- ment. The reception he gets is a measure of the degree in which he adequately represents this movement. Cer- tain variations are possible men who are forward in the legitimate progress of society and these men are the true and only geniuses. Other variations, which seem to discount the future too much, are ' sports ' ; for the only permanent discounting of the future is that which is pro- jected from the elevation of the past. 105. The great defect of this view is found in its defini- tions. We exclaim at once : who made the past the meas- ure of the future ? and who made social approval the measure of truth ? What is there to eclipse the vision of the poet, the inventor, the seer, that he should not 158 The Genius see over the heads of his generation, and raise his voice for that which, to all men else, lies behind the veil ? The social philosophy of the school of Spencer cannot answer these questions, I think ; nor can it meet the appeal we all make to history when we cite the names of Aristotle, Pascal, and Newton, or of any of the men who single-handed and alone have set guide-posts to history, and given to the world large portions of its heritage of truth. What can set limit to the possible variations of fruitful intel- lectual power ? Rare such variations that is their law : the greater the variation, the more rare ! But so is genius : the greater, the more rare. And as to the rat with the human hand, he would not be left to starve and decay in his hole ; he would be put in alcohol when he died, and kept in a museum ! And the lesson which he would teach to the wise biologist would be that here, in this rat, nature had shown her genius by discounting in advance the slow processes of evolution ! It is, indeed, the force of such considerations as these which have led to many justifications of the position that the genius is quite out of connection with the social move- ment of his time. The genius brings his variations to society whether society will or no ; and as to harmony between them, that is a matter of outcome rather than of expectation or theory. So the view held by William James, for instance, to which we have already referred, that the causes that enter into the production of varia- tions in the heredity of the individual are altogether physi- ological, and so represent a complete ' cycle ' apart from the other ' cycle ' of causes found in the social environment of the individual. While not agreeing with the doctrine which makes the The Judgment of the Genius 159 genius independent of the social movement, least of all with the doctrine that physical heredity is uninfluenced by social conditions, the hero-worshipper seems to be right in saying that we cannot set the limitations of the genius on the side of variations in intellectual endowment. So if the general position be true that he is a variation of some kind, we must look elsewhere for' the direction of those peculiar traits whose excess would be his condemnation. This we can only find in connection with the other de- mand that we make of the ordinary man the demand that he be a man of good judgment. And to this we may now turn. 2. The Judgment of the Genius 106. We should bear in mind, in approaching this topic, the result which follows from the reciprocal character of social relationships. No genius ever escapes the require- ments laid down for his learning, his social heredity. Mentally he is a social outcome, as well as are the fellows who sit in judgment on him. He, therefore, must judge his own thoughts as they do. And his own proper estimate of things and thoughts, his relative sense of fitness, gets application, by a direct law of his own mental processes, to himself and to his own creations. The limitations which, in the judgment of society, his variations must not overstep, are set by his own judgment also. If the man in question have thoughts which are socially true, he will, ipso facto, know that they are true. So we reach a conclu- sion regarding the selection of the particular thoughts which the genius may have : he and society must agree in regard to the fitness of them, although in particular cases this agreement ceases to be the emphatic thing. The essen- 160 The Genius tial thing comes to be the reflection of the social standard in the thinker's own judgment ; the thoughts thought must always be critical/} 1 judged by the thinker himself; and for the most fart, and genetically considered, his judgment is at once also the social judgment. 1 This may be illustrated further. 107. Suppose we take the man of striking thoughts and withal no sense of fitness none of the judgment about them which society has. He will go through a mighty host of discoveries every hour. The very eccen- tricity of his imaginations will only appeal to him for the greater admiration. He will bring his most chimerical schemes out and air them with the same assurance with which the real inventor exhibits his. But such a man is not pronounced a genius. If his ravings about this and that are harmless, we smile and let him talk ; but if his lack of judgment extend to things of grave import, or be accompanied by equal illusions regarding himself and society in other relationships, then we classify his case and put him into the proper ward for the insane. Two of the commonest forms of such impairment of judgment are seen in the victims of ' fixed ideas ' on the one hand, and the exalt^s on the other. These men have no true sense of values, no way of selecting the fit combinations of imagination from the unfit ; and even though some trans- cendently true and original thought were to flit through the diseased mind of such a one, it would go as it came, and the world would wait for a man with a sense of fitness to arise and rediscover it. Men of such perversions of 1 This is another way of saying what was said above (Chap. III., 3) that the individual's private 'selective thinking' proceeds under the social tests in- volved in bis personal growth. The Judgment of the Genius 161 judgment are common among us. We all know the man who seems to be full of rich and varied thought, who holds us sometimes by the power of his conceptions or the beauty of his creations ; but in whose thought we yet find some incongruity, some eminently unfit element, some grotesque application, some elevation or depression from the level of commonplace truth, some ugly strain in the aesthetic impression. The man himself does not know it, and that is the reason that he includes it. His sense of fitness is dwarfed or paralyzed. We in the community come to regret that he is so ' visionary,' with all his talent ; and so we accommodate ourselves to his unfruitfulness, and at the best only expect an occasional hour's entertainment under the spell of his presence. This certainly is not the man to produce a world movement. Most of the men we call 'cranks' are of this type. They are essentially lacking in judgment, and the popular estimate of them is exactly right. 1 08. It is evident, therefore, from this last explanation, that there is a second direction of variation among men : variation in their sense of the truth and value of their own thoughts, and with them of the thoughts of others. This is the great limitation which the man of genius shares with men generally a limitation in the amount of variation which he may show in his social judgments, especially as these variations affect the claim which he makes upon society for recognition. It is evident that this must be an important factor in our estimate of the claims of the hero to our worship, especially since it is the more obscure side of his temperament the side generally overlooked alto- gether. This we call in our further illustrations the ' social sanity ' of the man of genius. 1 62 The Genius One of the evident indications of the kind of social variation in question may be seen in the varying effects which education has upon character. The discipline of social development is mainly conducive, as we have seen, to the reduction of eccentricities, to the levelling off of personal peculiarities. All who come into the social heri- tage learn the same great series of lessons derived from the past, and all get, in the formative years of their educa- tion from the common exercises of the home and school, the sort of judgment required in social life. So we should expect that the greater singularities of disposition, which represent insuperable difficulties in the process of social assimilation, would show themselves early. Here it is that the conflict actually conies a struggle between im- pulse and social restraint. Many a genius owes the re- demption of his intellectual gifts to legitimate social uses, to the victory gained by a teacher and the discipline learned through obedience. And thus it is, also, that so many who in early life give promise of great distinction fail to achieve it. They run off after a phantom, and society pronounces them mad. In their case the personal factor has overcome the social factor. They have failed in the lessons they should have learned, their own self- criticism is undisciplined, and they miss the mark. 109. These extremes, however, do not exhaust the case. In one of them we see the tendency of social life to obscure the light of genius ; in the other the ten- dency of the potential genius to work himself out a crank, through his rejection of social restraint. The average man is the mean. But the greatest reach of human attainment, and with it the greatest influence ever exerted by man, is yet more than either of these. It is not The Judgment of the Genius 163 enough, the hero-worshipper may still say, that the genius should have sane and healthy judgment, as society reckons sanity. The fact still remains that even in his social judg- ments he may instruct society. He may stand alone, and, by sheer might, lift his fellow-men up to his point of van- tage, to their eternal gain and to his eternal praise. Even let it be that he must have self-criticism, the sense of fit- ness of which you speak, that very sense may transcend the vulgar judgment of his fellows. His judgment may be saner than theirs ; and as his intellectual creations are great and singular, so may his sense of their truth be full and unique. To be sure, this divine assurance of the man of genius may be counterfeited ; the vulgar dreamer may have it, but nevertheless, when a genius has it, he is not a vulgar dreamer. This is true, I think, and the explanation of it leads to the last fruitful application of the doctrine of variations. Just as the intellectual endowment of men may vary within very wide limits, so may also the social qualifications of men. There are men who find it their meat to do society ser- vice. There are men so naturally born to take the lead in social reform, in executive matters, in organization, in planning our social campaigns, that we turn to them as by instinct. They have a sort of insight to which we can only bow. They gain the confidence of men, win the sup- port of women, and excite the acclamations of children. These people are social geniuses. They seem to antici- pate the discipline of social education. They do not need to learn the lessons of the social environment. They dis- count the social future as men with great intellectual gifts may discount the future of knowledge and invention. Such persons represent, I think, a variation toward sug- 164 The Genius gestibility of the most delicate and singular kind. They surpass the teachers from whom they learn. It is hard to say that they ' learn to judge by the judgments of society.' They so judge without seeming to learn, yet they differ from the man whose eccentricities forbid him to learn through the discipline of society. The two 'are opposite extremes of variation ; that seems to me the only possible construction of them. It is the difference between the ice-boat which travels faster than the wind, and the skater who braves the wind and battles up-current in it. The latter is soon beaten by the opposition ; the former out- runs its ally. The crank, the eccentric, the enthusiast all these run counter to sane social judgment; but the genius leads society to his own point of view, and inter- prets the social movement so accurately, sympathetically, and with such profound insight, that his very singularity gives greater relief to his inspiration. Now let a man combine with this insight this ex- traordinary sanity of social judgment the power of great inventive and constructive thought, and then, at last, we have our genius, our hero, and one that we well may wor- ship ! To great thought he adds balance ; to originality, judgment. This is the man to start the world movements, if we want a single man to start them. For as he thinks profoundly, so he discriminates his thoughts justly, and assigns them values. His fellows judge with him, or learn to judge after him, and they lend to him the motive forces of success, enthusiasm, reward. He may wait for recog- nition, he may suffer imprisonment, he may be muzzled for thinking his thoughts, he may die and with him the truth to which he gave but silent birth. But the world comes, by its slower progress, to traverse the path in The Judgment of the Genius 165 which he wished to lead it ; and if so be that his thought was recorded, posterity revives it in regretful sentences on his tomb. The two things to be emphasized, therefore, on the rational side of the phenomenally great man I mean on the side of our means of accounting for him in reasonable terms are these : first, his intellectual originality ; and second, the sanity of his judgment. And it is the varia- tions in this second sort of endowment which give the ground which various writers have for the one-sided views now current in popular literature. 1 10. We are told, on the one hand, that the genius is a ' degenerate ' ; on another hand, that he is to be classed with those of 'insane' temper; and yet again, that his main characteristic is his readiness to outrage society by performing criminal acts. All these so-called theories rely upon facts so far as they have any facts to rest upon which, if space permitted, we might readily esti- mate from our present point of view. In so far as a really great man busies himself mainly with things that are objective, which are socially and morally neutral, such as electricity, natural history, mechanical theory, with the applications of these, of course, the mental capacity which he possesses is the main thing, and his absorption in these things may lead to a warped sense of the more ideal and refined relationships which are had in view by the writer in quest for degeneracy. It will still be admitted, however, by those who are conversant with the history of science, that the greatest scientific geniuses have been men of profound quietness of life and normal social development. It is to the literary and artistic genius that the seeker after abnormality has to turn ; and 1 66 Tke Genius in this field, again, the facts serve to show their own meaning. As a general rule, these artistic prodigies do not represent the union of variations which we find in the greatest genius. Such men are often distinctly lacking in power of sustained constructive thought. Their insight is largely what is called intuitive. They have flashes of emotional experience which crystallize into single creations of art. They depend upon 'inspiration' a word which is responsible for much of the overrating of such men, and for a good many of their .illusions. Not that they do not perform great feats in the several spheres in which their several ' inspirations ' come ; but with it all they often present the sort of unbalance and fragmentary intellectual endowment which allies them, in particular instances, to the classes of persons whom the theories I am discussing have in view. It is only to be expected that the sharp jutting variation in the emotional and aesthetic realm which the great artist often shows, should carry with it irregularities in heredity in other respects. 1 Moreover, the very habit of living by inspiration brings prominently into view any half-hidden peculiarities which he may have in the remark of his associates, and in the conduct of his own social duties. But mark you, I do not discredit the superb art of many examples of the artistic ' degenerate,' 1 Just as also with the criminal ; both he and such geniuses may have physical defects, various so-called ' stigmata ' ; but it is evident that it is incompetent logic which finds in these stigmata the 'signs' or invariable accompaniments either of genius or of criminality. And it is, a fortiori, worse logic to reverse the proposition and say that a man with so-and-so- shaped ears, a trembling palate, or a prognathous jaw, has either the one or the other. Possibly the best refutation of Nordau, Lombroso, and the rest, on pathological grounds, is Hirsch's book, Genius and Degeneration. The Judgment of the Genius 167 so called; that would be to brand some of the highest ministrations of genius, to us men, as random and illegiti- mate, and to consider impure some of our most exalting and intoxicating sources of inspiration. But I do still say that wherein such men move us and instruct us they are in these spheres above all things sane with our own sanity, and wherein they are insane they do discredit to that highest of all offices to which their better gifts make legitimate claim the instruction of mankind. in. Does not any theory of man which loses sight of the supreme sanity of Darwin, 1 and with him of Aristotle, and Angelo, and Leonardo, and Newton, and Leibnitz, and Shakespeare, seem weak and paltry? Beside the work of these men, do not the contributions of the talented special performer sink into something like apologies something even like profanation of that name to conjure by, the name of genius ? But, on the other hand, why run to the other extreme and make this most supremely human of all men an anomaly, a prodigy, a bolt from the blue, an element of disorder, born to further or distract the progress of humanity by a chance which no man can estimate ? . The resources of psychological theory are ade- quate to the construction of a doctrine of society which is based upon the individual, in all the possibilities of vari- ation which his heredity may bring forth, and which yet does not hide nor veil those heights of human greatness 1 In the original publication of this chapter {Pop. Set. Monthly, August, 1896), I used Darwin's formulation of the principle of variations (with natural selection) as an appropriate illustration of the 'judgment' of the genius; the more appropriate as being itself the explaining principle applied in the text. I am interested to find Professor Poulton {Charles Darwin, p. 12 f.) empha- sizing the same characteristic of Darwin's genius. I reprint my remarks on the subject, together with a quotation from Professor Poulton, in Appendix G. 1 68 Tlie Genius on which the halo of genius is wont to rest. Let us add knowledge to our surprise in the presence of such a man, and respect to our knowledge, and worship, if you please, to our respect ; and with it all we then begin to see that because of him the world is the better place for us to live in and to work in. So we find that, after all, we may be social philosophers and hero-worshippers as well. And by being philosophers we have made our worship more an act of tribute to human nature. Given a philosophy that brings the great into touch with the commonplace, that delineates the forces which arise to their greatest grandeur only in a man here and there, that enables us to contrast the best in us with the poverty of him, and then we may do intel- ligent homage. To know that the greatest men of earth are men who think as I do, but deeper, and see the real as I do, but clearer, who work to the goal that I do, but faster, and serve humanity as I do, but better, that may be an incitement to my humility, but it is also an inspiration to my life. 3. The Inventions of the Genius With the foregoing description of the type of man to whom the appellation ' genius ' may be properly applied, it is of further interest to look with closer scrutiny upon the inventions which he produces ; with a view to finding some- thing of their general character, and the grounds of their influence as factors in the progress of mankind. The mechanical arts owe their progress so evidently to the inventions which single men make, and the movements of masses of people turn so often upon the social effects The Inventions of the Genius 169 which such contrivances bring about, that any light we may be able to get from this source on the motives of collective action should be turned to account. There are some considerations which give justification to the brief discussion of this topic. 112. The inventions of genius fall into two classes. First, there are the scientific inventions, which may be described as, in each case, either the discovery of some new truth, whether it be in science proper, in literature, or in social life ; or in the new adaptation and application of some aspect of knowledge already more or less ade- quately understood. And second, there are the (Esthetic inventions, which are new dispositions of the material of thought viewed as arousing emotion and sentiment. These two classes of inventive creations are not mutually exclusive ; nor can they be said to have strict psychologi- cal justification as classes. For the new fact of science, or the new application of a scientific principle, arouses emo- tion ; and the aesthetic constructions of the artist serve to enlarge knowledge and refine human appreciation of truth. But, on the surface, these two traditional aspects of the novelties which the inventive mind puts forth are so clearly distinguished from each other, and the types of mind which represent them respectively are so disparate and so seldom found in the same individual, that we may well distinguish them with reference to their social meaning. 1 13. The so-called scientific inventions, removed as they seem to be from the progress of social life, have important bearings upon it nevertheless. We only need to be re- minded of the printing-press, the cotton-gin, the loom, the threshing and reaping machines, the steam-engine, 1 70 The Genius and the steamboat to take only those specimens of me- chanical invention which make our modern era great to see that because of these contrivances our life is a very different thing from our fathers'. The social effects of the railway and the telegraph are enormous. The newspaper, with all its educating influence ; the library in the home, the school, and the village building ; these are the results of the printing-press. And almost all of the marked characteristics of our daily life, as far as they have a material side, will be found to have a direct depend- ence upon the inventive thought of some one man who first planned this or that mechanical innovation. There are two great ways of looking at the function of these inventions, apart from merely descanting upon the wonder and magnitude of them. These two ways of con- sidering them fall in with the earlier aspects of social life already emphasized. All inventions may be considered on the side of social heredity ; and as such their signifi- cance becomes that of the other great incentives to the learner the 'social aids to invention,' as we have had occasion to call the channels of tradition and acquisition. Inventions, from this point of view, remain a part of the social heritage which posterity shares, as riches common to society. They go to direct social habit. The second aspect of discovery is what, on the other hand, I may call its accommodation function. Inventions are new elements brought into social life, new ways of doing things ; calling for new training, and requiring new ways of living to which the people have to be accommodated or adapted. I shall take up these two points in turn. 1 1 It is also largely through his inventions that man is able to work the changes in his environment which we often sum up by the phrase ' conquering nature.' The Inventions of the Genius 171 114. I. The psychological processes of the inventor, whose procedure has been discussed in the chapter on ' In- vention," show us that an effective invention is always rooted in the knowledge already possessed by society. No effective invention ever makes an absolute break with the culture, 1 tradition, fund of knowledge treasured up from the past. The education of the inventive genius makes him ame- nable to the judgments of society, and he himself .reflects the same standards of judgment. To invent a social thing without using material current in his environment would be as impossible to a man as to think anything without using the materials of his own memory and past imagination. It is a commonplace in psychology that, however fanciful the combinations which arise in our imaginations, or how grotesque the form in which our fancies parade, they must contain elements which have occurred at some time in the experience or in the fancy of the individual. This is as true of the social imagination as it is of the individual's imagination. Nothing takes form in the usages and institutions of society absolutely per saltum. Just as there is, on the one hand, in the individual, a drift of personal tendency and a set of selected and dominant images which make an 'apperceiving mass' to which all the novelties of his thought must conform and from which they take their origin ; so also is there on the other hand, in society, the mass of traditions, con- Certain writers have correctly insisted that this is an important factor in social progress : for if nature were not ' conquered ' men would remain in many respects isolated and their social capabilities would be in so far undeveloped. 1 Of course the nearest approach to this would be the scientific discovery of something absolutely unrelated to earlier knowledge; or something contradic- tory to current beliefs, as the Copernican theory (which, however, drew upon the data of common knowledge). 172 TTte Genius ventions, established usages, formal institutions, industrial and political customs, which set limits to the new. The individual's creations are his only in the sense that it is through him that the elements of social tradition show themselves in their concrete variations ; and if perchance the creations of the genius seem in a measure to violate tradition and to be judged more truly by the thinker than by society, nevertheless, even such real addi- tions to possible human achievement do not become the social success which makes them additions to human cult- ure, until society do come up to the standard of judg- ment which they require. So that while we may say, as we have, that the inventor himself may be a variation of such a kind as to seem far removed from the ordinary standards of society, the same cannot be said of his inven- tion, if it is to be a factor of social progress. It should be borne in mind, indeed, that the problem of the invention itself, considered as a factor in human progress, is quite different from the problem of the inventor, considered as a man. The invention cannot be an element in human progress unless it enter into the network of social relationships in some way. If it do not, it may be a thing of great ingenuity and originality ; but that only makes it a part of the problem of the origin of the man. It then loses its interest as a thing of social value. 1 15. The reason that an invention or discovery gets im- portance in the social movement is that it arouses human attitudes of some kind. The adjustments already effected in society represent, as we have seen, the various and very complex conditions of human activity up to the present. Society is stable only because these relationships are, in the long run and on the average, constant. The attitudes The Inventions of the Genius 173 of employer and employed, the holiday privileges, hours of work, scale of wages, kind of domestic life, all of these things are the gradual outcome of an enormously complex system of personal attitudes and claims ; and the relative satisfaction with them represents the constant interaction of these attitudes and their discharge in actual and mutual service. Now this adjustment is usually contingent upon some more-or-less important invention, upon some thought or system of thoughts which represented some one's originality. The inventions, therefore, using the word in the widest sense, are the points of emphasis, the nuclei, so to speak, the centres, from which diverging interests radi- ate. The normal course of a man's life flows about some single idea, established scheme, institution, or even some single machine, which represents what to him is the out- come of the thought and personal effort of mankind in a particular direction. The inventions, then, may be taken as representing the advance guard of social progress. In them, as in centres, the fund of human mental and social capital is invested. The activities of men terminate on them and their support comes from them. This tendency of the interests of social life to crystallize about the greater thoughts and inventions which are em- bodied in it, shows itself in many ways. It is a phe- nomenon of social habit, exhibited on a large scale. It is the habit of the race, which the individual has to acquire in his personal education. It then controls his personal habits, because it represents the persistent line of activities in the accomplishment of which his life is spent. It is his social heritage. The sorting of men out in professions, in trades, in colleges, in banks, etc., is but the solidifying of the lines of personal habit in forms suited to the more 174 TJie Genius effective pursuit of certain common aims and activities of the members. So whenever a new thought comes, or a new invention, there is likely to be a great caving-in of the social crust, so to speak. And from this point there will again radiate a great number of vested interests. In fact, I find it impossible to think of a society, in any de- veloped sense, in which this principle does not work to produce in every individual a certain prescribed range of special interests, at the centre of which lies an idea or thought, now a matter of accomplished social habit, which gives movement to his life and affords an outlet to his energies. 116. This is reflected in what is called the 'conserva- tive ' spirit in society. It is the voice of social habit. It is the law of social heredity proclaiming itself in the bosom of each member of society. It says to him : " Guard well the heritage of the fathers ; listen not to the agitator, the innovator, the advocate of change. The es- tablished is the safe ; it is acquired, it is tested ; experi- ence is the best, indeed the only, teacher that organized society may appeal to." This is even more true of society than it is of the individual ; for when the individual makes the mistake of venturing beyond the teachings of his pri- vate experience, he simply suffers a penalty which in the future he can avoid except in the cases mentioned below, in which his indiscretion costs him social place. But it is not so in the social realm. The very complexity of the interests involved in any social adjustment, and the variety of individuals who may have been brought by a happy combination into co-operation, makes a single inno- vation irrevocable. Political agitators realize this, and aim to carry measures by a wave of temporary entliusi- The Inventions of the Genius 175 asm against the dictates of sound social judgment. A detailed and complicated social arrangement may go to pieces through a single error of judgment. And this applies, as has been intimated, to mistakes on the part of individuals also, acting in their social capacity. A single lapse from convention or social moral- ity gives a man a name and reputation from which he never gets himself free. The tales of fiction-writers often turn upon this motive. A character appears in a com- munity and gains a high place by his talents and social probity, until some rumour of an earlier crime comes to blast all the fruitage of his toil ; the outcome of a single act weighs more than all the record made under the new and more difficult circumstances. All this shows the extreme force of conservative sentiment in matters of social organization. It is the governor of the engine, and its loss is sufficient to wreck the train. Its presence is not an accident ; it is the safeguard which the evolution of society itself has produced as the necessary check upon precipitation and ill-judged change. This principle of conservatism is one of the most im- portant elements of what is meant by 'public opinion.' 1 So far we have reached a view which teaches us that the definite social attainment of society, on the side of what is usually called its material life, all the acquisition up to the present, is embodied in the inventive thoughts, schemes, institutions, industrial arrangements, etc., actually existing ; these are the nuclei about which the entire social turmoil centres. And the effect of this growth of institu- tions about such great germinal ideas, or inventions, is that men come to invest all their interests in these ideas, 1 See below Chap. X., 2. 1 76 The Genius and so become what we ordinarily call conservative. Carrying these two points along with us, we may now turn to the other side of the matter, still concerning ourselves mainly with the scientific, utilitarian, ' material ' side of invention. 117. II. The second general consideration is by no means inferior to the first. It has to do with the actual growth of society, as the other has to do with the conserv- ing of the attainments already made by society. As we have seen, society has to have habits, traditions, institu- tions, and with them the conservative attitude of mind which sees that these things are jealously guarded and con- served. But it is plain that if this were all, no progress would be made ; indeed, the conservative is usually the hindering element in social progress. 1 Just as natural development has to see to it that the organism gets new accommodations which bring the creature constantly into adaptation to the newer and changing conditions of the environment, sometimes indeed working directly in oppo- sition to the habits already acquired, so also is it with the social body. There must be a principle of social accom- modation, analogous to the principle of organic accom- modation recognized in theories of organic and mental development. The requirements of the case seem to be essentially the same, in the two spheres. In organic development, we find the two principles coming to unite in those critical reactions which at once illustrate habit and at the same time secure new adaptations. In the growth of the individual child we have seen that the reactions which are imitative in type accomplish this ; by them the child expresses himself in the habitual ways 1 See Chap. X., 2, below. The Inventions of the Genius 177 which he has already learned, and also secures the new actions which serve to bring him into better relation to his social and physical environment. So also recent writers have found that the theory of race adaptations proceeded upon the assumption of the same type of ac- tivity in the species which is to live and grow. It must have reactions which constantly bring the exercise of habits into conflict with the environment, so that the principle of natural selection may come in to secure the survival of those which can so modify their habits, so ac- commodate themselves to the newer conditions of living, as to utilize them for the purposes of life and growth. When we come to look at the progress of society from the point of view of this analogy, we find in part what has already been said in the pages immediately preceding. The law of social heredity with the conservative spirit is the law of social habit. By it, social reactions are made permanent and secure. And the kind of reactions, atti- tudes, institutions, which represent this law are those which are developed about the great germinal ideas or inventions of the past. The inventions of the genius are the nuclei of social habit. 118. But they are more. And what more? this in- troduces the question of accommodation. They are the loci of social accommodation, as well as the nuclei of social habit. As the habits of the organism are the means of new organic adaptations, so the habits of the social body are at once also the means of its growth. The way it works is this. The new invention comes to create disturbance. The kind of disturbance I mean is the kind which arises when the fixed ways of social activity of any kind are violently wrenched and altered. I 178 The Genius have only to cite the social disturbances which arise around the introduction of new machines to make my meaning clear. Riots, bloodshed, labour disputes, boy- cotts, revolutions of the unemployed, persecutions of the employing classes, attempts at conservative legislation in the interests of classes, these are the historical wit- nesses to the critical part which inventions play in the evolution of social life. The printing-press drove the illuminator and his art out of existence. The reaping- machine made the scythe a wall ornament, and the human reaper an anachronism. The steam-engine relieves the posthorse of his burden and the driver of his employment. In fact, in this material realm, the science of archaeology is a record of the progress of humanity as it is recorded in its successive inventions ; and our museums are collec- tions whose main lesson perhaps, to the student of human progress, is the superb one that intellect is alive in the world and that thought leads, even though it be by con- vulsions of the social body and by the strangulation of outgrown utilities. A new invention, thought, idea, in whatever realm of our interests it may be, is like an electric spark in a mixt- ure of oxygen and hydrogen. An explosion is the im- mediate result. But, as in chemistry, the explosion is the incident merely. The result of the explosion in chemistry is the production of the world's drinking-water. The new thought is an electric spark in human affairs ; it does lead to the explosions. Yet they are but the sign of the new adjustments which society goes on to effect. The new supersedes the old by using it, remoulding it, refining it ; and after such a fight with the conservatives, to whom the old is too dear, the thinkers who bring in the new see The Inventions of the Genius 179 that by it humanity has gained and the millennium is nearer. TJiere is a precipitation about a new nucleus, That is the method of social accommodation. And just in so far as the new idea is new, revplutionary, unheard- of, so far will the struggle be bitter and the chance of its w.orking its way less. 1 19. The attitude which this law of accommodation tends to bring about in men is that of opposition to con- servatism ; we call it 'liberalism.' It is a tendency which is very real and powerful in society. It marks a temperar ment in particular men, as the conservative tendency does in others. And any account of the forces which play in social life has mainly to do with these great antithetic attitudes, arising conspicuously about the thoughts and in- ventions of great men, but present always in the slower movements as well. To get the real force of the two principles now set forth, we should be well aware that the word 'invention' is not confined in its application to machines ; it applies to orig- inal conceptions of every kind. The man who proposes a new banking law, or a new scheme of taxation ; the theo- rist who writes a persuasive book on the methods of city administration or on the ways and means of public educa- tion, these men are inventors, and their proposals come directly before the people for social assimilation. The socialists of to-day are a set of more or less original men, who seek to commend innovations in the actual adjust- ments of social forces to one another. The secretary of the navy who submits a new scheme of coast defence, and the continental statesman who has an idea on the subject of the disturbances in Armenia, are inventors, and candi- dates each for the honour of being a social electric spark 180 The Genius which is to produce an explosion and set a permanent nucleus of progress equally so with the man who in- vents duplex telegraphy or a type-setting machine. The idea is the thing and the man who is able to have the idea. It then remains to see what society can do with the idea, and what the idea can do with society. When we come to put the two aspects of the inventor's work together, we find that it is not so much the particu- lar invention or discovery that our theory values, chosen out to illustrate the principle, as the general fact that society proceeds by inventive increments to its store, both of truth first and of adaptation to truth afterwards. Not the great genius alone illustrates it, but every man, so far as he thinks out novelties which society finds it pos- sible to embrace and assimilate. The inventor of the self- clasping collar-button is an original social force, in the same sense that the Howes and the Hoes and the Edisons are ; but to a different degree. We can better dispense with the collar-button than we can with the sewing-ma- chine ; but I doubt whether we could dispense with all the smaller inventions and adaptations of our lives as well as we could with all the larger ones. This is of course an artificial comparison and a needless one ; but I write it out to illustrate the fact that the theory which we have now worked out concerns itself with the smaller as well as with the larger phenomena, and reaches results which set the smaller in their place beside the larger. It is a commonplace that all great inventions are at first rough- hewn, to a degree angular and unassimilable, until the smaller and more painstaking men have modified them into better conformity to the actual demand which society makes. The patent office is full of secondary patents fol- Social Selection 181 lowing the few main ones which embody really great and novel ideas. 1 4. Social and Imitative Selection 1 20. It may be useful at this point to gather together the various meanings which we have found it possible to give to the term ' selection ' when used in its social refer- ence ; especially in view of the confused conceptions to which its uncritical use may lead. In an earlier place 2 cer- tain of the meanings of selection were pointed out with especial reference to natural selection. In addition to what was said there, we find it well to suggest that the phrase 'social selection' be employed when, and only when, there is a real operation of natural selection working upon some form of social variations. This is realized in two cases. First, we have the form of social selection which results from the competitions of individuals with one another in society. There is a social survival, and even often a physi- cal survival, of the socially fittest individuals. The man with the ' pull ' gets the political place because he has the social qualifications which his ' pull ' represents ; and the man who passes the best competitive examination also gets the place because his qualifications are also specially fit ; in this case fit for the service, as in the other the fitness was for the ' pull.' The man of social gifts is employed as floor-walker in the business house ; and the man who writes a good hand and so saves the eyes of his employer, suc- ceeds as book-keeper. All these are cases of ' social selec- tion.' 1 See the discussion of the ' generalization ' worked by society, below, Chap. XL, 3. 2 Sect. 40, note. See also Sects. 306 f. 1 82 The G 01 ins Second, there is the form of social selection which illus- trates natural selection operative upon social groups. Here there is the survival of the group as such. The fitness is fitness for the requirements set by the collective conditions of the life of the group. Historically this principle, which is strictly a case of natural selection, has many important illustrations in tribal and national competitions due to migration, colonization, rival occupation of territory, etc. 1 It is, I think, with reference to these sorts of selection that the analogy between social and biological progress gets its force. Here we find both natural selection and physical heredity, with congenital variations, in operation. These sorts of selection, with the analogy in question, should be distinguished with all the more care from those in which one or other of these principles is not operative. Especially should they be distinguished from the different forms of selection, so important in social life, which operate by conscious choice and imitation. The social selection of individuals merges into conscious selection by individuals when the criterion is no longer the social variation of the one selected, but the choice of the one selecting. This distinction comes out in the illustrations given above ; the choice of the candidate by his friend may be contrasted with his success in the examination. 121. In so-called 'imitative selection,' 2 with which we have more to do later on, the imitative propagation of ideas in society, we have a phenomenon for which biology 1 It gives rise to what may be called the law of ' the widening unit,' ijt. that as the circle of co-operation widens the unit of survival, the group, taken as a whole, becomes larger. 8 See above, Sect. 40, note. In order to keep it quite clear from biological misrepresentations, as well as to designate its essential character, it is called below 'social generalization' (Chap. XL, Sects. 309 f.). Social Selection 183 shows us no analogies. What survives in this case is not individuals, but ideas ; and these do not survive in the form in which the first thinker conceives them, but in the form in which society applies them. Again, their fitness is not in any sense fitness for struggle ; it is fitness for imitative reproduction and application. And finally, they are not physically inherited, but handed down by 'social heredity ' as accretions to the store of tradition. These essential differences may be summed up in a way which connects this sort of selection so-called 'imitative selection ' with what has been said of public opinion, as representing the conservative spirit in society. Public opinion may be called the organ of imitative selection. It sets the standards with reference to which the idea selected shows its fitness. It represents the set forms of tradition into which the new idea is to be absorbed. It brings to bear the judgment which society cherishes ; and which, when reflected into the thinker himself, constitutes the measure of his social sanity. It applies the idea, when once it is selected and embodied in this institution or that, to each individual in turn in the way which in its broader aspects we have called 'social heredity.' 1 It remains only to say that we have now reached a sort of resting-place in our discussion, from which cer- tain main facts of social development appear in view. The essential meaning of the imitative and inventive prin- ciples have been discussed both on the side of the individ- 1 The distinction between 'social selection* and 'social suppression' (men- tioned above, Chap. II., 3), will be evident. It is interesting to note that the law is the administrative organ of the latter, public opinion being incom- petent to suppress individuals. Cf. Appendix B for a classification of the vari- ous ' selections.' 184 The Genius ual's personal growth whether he be genius or drone and of the movement of society to higher levels of com- mon accomplishment. The outcome so far may be em- bodied, on the part of the individual, in the view that every man is a socins ; and on the side of the social body, in the view that every society reveals the socius. It follows, from this, that there are two fundamental inquiries at the bottom of any adequate theory of society. The first is this : How far a complete knowledge of the individual man in society would also be a complete revelation of the society which he is in ? And the second question is this (the re- verse of the other) : How far is it necessary to understand society, as it actually exists, in order to construct an adequate view of the mans actual nature and social possibilities ? We now find it possible to go on to the discussion of these questions with some hope of reaching results. It will have been observed that the consideration of the ' aesthetic ' inventions has been left over for the chapter on 'Sentiment.' PART III THE PERSON'S EQUIPMENT CHAPTER VI His INSTINCTS AND EMOTIONS IN the preceding pages, we have seen reason to believe that the individual has certain propensities toward life with his fellows, and also certain capacities for realizing his social nature by action. It now becomes our task to inquire as to the ways in which he shows the social ele- ments of his character in conduct. I. Instinctive and Reflective Emotion 122. The observation that men are emotional animals, and that emotion is a great incentive to action, is a com- monplace. We need not stop to define emotion nor trace its genesis in the animal kingdom. On the con- trary, we may assume that the reader has a clear enough sense of what emotion is when he feels it. The remark, then, that the social man has emotions and that they influence his conduct is pertinent here only as indicating a further problem : the problem, to wit, as to how the individual manifests his emotions and how these mani- festations tell, in his social life, upon him and upon pthers. 1 86 His Instincts and Emotions Psychologists agree that emotion is generally an ac- companiment of ideas. An emotion has a distinctive character consonant with the character of the particular idea which it accompanies. A lion arouses fear, a friend affection, an enemy hate, etc. But there is a fur- ther fact about the idea or thought which one has in mind when he experiences a lively emotion. This appears in the fact that emotions are usually classified under two great heads : those which attract us to an object thought of, on the one hand, and which are accompanied by pleas- ure, and those, on the other hand, which repel us from the object and feel painful. The attracting emotions are uniformly pleasurable and the repelling emotions painful experiences. And when we come to inquire into this curious state of things, we find only one way to explain either the one or the other pair of opposing facts the pair representing attraction and repulsion or the pair representing pleasure and pain. The fact is this : that there is a centre of organic or personal existence a self of some kind to the welfare of which the emotion in some way refers. We say '/ am afraid,' or '/ love and hate,' or 'the lion frightens me.' 'When I fly from a fearful thing, I try to remove myself.' And when I embrace a friend, hope for a gift, rejoice in an honour, it is that I myself find advantage in some way in the attrac- tion exerted upon me by the object involved in this case or that. This much we may say, however our opinions may differ as to the best way to explain this reference of emotion to the good or evil involved for the personal sjlf. Certain emotions, usually called reflective emotions, have a distinct reference to our conscious thought of our own welfare, or the opposite. First among these, is, of Instinctive and Reflective Emotion 187 course, the class of emotions known as vanity, pride, etc., in which the thought of self is very prominent. 123. Granting so much about emotion, another distinc- tion arises. There are certain emotions whose reference is distinctly physical, organic. In the case of these, the seizure by the emotion does not seem to require that we actually think of ourselves. We may not have time to do this. We often simply find ourselves in or undergoing the emotion, and the discovery that we are in danger or in joy is a later thing. These emotions are said to be instinctive or organic. They seem to belong to the physi- cal organism, and to be so closely knit into the structure of the body by its heredity that they serve to protect us from harm and to secure benefits without assistance from our reflective processes. 124. Now these two references to a self-centre in the emotional seizure however different the self may be in the two cases are each of direct social importance. As far as the emotion is a matter of organic reaction merely, its expression is an affair of fixed organic habit. It sug- gests to us the question whether in these organic exhibi- tions of race habit there is to be found any evidence that the species to which the individual in question belongs has lived a social life. Of course the forms of reaction show the general character of the environment in which the emotional expressions were learned ; and if we find in them elements which clearly require social environment, then better evidence could not be wished that such ances- tral conditions existed. How far, then, do we find in emotional expression evidence of the relations of co-opera- tion which social life requires ? This question has already been answered in the various 1 88 His Instincts and Emotions works in which the social instincts have been submitted to more or less adequate examination. As far as man shows the social instincts of the animals, so far we have a right to say that his reactions may be taken to show that the early social habits of man were, in the respects which these reactions indicate, the same in kind as those of the animals. This is true of the family instincts in general : the maternal care, the paternal provision of food and watchfulness in danger, the parental instruction in movement, self-support, etc., the filial response to parental care and instruction, the fraternal attitude of the young to one another in the same family, the play-instinct with its exercises in endurance, defence, and skill. All these things show a common fund of acquisition by man and brute, and point back, I think, to the race conditions which were operative before man appeared upon the earth. As regards man himself, these tendencies are, in the main, hereditary, and the exercise of them in a spon- taneous way by the infant gives evidence of the law of ' recapitulation ' in its main conception. 1 In addition to these instinctive reactions of an emotional kind, however, there are certain other expressions found in a marked degree in children, and in animals sometimes, which it is our immediate object to investigate ; they form an apparent link in the chain of facts upon which both the biological theory of recapitulation, and also the higher form of the same truth found in the history of human race progress, rest for support. These facts are : the mani- 1 The ' recapitulation ' theory (according to which the individual goes through stages in his development which show in order some of the stages which the species has passed through) is discussed with reference to mental traits in my .\fental Development, Chap. I., where references to the biological literature are also given. Instinctive and Reflective Emotion 189 festations or expressions of certain emotions which have both the organic and later the reflective form as well ; such, for instance, as jealousy, fear, anger, and sympathy. These emotional expressions, together with the physical reac- tions which are shown by young children in what we call bashfulness and in the play-instinct, are, to my mind, of great importance in the mental evolution upon which the social life is founded. This makes it well that we should understand more clearly the issues raised ; and I shall devote a few paragraphs to setting certain distinc- tions out more fully, before taking up the series of facts which are to be cited in this chapter. 125. It appears that the theory of 'recapitulation' has two great spheres of application. It applies on the animal side, as usually studied by the biologists and comparative psychologists, and it has, besides, a certain application on the human side this latter having to do with what the writers on anthropology call culture-stages. In biology and comparative psychology the question is whether the human organism and mind go through stages which recapit- ulate the forms of the animal world ; the anthropological question, on the other hand, is whether the human indi- vidual goes through the stages of culture which the human race as a species has gone through. In discussing the mental development of the child we have both these problems to solve : the two problems, i.e., whether the child's mental development recapitulates the stages of mental development in the animal world, and second, whether it then goes on to show, or to recapitulate, the stages through which the human mind, after it arose in history, has passed in our race development. 1 1 My earlier discussion, already referred to {Mental Development, Chap. I.), takes up only the first of these questions. 190 His Instincts and Emotions It is easy to see that the social life is mainly a matter which falls under the second inquiry. Only in so far as the child has the modicum of social tendencies which we also find in the animals only so far can the question as to whether he is recapitulating animal forms of sociality be put and answered. But inasmuch as the child then goes on to exhibit further reactions of a special kind, or in a special degree, which the animal world does not seem to possess, especially if these latter seem to be super- posed upon the former and to supersede them, the second question of recapitulation becomes pertinent ; and we then ask : Are these further tendencies of the child toward social life a repetition of the development of man from the conditions of primitive life in which he was nearer to the animal ? The answer to this question supposes some knowledge of the history of culture from prehistoric times : the information which the ethnologist sets himself to discover. Just as the comparative morphologist fur- nishes his data to the human embryologist and asks him to discover parallels which indicate recapitulation ; so the ethnologist may come with his determinations of the social conditions of primitive man at various epochs, and ask the psychologist to point out parallel stages in the child's progress. When we come to put together the two spheres of ap- plication of the principle of recapitulation, we find that the history of the whole progress of the animal series up into the human epoch, and also the later history of the man's progress in social life, should be given in the child's growth. And we cry, how rich a field of study ! But the very fact that the child has to reveal so much, makes it impossible to expect that the record will be complete. Instinctive and Reflective Emotion 191 On the organic side, we find a reasonably complete record of animal progress in biological development ; but the very fact that it was only after man had come that the development of the social life began which requires much intelligent co-operation this tends to obscure the earlier stages of mental development. In order to be reflectively social, the child must be less aggressive, more tolerant, more adaptable, less dominated by inflexible instinct. But in order to this, those stages of the development in the animal mind which require the opposite qualities, such as high instinctive equipment, must be either quickly passed over by the child, or be absent altogether. If this general point be true, then we should expect to find in the mental development of the child only those mental traits of the animals which could exist along with the higher social development which comes to be an essential thing in human life. 126. Such traits, we do find, as a fact, in the child : cer- tain great systems of reactions and their mental accompani- ments which bear such a construction. These reactions seem to be original elements in his hereditary equipment. They seem to be well explained by the law of organic recapitulation. Yet we find that they are also capable of a construction which would have placed them as the results of intelligent adaptation and social co-operation. They can be explained as illustrating the later or anthropological sort of recapitu- lation. These are the emotional expressions of which I am about to speak. To cite an instance : the child shows certain native ex- pressions of affection which are common to him and the dog. These common expressions can only be accounted for 192 His Instincts and Emotions as having arisen ancestrally under conditions in which, in certain respects, the dog now is, or earlier. But after the child grows older, we find that his intelligent expressions of affection take the same cliannels. If we had not seen them in the child at the earlier period, we should have said, quite possibly, still applying the theory of recapitula- tion, that they represented the period in the development of the human race when certain ways of intelligent action in a social community were found useful. There are here, therefore, two different assignments of these reactions by the recapitulation theorist. This serves to show how rich a field for interpretation these emotional expressions are. It is interesting to note that Darwin, and the other writers who have studied them, have with rare exceptions, as far as I know, confined the interpretation to the utilities in the animal series, without inquiring into the culture- history side ; that is, without inquiring as to the second or intelligent utility which the same reactions subserve in the history of human development, together with the cor- respondence between the two. 127. As to the relative effects which these two kinds of recapitulation produce in the child's development, cer- tain truths may be made out. We may say (i) in so far as the heredity of the child's animal ancestry tended to come into conflict with the requirements of the social de- velopment of the race of mankind, then the former must have been obliterated ; since, as a fact, the child does ful- fil the requirements of social development. The self-seek- ing tendencies of the animal must give place to co-operation and sympathy. And the process of selection, in order to get the human race started on a career of sociability, must have put a premium upon variations which did this. (2) In Instinctive and Reflective Emotion 193 so far as the organic reflexes of animal instinct, which had proved useful to the animal, did not hinder the develop- ment of the social ways of action thus put at a premium, they would run an equal chance of still surviving for the sake of their older utility. And (3) in so far as the animal modes of action served purposes which were favourable to the growth of social life, or could be pressed into the newer utilities of social life, then these reactions would be confirmed and further developed. The germs of social life found in the gregarious habits of certain animals were available for further development in man. The first of these three classes of cases we find illus- trated, in the human young, in the absence of native in- stincts impelling to co-ordinated systems of movement apart from certain combinations which are actually neces- sary to his life. And the reason becomes clearer when we remember what has already been said as to the need of the child's having all his members so plastic and unconstrained as to learn, as fast as possible, the acts of skill which his social environment requires of him. These acts are so varied that the same muscles and members have to be used in the greatest variety of combinations ; a need which could not be fulfilled if these muscles and the brain matter which works them were already tied up in such in- stincts as those possessed by the animals. Plasticity is the rule of social life, and its requirement ; the opposite is the condition represented by animal instinct. The second and third cases also have instructive exam- ples. We may ask why the arms are no longer legs, while the legs are still legs. The reason is plain. The purposes of locomotion require legs ; the legs remain legs because to lose all legs would have been to lose life. 194 His Instincts and Emotions These organs are continued because they continue a func- tion which the new dawning social life not only does not antagonize, but actually requires. But the arms cease to be legs because a social function can be found for them without sacrificing any essential animal function. This the organism found a way of effecting as soon as the adaptation which we call upright-walking was reached. So the fore paw, with its flat simplicity of use, became the human hand that most marvellous implement of human utility. The tongue is a case in which the old and the new functions exist together in the same member : eating and speech. 128. The third of these cases the ratification and further development for social utilities of the ways of animal action which first rose for organic utilities this brings us again to the emotional expressions which we set out to examine. The thing which strikes us at the outset, in taking up the emotional expressions which have social value, is just their double meaning. That they have this double mean- ing indicates, again, two general things about their condi- tions of rise and their relation to each other. First, it is evident that, in order to persist in the social development of mankind after serving their utility in the animal series, while, as we have seen, so many other animal reactions did not persist, they must have represented adaptations to a pre-social environment which was at least consistent with the social environment, if not actually in a measure social. And, second, it must mean that when taken to- gether all these reactions are to be explained, along with the new social adaptations which have been built up upon them, by one general life-tendency. That is, the Bashfulness and Modesty 195 drift of the selective principle must have been to conserve and develop these sorts of reaction. And from these truths the further one seems to be reached: that the principles of selection and survival get a construction which shall secure social progress?- 2. Bashfulness and Modesty 129. The more evident physical accompaniments of bashfulness in the child have been well set forth by various writers ; and one at least of the signs of modesty, by far the most striking sign in the youth and adult, blushing, has been discussed in some detail by Darwin. 2 The fol- lowing description of the phenomena of bashfulness, with hints as to the phylogenetic meaning, may be quoted from my earlier work. 3 " It [bashfulness] begins to appear generally in the first year, showing itself as an inhibiting influence upon the child's normal activities. Its most evident signs are ner- vous fingerings of dress, objects, hands, etc., turning away of head and body, bowing of head and hiding of face, awkward movements of trunk and legs, and in extreme cases, reddening of the face, puckering of lips and eye muscles, and finally cries and weeping. An important dif- ference, however, is observable in these exhibitions accord- ing as the child is accompanied by a familiar person or not. When the mother or nurse is present, many of the signs seem to be useful in securing concealment from the eye of strangers behind dress or apron or figure of the familiar person. In the absence, however, of such a refuge, the 1 Cf. Appendix A, Organic Selection and Social Heredity. 2 See also Mosso, Fear. 8 Baldwin, Mental Development, Chap. VI., 6. 196 His Instincts a)td Emotions child sinks often into a state of general passivity or inhibi- tion of movement, akin to the sort of paralysis usually asso- ciated with great fear. "This analogy with the physical signs of fear, gives a real indication, I think, of the race origin of bashfulness ; it is probably a differentiation of fear. This I cannot dwell upon now, but simply suggest that bashfulness arose as a special utility-reaction on occasion of fear of persons, in view of personal qualities possessed by the one who fears. The concealing tendency also shows the parallel development of intimate personal relationships of protec- tion, support, etc., and so gives indications of certain early social conditions. " My observations of bashfulness not to dwell upon descriptions which have been made before by others serve to throw the illustrations of it into certain periods or epochs which may be briefly characterized in order. " i. The child is earliest seized with what may be called 'primary' or 'organic' bashfulness, akin to the organic stages in the well-recognized instinctive emotions, such as fear, anger, sympathy, etc. This exhibition occurs in the first year, and marks the attitudes of the infant toward strangers. It is not so much inhibitory of action in this first stage; it rather takes on the positive signs of fear, with protestation, shrinking, crying, etc. " The duration of this stage depends largely upon the child's social environment. The passage from the attitude of instinctive antipathy toward outsiders, and that of affec- tion equally instinctive toward the members of the house- hold, over into a more reasonable sense of the difference between tried friends and unproved strangers -this de- pends directly upon the growth of the sense of general 197 social relationships established by experience. One of the most important elements in the child's progress in this way out of its ' organic ' social life, is the degree and variety of its intercourse with other children, and indeed with other adults than those of its own home. " 2. I find next a period of strong social tendency in the child, of toleration of strangers and liking for persons gen- erally, in great contrast to the attitudes of organic distrust of the earlier period just mentioned. There seems to be in this a reaction against the instinct of social self-preservation characteristic of the earlier stage. It is due in all likelihood to the actual experience of the child in receiving kind treat- ment from strangers kinder in the way of indiscriminate indulgence than the more orderly treatment which it gets from its own parents. Everybody comes to be trusted on first acquaintance, by the child, through the teachings of his own experience, just as in the earlier years everybody was treated by him, under the instincts of his inherited nature, as an agent of possible harm. " 3. Finally, I note the return of bashf ulness in the child's second and third years. This time it is bashfulness in the proper sense of the term, rid of the element of fear, and rid largely of its compelling organic force and meth- ods of expression. The bashful three-year-old smiles in the midst of his hesitations, draws near to the object of his curiosity, is evidently overwhelmed with the sense of his own presence rather than with that of his new acquaintance, and indulges in actions calculated to keep notice drawn to himself. " The reality of this group of the child's social attitudes, and the great contrast which they present to those of the organic period, can hardly have too much emphasis. It 198 His Instincts and Emotiotis is one of the great outstanding facts of his progressive relation to the elements of his social milieu. There is a sort of self-exhibition, almost of coquetry, in the child's behaviour; which shows the most remarkable commin- gling of native organic elements with the social lessons of personal well- and ill-desert which are now becoming of such importance in his life. All this makes so marked a contrast to the exhibitions of organic bashful- ness that it constitutes in my opinion a most important resource for the study of the evolution of the social sense. "The observation of organic bashfulness tends to con- firm our view of the way the child begins to apprehend persons ; and at the same time it enables us to see a little further. For, strange as it may appear, we are here con- fronted with an element of organic equipment especially fitted to receive and respond to these peculiar objects, persons: 'personal projects.' The child strikes instinc- tively a particular series of attitudes when persons ap- pear among his objects, attitudes which other objects, qua objects, do not excite. And later in life, in the organic effects indicative of modesty, such as blushing, hesitating, etc., we find familiar signs of a social rapport which has grown into the very fibre of our nerves. We have to say, therefore, that the child is born to be a member of society in the same sense precisely that he is born with eyes and ears to see and hear the movements and sounds of the world, and with touch to feel the things of space." 130. These facts, with the inferences from them, may be taken as sufficient for purposes of description. The two principles which seem to be revealed are : first, that Bashf illness and Modesty 199 these reactions, taken as a whole, indicate the existence of social conditions so far back in the organic ancestry of the child that the reactions which show adaptation to such an environment have actually become ingrained in the ner- vous structure of the child to the extent that the functions are now instinctive. It is impossible to believe that the young chick would heed the warning note of the hen when the hawk flies over, unless his ancestors had experienced similar common dangers ; so it is impossible to believe that the child could show instinctive bashfulness before persons except on the supposition that his ancestors have sustained close relations of some kind to their fellows. Of course, it still remains to ask how far back this condi- tion of social relationship goes in the life-series ; whether they are only present after the human species appears with its tendency to establish intelligent social co-opera- tion. This depends upon the kind of social co-operation which the actual reactions shown by the bashful child would indicate. Upon such an actual examination of the reactions involved depends also the question as to the character of these ancestral social relationships. Apart from the details of fact, however, there is a general hy- pothesis which seems to be justified by this phenomenon. It is this : that organic bashfulness is, as is indicated in the quotation above, a differentiation of animal fear ; 1 and that the more reflective bashfulness which comes only after the child has begun to have a notion of his subjec- tive self, is a reaction of anthropological origin. On this view the organic form of the reaction belongs to the animal phylogeny, and the reflective form is a further 1 This is confirmed by Mosso's interesting researches on the vasomotor changes in the rabbit's ear during slight fear and excitement : Mosso, Fear. 2OO His Instincts and Emotions development belonging to the human phylogeny ; so that both sorts of recapitulation cited above are represented in the growth of the child's modesty reactions. The phe- nomena of blushing, and certain other physiological ap- pearances, belong in both of these. 131. As to further evidence in favour of this position, I may cite : First, the general course of the child's develop- ment. Organic bashfulness appears at the remarkably early period when the child has no reflective processes, no emotions due to ideas, except as his suggestions confirm his instinctive reactions. He cannot inhibit his bashful- ness, nor much modify it. His mental part is below the development of certain of the animals. Again, the details of the reactions of this first sort of bashfulness are strik- ingly similar to those of purely instinctive fear, as it is shown by the animals. The profoundly organic elements in these modifications seem to require that their origin be as far back in the life-series as the indications on other grounds will allow us to place them. Second, these exhibitions of organic bashfulness are modi- fied as soon as the later development of self-consciousness brings in reflective modesty. The characteristics common to this reaction and to fear tend to disappear; and the child's attitudes become mainly a mixture of fear, hesita- tion, and self-exhibition. This last element, seen in the child's unwillingness to allow himself to be overlooked by strangers, is in striking contrast to the concealing tenden- cies of the organic period. It can only have arisen, it would seem, after the child had attained some more or less obscure form of self-consciousness. This would bring this form of the modesty reaction down into the human epoch in race-history ; since there is no evidence of such a Bashfulness and Modesty 201 sense, except in the most rudimentary form, 1 in any of the higher animals. These higher manifestations of modesty get their only explanation as belonging to primitive human society, and as having arisen by the adaptation of the earlier bashful attitudes, which primitive man inherited to the requirements of more complex social life. This agrees with the supposition that the organic form of bashfulness belongs in the animal phylogeny, where it is mainly the reaction of fear. Third, I think there are signs of organic bashfulness to be found in certain animals. The behaviour of a dog in the presence of strange dogs appears to justify this opin- ion. When the dog meets an unknown dog, he shows a general disposition to be cautious ; he gets ready for flight, but still does not fly ; he shows an incipient fear-anger psychosis by the raising of the hair of his neck, the straightening out of his tail, the setting of his ears forward in an alert way all attitudes of self-defence. 2 And with it all, there is a set of tentative manoeuvres of exploration, 1 The evidence of such a sense is usually drawn from just these animal emotions : pride, jealousy, etc. And in estimating it, one is embarrassed by the question as to how much of these may be instinctive. In a paper on ' In- timations of Self-consciousness in Animals,' read in my Seminary, Dr. C. W. Hodge concluded that we must allow dogs (*,-.) an obscure form of self-feel- ing. That a dog may eject something of his own mental life and act as z/he 'put himself in another's shoes,' while still maintaining his own self-sense, appears in the following case, which I have at first hand from Mrs. Baldwin. Her dog Nero was accustomed to escape from the yard by a hole under the fence. On one occasion a strange dog visited him and was shut in the yard by the closing of the gate. Nero, who was outside, helped him to get out by running ahead on the other side of the fence, barking vigorously, and looking back to see that the other dog followed, until he led him to the hole through which he was himself accustomed to escape. 2 Cf. Darwin's description of these attitudes in the dog. Exp. of the Emotions. 2O2 His Instincts and Emotions scenting, advancing and retreating, etc., which are very similar to some of the indications of bashfulness of the child. We cannot say that the dog is waiting to see what the other dog thinks of him ; that would be to make of the dog a man ; but we can say that his actions may be a sort of race equivalent of just that. And as soon as fair treatment, or a show of respect from the other dog, ap- pears, he grows affectionate and demonstrative. This is also the course of the child. Moreover, the signs of shame which some writers have observed in animals are to be brought under this class of reactions. These signs are those of slinking away, attempting to hide, random move- ments with a good deal of inhibition, sinking of the body toward the ground, and furtive restlessness of gaze. All these things are present also in the child's early bashful- ness, in the period before the dawning of self-conscious- ness introduces an element of self-exhibition into the phenomenon. Fourth, there is a class of modesty actions associated with the sexual relation which show a similar likeness to the reactions of the child. It is evident how great a place this kind of social toleration and acquiescence must have had in animal life. The oncoming of adolescence had to be provided for in the hereditary impulse ; and among the actions which represent social life in general, we should expect that those which belong to this relation would be prominent. Now the phenomena which various writers have described as characteristic of animals at their mating, will be found, when analyzed, to show remarkable similarities to those shown by the bashful child. 1 What 1 See Groos' detailed descriptions of ' Courting Plays ' and the bashfulness (Sfr'ddigkeif) of the female, especially among birds (loe. cit., pp. 243, 288). Bashfulness and Modesty 203 this means in the development of the child is probably this : that the modesty reactions which he inherits and which he finds himself performing all through his life, are, in a measure, those which the sexual relations of the earlier forms have established, and which his own adoles- cent period will, at a later time, bring again into ac- tivity. That the general phenomena of bashfulness, in all its phases, is pronounced and unmistakable in what we call ' shyness ' as the period of adolescence approaches in the youth, is a matter of common knowledge. The force of this consideration would also be in the direction of placing the organic basis of bashfulness and shyness back in the animal epoch of evolution. These indications seem to me sufficient to lead us to the probability that, in the bashful youth, we have both terms of race-history represented. The further development of the modesty reactions of the individual take us on in the history of social humanity. And at the outset I may say a few words about the course of the child's progress from a bashful babe to a modest man. 132. On the organic side, we find the reactions charac- teristic of so-called bashfulness giving way to those which go by the name ' shyness,' as the child grows up into the period of youth. Shyness is, however, more particularly applied to mental and social attitudes. The physical signs of shyness are, in the main, a lowering of the eyes, bowing of the head, putting of the hands behind the back, nervous fingering of the clothing or twining of the fingers together, and stammering, with some incoherence of idea as expressed in speech. With these external signs comes on the remark- able adult sign of shyness or modesty, blushing. These physical manifestations seem to be very largely survivals 204 His Instincts and Emotions from the more overpowering bodily expressions of the young child's bashfulness. They are to a great degree inhibited by the habits which go with adult self-control ; and they are not allowed to come out at the mere triviali- ties of social intercourse with strangers, as the child's do. But in their character they affect the same members, and the occasion of their display is the same in kind. It is interesting, also, to observe in those whose adult shyness is extreme, as it sometimes is, how really childish the phenomena seem to an on-looker. Some young ladies, in particular, seem to be quite incapable of undergoing an introduction without such evident display of what we call ' self-consciousness ' that the meeting is embarrassing on one side and uncomfortable on the other. More positively, the appeal may be made to the sort of emotional consciousness which the expressions of social embarrassment carry with them in persons of sensitive social temperament. 1 To people who are thus constituted, the social relation is, purely from an organic point of view, the most exhaust- ing, nerve-trying relation which one can well imagine. It is quite impossible to keep up even the most trivial social contact, such as travelling with an acquaintance, sitting or walking with a friend, etc., without soon getting in a condition of such nervous strain that, unless one break the relation occasionally to be alone, even the ' yes ' and 1 no ' of conversation becomes a task of tasks. If, how- ever, the relation involve thought of an objective kind which does not bring the social relation itself forward, 1 The present writer has been himself a victim of a very sensitive social sense in many respects, and the following remarks may be taken as giving in great part his own experience. Bashfulness and Modesty 205 such intercourse is most exhilarating and enjoyable. The finer shades of emotional effect are associated with in- creased rapidity in the heart-beat, some slight setting of the blood to the head, more rapid breathing, a general toning up of the muscular system, and a peculiar static pressing inwards from the front of the abdominal muscles. This is accompanied, on the mental side, with what I can describe only as a 'sense of other persons.' This ' sense of other persons ' may break up all the mental processes. The present writer cannot think the same thoughts, nor follow the same plan of action, nor control the muscles with the same sufficiency, nor concentrate the attention with the same directness, nor, in fact, do any blessed thing as well, when this sense of the presence of others is upon him. But there are other peculiarly social, i.e., conversational, etc., functions which are then at their best. 1 133. Apart from these more hidden organic changes, the one general effect due to the presence of other persons 1 At the same time there is an extreme form of this social sentiment, when the mental processes are kept strictly objective, which amounts to a sort of exaltation of all the faculties and a stimulus to success. The only way that I, for one, can undo this distressing outgo of energy, and release these uncomfortable inhibitions, is to expand the abdomen out- wards by a strong muscular effort and at the same time breathe-in as deeply as I can. But even the process of doing this is not normal, the very control of these muscles being in some degree under the same social ban. After such a siege of society, one must seek the rest of absolute solitude. The comparative relief found in expanding the abdominal muscles is probably due to the fact that it allows the contents of the body to fall, and so relieves the heart from any artificial pressure which may be upon it from the surrounding organs. Further, the increased heart-action which is itself a part of the reaction of shyness, requires all the space it can get. It is only in self-defence that such a person cultivates social coldness and indifference. Two recent studies of these effects are 'Morbid Shyness,' by H. Campbell, Brit. Med. Journal, Sept. 26, 1896, p. 805, and L. Dugas' ' La Timidite' in Revue Philosophique, Dec., 1896. 206 His Instincts and Emotions is that of blushing. The extent of the blush is described by Darwin with his usual thoroughness, i.e., the parts of the body to which it extends, and it is an interesting fact that the blush proper is limited, in his opinion, largely to the surfaces which are exposed to the gaze of others, Appearing mainly on the face and neck. 1 It begins in early childhood, about the time when we may say with confidence that the sense of self is moderately well devel- oped. I have seen my child H. blush vividly in the sixth year, but it is probably to be observed much earlier. Blushing is a general modesty reaction, since it is not limited to either sex, although it is usually stronger and less controllable in woman than in man (in the case of adults), and it is not due exclusively to any one occasion of mod- esty. The spheres in which it is most extreme are those which involve what is called shame in all its varieties, such as is caused by the thought of physical immodesty, seen in exposure of the covered parts of the body, by sugges- tions of personal uncleanness in body or mind, by the most distant allusions to matters of the sexual relation, or even merely to persons of the opposite sex, and by indeli- cate situations of any kind. There is also the sphere of moral ill-desert, the sug- gestion of disapproval or even lack of appreciation, of mis- taken inference, or harsh judgments ; all these call out the blush in the party morally judged, provided he know that this opinion is entertained of him. The adverse judgment of others is sufficient in many people to bring 1 Mosso, however, thinks the blush is mure diffused and is only the striking instance of the general vasomotor effect seen (in his experiments on animals) in the skin-vessels generally. Darwin supposes the blush to be due to ' atten- tion to self (*/> of Emotion, pp. 331 ff.), and his discussion of the vaso- motor effects of the attention is still one of the best. 207 a blush even though there be nothing to justify the opin- ion ; and the calmest sense of being right is often not calm enough to prevent the appearance of guilt conveyed by the blush. This reaction is, however, in great part a transitory one in the development of the individual. The loss of bodily sensitiveness seems, for the most part, to go with the loss of moral sensitiveness. The dulling of the social sense in general, as seen in ethical decay, fre- quent violations of social requirements, and habitual relax- ation of attitude with reference to the claims of either physical or moral propriety, tends to make the reaction of blushing infrequent and unintense. We often hear of persons who have 'forgotten how to blush.' Yet the blush may grow more and more vivid as the social sense grows more and more refined. Again, it is interesting to note that the organic process of blushing may be brought about simply by the imagina- tion of social condemnation, or by a situation of real de- merit in which there is no witness but one's own self. Self-condemnation may bring its own organic result. 134. Coming from so much description of the facts, both physical and mental, of these modesty reactions, we may inquire into their possible construction on the evolution hypothesis. What light do they throw on the conditions of race-history, either in its animal stage or in its human stage ? As to the meaning of these signs, it seems impossible to think that they could have arisen in the course of the intercourse of man with man, and especially of man with woman, which characterizes peaceful society. The sur- vival of organic effects of this definite and persistent kind must have had some profound justification which the his- 208 His Instincts and Emotions tory of civilized man's dealings with one another does not disclose. Assuming the correctness of the position taken above that bashfulness is a differentiation of fear, the fear of persons present in ruder family or tribal relationships and that bashfulness also has a strong ingredient of the reactions of mating, we may find in these points sugges- tions to carry further. I think that the differences be- tween the organic effects of bashfulness and those of the higher modesty reactions are to be accounted for as modi- fications due to the further social relations which were imposed, in the progress of evolution, upon these con- stant elements. Man continued to fear when there was occasion for fear, as also does the child. Man of course continued to mate; but certain regulations of his mating were established in his social progress. All these profita- ble variations became engrained in his nervous constitu- tion, and so tended to modify the simpler characteristic exhibitions. The general meaning of this may now be indicated, as far as we have ground for thinking that we can make it out. 135. Certain general bearings of the facts may be set forth before we attempt to give more detailed inferences. i. The inclusion of the moral emotions in the class of mental experiences which call out such organic reflexes as blushing, 1 shows that these emotions are of social origin, and have arisen in the same movement with the other fac- tors of this entire group of effects. We have already seen that the ethical sense is a growth. The reconstruction by 1 The sameness of expression of the more refined with the coarser emotions has been noticed before, and it has been discussed from an evolution point of view by Schneider, Thieriuhe ll'ille, p. 1 20. Bashfulness and Modesty 209 the child, in his own experience, of the social relationships through which his sense of self gets its discipline and clari- fication, makes him ethical. The discovery, therefore, that the organic reactions to ethical relationships are included in those of the social generally, shows that the plan of race ac- quisition of the ethical sense is recapitulated, in its great outlines, at least, in the child. I find it impossible to see, if we assume the Darwinian theory of the origin of emotional attitudes and expressions, why the class of emotions which we cover by the term ' shame ' should be cut in two, and those which are simply social should be said to have grown up in race-history in union with their expression, while the other half, those which are called ethical, although show- ing the same organic reactions, should be supposed to have acquired their connection with the organism in some extra- evolutionary way. This agreement, in fact, in the expres- sions of the ethical and social, taken with the social rise of the ethical emotions in the child, furnishes, to my mind, a twofold and irresistible proof of the evolution of the ethical sentiments in race history. No other theory seems to ex- plain the blush of moral shame. 136. 2. These reactions point to conditions of actual and active personal relationship in which they were of utility to the individual or the species. It is evident that they are less useful than damaging in our present society. By the blush the criminal only betrays himself ; by agita- tion the lover makes himself weak. The act of indelicacy thus carries its own condemnation, while the man or woman who is self-possessed escapes suspicion. The util- ity of these reactions could be established, therefore, only for a society in which the physical was in some way largely the measure of social efficiency, and the rushing of blood 2IO His Instincts and Emotion* to the head gave a respite or a resource which now we find in the 'soft answer which turneth away wrath,' or in the deed of moral restitution. We are forced, if this be true, to look for the conditions in which these reactions had active and effective play, backward in the history of man, to the period of primitive culture at which the physical was the main social weapon and law. Indeed, anthropological study enables us, from the object-lessons which we still have from primitive com- munities, to see to what a degree the meeting of a fellow was loaded with possibilities of danger and need of self- defence. In rude societies, the women are often matters of strife to the men, and the contest is a physical one; 1 and apart from the distinction of sex, with the causa belli which it affords, the rivalry of clan, the personal glory which accrues to the savage warrior, the element of treachery which makes the lone individual in the woods or at the camp-fire a legitimate victim, all these things, which are most critical and striking factors in rudimentary social life, make it only natural that the association of man with man and of man with woman should leave certain well-differentiated effects in his organism. Nor is it sur- prising that these effects should be taken up and perpetu- ated, in less gross but still unmistakable forms, when the personal relationships are developed in the more subtle modes which we call ethical and social. 137. Allowing these two general statements to stand as sufficiently proved by the fact that these reactions are what they are, I may be allowed to go a little into detail as to the more particular elements which entered into the 1 With animals this is true, even to life-and-death struggle between males. Cf. Groos, lot. fit., pp. 130, 144 social conditions of the environment in which they arose ; at the same time saying that these details are matters of my own personal attempts at interpretation, and are in so far more liable to incur criticism. I would not have them endanger the two general statements, however, which are made above, and which I hold are well proved, pro- vided only the postulate of organic evolution be accepted. At the same time the points which follow furnish addi- tional illustration and evidence for these two main con- clusions. i. The most general elements in the organic reactions of modesty, shame, etc., are certain vasomotor changes, with inhibitions and confusions of muscular movement. The vasomotor changes seen conspicuously in the blush are analogous to those found in connection with other emotions, notably fear and anger. If we say, therefore, that these changes are rooted in conditions of personal experience which occasioned fear and anger, that may be our starting-point in the reconstruction of the social prog- ress which these reactions stand for. And the conditions of the presence of these vasomotor and muscular changes may be assumed to be those of fear and anger, i.e., the strife which brought on physical struggle, involving excited heart-action and strenuous muscular exertion. Readers of the literature of emotional expression l since Darwin will be sufficiently familiar with this hypothesis and the grounds on which it rests. These considerations extend to both the aspects which we have found attach- 1 Cf., besides Darwin and Spencer, also Mosso (Fear), Mantegazza (Physiognomy and Expression), James (Princ. of Psychology, II., Chap. XXV.), Dewey (Psychol. Review, Nov., 1894, and Jan., 1895), Baldwin {Mental Development, Chap. VIII.). 2 1 2 His Instincts and Emotions ing to the modesty reactions, the aspect which implicates the sexual relation, and that which pertains to personal defence ; the former factor being very essentially one of high motor and vasomotor changes. 138. 2. The beginning of differentiation of the reac- tions of fear and anger in the direction of modesty re- quires some very striking cause. Fear has, in its higher forms, some ingredient of self-insufficiency, it is true ; after the idea of self and its relation to an alter arises, we have ground for considerate fear ; but physical fear has very little reference to self, consisting as it does in an overwhelming sense of the presence of the fearful object. The same is true of anger ; so far from involving any hesitation or retreat through considerations of personal lack of power, worth, etc., it tends in quite the opposite direction. Anger means precipitation upon the offending thing. The consistent development of these forms of re- action, therefore, in the progress of the race would have been in the direction of the more formidable equipment of the individual for defence and offence, with the eliminat- ing of the elements which tend to hesitation, embarrass- ment, and weakness. So we must look for some modifying factors in the environment some sufficient reason for the development of these reactions in the direction of less personal aggressiveness, and more personal dependence, which we find they have actually taken. 1 39- 3- This modifying influence is doubtless to be found in the tendency to family life, 1 and in the germinal 1 Cf. Westermarck (I/islory of Human Marriage, Chap. I.), who holds that marriage exists among animals as an instinct Hue to natural selection, its utility being the raising of the family : " Marriage is rooted in family rather than family in marriage " (p. 22). Bashfulness and Modesty 213 beginnings of social and collective action which we see illustrated 1 in some degree in the animal kingdom. The consideration of the animal family is itself sufficient, in my opinion, to show the manner of pro-social develop- ment. The qualities seen in the animal member-of-a- family those which he must possess in order to make the family eligible in the struggle for existence involve two factors. First, the degree of self-seeking or aggressive tendency which avails to keep selective competition sharp inside and outside the family life ; for the family depends, for its food and drink, upon the individual's courage and strength. And second, the development of the co-operative tendency, with the consequent suppression of aggressive- ness, as far as this is necessary for the essential family rela- tionships and for united action in the competitions which the family as a whole has to wage. These two opposite tendencies must be reconciled; and the development of further social life depends upon the way in which the organism succeeds in reconciling them. The gregarious instinct must exist outside the family also alongside of sufficient aggressiveness. Now the reactions which we are studying seem to me to be the survival and thus the evidence of this opposition, as I may go on to explain. 140. 4. In the child's bashful period, there are three epochs or stages : first, a purely organic stage ; second, a free-and-easy social stage ; and third, a stage in which a certain ' self-exhibition ' seems to be struggling against the organic inhibitions and restraints. These periods are 1 Topinard {Monist, January, 1897) ^ as recently collected evidence to show that these two tendencies do not always go together; that the most gregarious and instinctively ' social ' animals are often those of least developed family life, and vite versa. 214 His Instincts and Emotions not speculative, but real, as the actual study of children discloses. The last-named period is the beginning of real modesty, and involves the subjective sense which we call self-consciousness. The first of these epochs we have already identified with the fear-anger reactions of the animals, together with their sexual commotion ; these two things at least and in the main. The second of the child's periods, I am inclined to think, represents a sort of organic resting-place, with the degree of social co-operation which terminated the extreme strife, struggle, hand-to-hand con- flict required by the purely biological operation of natural selection. The child becomes simple in his confidence ; he is naive, unsophisticated, credulous to a great extreme. He seems to me then to have his parallel in the rest which man took after his release from the animal ; with his dawning sense that he could exist without killing and being killed, with his discovery of the arts of tilling the soil and living, for some of his meals at least, on vege- tables. The social tide then sets in. The quiet of domes- tic union and reciprocal service comes to comfort him, and his nomadic and agricultural habits are formed. He lives longer in one place, begins to have respect for the rights of property, gives and takes with his fellows by the bar- gain rather than by strife, and so learns to believe, trust, and fulfil the belief and trust. Looked at logically, no less than historically, this is to me quite reasonable. The early ages must have had, sooner or later, a scene like that depicted in the life of the Hebrew patriarchs, when the flocks were the main care, and the wolves were the main enemy ; when the hand of some men ceased to be against every man ; when the principle first came to take permanent effect in the consciousness of man that to 215 co-operate was rational, and to fight continually was not convenient as slow as this principle was and still is of recognition beyond certain restricted spheres, and as un- supported as it was by any effective sanctions but those of force. This need of rest from strife, on the part of the race, as an introduction to the occupations of peace, would seem to be testified to in the history of primitive times ; and the anthropologist may be counted on to give the asser- tion some authority. 1 I have already pointed out (Sect. 93) the function of play as aiding such a growing sense of sociality. Of course it is more questionable whether there has ever been any such period over the whole earth at once. It may be in order, however, to say that the supposition is not necessary that such a stage was real- ized in the entire human race at the same time. The anthropologist is coming to put less and less stress upon the claim that certain stages must be reached by different families or groups in the same degree at the same time. Race peculiarities, as far as they exist and go back into prehistoric times, must have arisen just through the dif- ferences which different groups showed in their develop- ment under different geographical and historical conditions. This tribe may have been prevented longer than that from turning to the arts of peace, by the aridness of the soil, by the prevalence of wild beasts, by the conditions of the seasons, or by lack of useful inventions. Certain other 1 Of course its confirmation would require much anthropological research which I am not able to bring to it. See the quotations, regarding this well- recognized period, however, in Appendix F. May this declaration of the hypothetical character of this parallel appease thee, learned critic, whose red-rag instinct is keen for theory ! 216 His Instincts and Emotions groups may have had to come into social co-operation sooner in order to subdue nature and drain the soil ; or to protect themselves from common enemies. 1 All these things, which anthropology is far from understanding in any detail, are yet clear enough to make it necessary that we look for types of human culture realized somewhere rather than for the realization of any type everywhere at once. The cat and the tiger are both felines and both represent types of feline nature, although for all I know we may not be able to say that there was a time when either alone existed. The tiger may be alive all the time, and yet the requirement may be real that there should also exist a feline edition so mild in its character as to be capable of domestication. Saying, then, that there has been such an epoch of transition between the lower man who does not reflect, and the social agent who does, this epoch would seem to be represented well by that period of trustful sociability and unreflecting credulity which lies between the organic fears and tears of the child and his self-conscious shyness and modesty. 141. It may be well at this point to designate the two periods in race progress which we have so far distinguished ; and I know of no better designations for them than these: first, the animal period, revealed in the reactions of the child which are mainly organic, we may call, from the social point of view, the period of 'instinctive co-operation? The second, that which brought in the reign of peaceful pur- 1 Indeed, the competition of groups of men with one another (called above 'social selection '; Chap. V., 4) was doubtless the means of the selection of the more socially endowed tribes, as, for example, those which applied the principle of division of labour in their internal economy. Bashfulness and Modesty 217 suits and the beginning of widened communal interests, represented in the child by the frank trustfulness which succeeds organic bashfulness, we may call the period of 'spontaneous co-operation.' The word 'spontaneous' is con- trasted both with the term ' instinctive ' and also with the term ' reflective ' which we will find it well to apply to the period of distinctively intelligent social life which arose later on in the life both of the race and of the child. These terms apply as well to the child ; better, in fact, than any other descriptive terms which I think of. His social attitudes are first instinctive, then spontaneous, and finally reflective. 1 So we may now turn to the third or ' reflective ' period in the development of both child and race, as it is exhib- ited in the reactions of modesty. 142. 5. The way the child has of coming to be reflec- tive is simply his way of getting his notion of himself ; that is what reflection means, the distinguishing of the object, the alter, the not-self, from the self, and then the bringing of the self up to pass judgment upon the other. I reflect when I, the ego to the best of my ability to be an ego or self turn round and examine something in 1 Of these sorts of co-operation, the ' instinctive ' belongs to animal ' com- panies ' (Cf. Appendix D.) ; the ' spontaneous ' mainly and the ' reflective ' almost exclusively to human ' societies.' See distinction between ' companies ' and 'societies' below in Chap. XII. (Sect. 320). I use the word 'co-opera- tion ' rather than ' association,' which has some currency, chiefly because of the technical meaning which the latter term has in psychology. ' Association of ideas ' is a very important fact in the psychology of ' co-operation ' and two distinct terms seem to be requisite for clearness. ' Co-operation ' involves, besides, some degree of active attitude on the part of the individuals in dis- tinction from the 'association' by mere herding, so common in the animal world, which is a very static and unfruitful form of gregariousuess, and which in the human mob is actually destructive. 218 His Instincts and Emotions my consciousness ; my plans, my memories, my failures, my hopes, in short anything which I can represent in my consciousness and examine more or less coolly. The progress of my reflection is really the progress of my ability to hold myself together as an independent and critical being that judges. 1 The child's progress in this has already had detailed attention. We understand that he reaches constantly a self of his own by understanding others better, and then understands others better by reason of his interpretation of them in terms of what he thinks of as himself. These two poles of thought constantly occupy him ; and he gets them generalized in some degree in what was called in an earlier place the ' habitual ' self, on the one hand, over against the ' imitative ' or social self, on the other hand. The habitual self is the reckless, bullying, bragga- docio of a self; and the imitative self is the docile, teach- able, retiring self. Both grow up together by the very opposition which presupposes them both. So in his inner world he reproduces the actual social world, and fits himself for an active place in it. Now the indications are that this is the case with the progress of the race. The elements called ego and alter thus present in the child's consciousness are also represented in his organic reactions, in just the two factors which we have already found well to point out : the fear, anger, self- defence and offence, etc., inherited from the instinctive period, and then the other factor due to the peaceful learning of the communal lessons in co-operation which come down from the period of 'spontaneous' social life. 1 Cf. the exposition of Bradley'* description of the self of reflection in Appendix E. Bashfulness and Modesty 219 There are the same two factors in the individual's equipment which we find the animal's life to require : aggression and co-operation. The social development of the child, therefore, shows both the sorts of recapitula- tion which we should expect ; both phylogenies have the periods which in the growth of the child we have called respectively 'instinctive' and 'spontaneous.' And then, besides, we now find that what the child goes on to be in his 'reflective' period is just the outcome of the ten- dencies of the other two. Reflection is born of the need of getting a sort of accommodation which will reconcile the personally aggressive or instinctive with the person- ally imitative or spontaneous ; this the child attains by his development of personality, wherein he has to give, by the very movement of his own growth, due value to the two terms which lead him on, the ego and the alter. So the race had to reconcile the instinctive tendencies which came down from the animals with the co-operative tendencies which social life prescribed ; and it was done by the race in the same way that it is done by the child: the race became reflective, intelligent, and so started on a career of social development in which two fundamental influences were to work together, the private selfish in- terest and the public social interest. This leads to a topic which is of so great importance in the further development of the meaning of social life, as this book conceives it, 1 that I shall now leave its fur- ther consideration over until the other elements of equip- ment which have social expression have also been ex- amined. It is an interesting question to ask whether they notably sympathy give any further support to 1 The topic ' Sqcial Progress'; see Chap. XIII., below. 220 His Instincts and Emotions the conclusions to which the reactions of modesty have led us. 3. Sympathy 143. The consideration of sympathy is made more easy for us since this emotion has always been considered a critical phenomenon for ethical, psychological, and socio- logical theory. It has been the central point of some of the most stubborn conflicts in the history of ethics ; con- flicts which were sometimes remarkable for the lack of the attitude which the topic discussed would seem to encour- age. And when we come really to see how pregnant with meaning sympathy is, we are not at a loss for the explanation of the fact that it should have been used to support this view of man or that, to the neglect of the sympathetic consideration of opposing views. These discussions of sympathy have given us, indeed, a fairly clear view of the facts, and a generally adopted theory up to a certain point in its interpretation. Psy- chologists are generally agreed in finding a distinction necessary between ' organic ' and ' reflective ' sympathy, similar to the distinction which has been made in consider- ing modesty. The sympathy which the infant shows when its doll bumps its head, or when papa puckers up his face and pretends to cry, is very different from the sympathy which I bestow upon the wretch in the slums, or upon the widow who has lost her only son. The quick appearance of violent organic changes in the child, his unreasoning and indiscriminate expressions of the emotion, the passing of it as soon as the physical expression has to a degree sub- sided, the lack of any sufficient mental development, at the period when these reactions occur, to support a real sym- Sympathy 221 pathy of reflection, all these indications serve to justify the opinion that we are dealing in the former case with an inherited organic manifestation. This is further made clear by the fact that animals give very remarkable exhibi- tions of this sort of sympathy. The dog will howl at the calamity of his master, or at the disaster which befalls his fellow-dog before his eyes ; indeed, the phenomena are so well known and so much discussed by a humane public, that I need not cite evidence which may be found in any of the books on animal psychology. There is, then, we may safely say, an organic sympathy as well as a reflective sympathy. 144. The physical manifestations of these two forms of sympathy are, however, again, as in the case of the emo- tions already cited, the same in kind. The expression of sympathy is akin to that of suffering in general. A certain subdued air is assumed throughout the entire muscular system, the corners of the mouth droop even to the ex- tent seen in weeping, to which, indeed, the sympathetic feeling sometimes actually brings us, the movements take on a general attitude as of proffering help to the individ- ual toward whom the sympathy is directed, and the voice reveals the peculiar quality characteristic of distress in man and of the cries of suffering in animals. The young child reveals his sympathy by at once falling into tears and vocal cries. The adult either bestirs himself, if on reflection he judges it well or useful to yield to the promptings of sympathy, or sets up counter movements of restlessness and aimless activity in order to relieve the uncomfortable tensions which his sympathies excite in his organic and muscular systems. 145. The meaning of sympathy considered as a race re- 222 His Instincts and It mot ions action is reasonably clear, I think, and it falls in with the inferences which we have already drawn respecting mod- esty. Organic sympathy, being too early in the child for reflection, and being also present in the animals which give no sign of ability to reflect, must be considered as revealing instinctive reflexes in the child. Falling thus in the period which goes back in its reference to animal ancestry, it gives an instance of recapitulation from the animal series. And the meaning of it in the child, ob- scured as it is by his quick development in other and char- acteristic human directions, is the same as in the animals. In the animal family, sympathy is largely a part of the family instinct as such. It represents the extreme of animal blood-relationship ; and in some of its manifesta- tions is among the most extraordinary phenomena in the whole range of life. For example, some ferocious animals, which delight in drawing blood, will nevertheless discrimi- nate the blood of members of their own species, and show subdued and sorrowful attitudes. Carnivorous animals will lick the blood from the wounds of their companions, with every expression of what is to us, in similar circumstances, gentle pity and fellow-suffer- ing ; thus suppressing those more ferocious appetites of their nature which the taste of blood generally excites. And the more remarkable is it since other animals draw no such distinctions, eating their own kind with a good appetite. Indeed, the existence of cannibal tribes among men serves up a comparison which makes it allowable to suggest that, in going back to animals for our origin we reach a nobler lineage possibly, in some respects, than if we had stopped short of it. The human cannibal, however, is of course the excep- Sympathy 2 23 tion ; and he may represent a relatively isolated trend of development or of decay ; at any rate, his presence in the world does not stand in the way of our learning the lesson of the animal's sympathy. Even the cannibal does not eat his own children, nor members of his own tribe. They are to him as himself just as the whelps of the mother-dog are to her as herself ; and as the human babe is to his parents as themselves. And we must look upon the sym- pathetic reactions of animals and by analogy those of primitive human times as showing the extreme form of the co-operating tendency, before the rise of the reflective faculty. 146. Coming, however, to the reflective form of sym- pathy which the child so soon begins to show, and which, when once come, is one of the strongest and most saving elements of his human nature, we find a state of things strikingly similar to that depicted in connection with mod- esty and shame. Indeed, the facts are much clearer here, thanks to the analyses which psychologists and moralists have made. The rise of reflective sympathy is clearly a function of the rise of the notion of self. As we have seen, the thought of the ego, and the thought of the alter, having the same presented content at bottom, excite the same emotion in kind ; and so the emotion of suffering, appeal, joy, rebellion, etc., which one feels for himself must be aroused also when the same thought of per- sonality comes up with the different descriptive term 'another' attached to it. The progress of the child in get- ting the antithesis between ego and alter well fixed, and even bodily separated, does not impair this necessity of his thought. The motor processes which represent the thought of self must be, in the main, the same whether it 224 H* 5 Instincts and Emotions be myself or yourself to which a particular experience re- fers ; so the reactions of relief, weeping, rebellion, subdued collapse, etc., must come to the front in the presence of the fate of others no less than when the victim is oneself. In the latter case, of course, the actual bodily sensations of present surroundings, or the actual requirements of consistency in my thoughts, memories, local escorts, etc., may be amply sufficient to prevent me from making a mis- take in my identity, and thinking the suffering is really my own ; but even that is liable to be undone in cases of high sympathetic excitement. Sometimes the external, and indeed the internal, boundaries between you and me are swept away, and I feel your calamity really as my own. This tendency is, of course, the source of the emotions of the theatre, where every premium is put on the sort of self-illusion of which I am speaking. And in certain very frequent and persistent cases of such confusion of real suffering and fancied or historical suffering, we have to treat the patient as a victim of an abnormal process which, however, in its root and value, is normal sympathy. Reflective sympathy, therefore, is distinctly a social out- come. It is the inevitable result of the growth of reflection ; and reflection is just a relation of separateness created between the ego-self and the object-self. If there were no alter thought, there could be no reflection, and with it no sympathy. In organic sympathy, the relation is a mat- ter of organic reaction due to natural selection, we may suppose; 1 reflective sympathy reaffirms the social value of the reaction, utilizes it, and in discovering the relations of persons for itself, in a reflective and critical way, goes on to refine the reactions and embody them in the institutions 1 Cf. Appendix D. Sympathy 225 of social life. Reflective sympathy comes to replace much that is, in its earliest foreshadowings, biological and merely adaptive ; and through it the laws of organic adaptation get a turn which is characteristic of a rational order. Under this head, finally, reference may be made to cer- tain other emotional states which have more or less value in the social life as over against sympathy. I refer to the class of emotions covered by the words 'jealousy,' 'pride,' ' vanity,' etc. These easily fall under the general concep- tion of a developing self to which I have referred the sympathies. The emotions of pride attach to the habitual, aggressive, domineering self, and are of importance mainly as illustrating that aspect of self-development. There are, however, certain social facts to be mentioned later, which make it well to refer to them in this place. In jealousy we seem to have an emotion in which both the resources of explanation are taxed to their full extent. Considering reflective jealousy in man, we should say that it represented a certain second ' intension ' of the sense of self, a double reflection. For to be jealous of another it is not alone necessary to think of him as one also thinks of oneself, and thus to be thrown into the attitude which char- acterizes sympathy; this does not go far enough. There is besides the further consciousness that what he is experi- encing is different from what the self is experiencing, and more desirable. This is possible only on the ground of a contrast between the ego and alter thoughts as marked as is the identity on which the sympathetic emotion rests. It may therefore be described as a state of sympathy held in check and overbalanced by the egoistic tendencies aroused by the knowledge of the cause which is contributory to the Q 226 His Instincts and Emotions other's enjoyment. This on the side of the higher reflec- tive form of jealousy. We should be led to think, in view of the complexity of this state of mind, that it could hardly be found in the animals ; yet organic jealousy is found in them in a remarkably striking degree. Dogs are proverbially jeal- ous of one another and even of other animals and of man. Yet it is impossible to say that dogs have this double play of attitudes about the thought of self. In fact, the existence of strong jealousy among the brutes avails both to emphasize the two sorts of emotional expression, and also to make it imperative that we recognize the two principles of their origin. In the origin of organic jealousy we have the complex but direct operation of natural selec- tion. When we think of it, we see that such an instinct is of direct utility to the dog ; for it stirs him to throw himself upon his rival, and by overcoming him so to secure the good thing which was his rival's. As a complication of sympathy, also considered as instinctive in the animals, this is what would seem to be a necessary outcome of the law of utility ; for the dog whose sympathies for another had no such modification would stand by and perish while others lived whenever the competition for food was sharp. His delight would be to see others eat ! The organic emotion of jealousy, therefore, would seem to be a biological outcome, serving in the animal something the place of the reflective egoism seen in the higher jealousy of man. The general result, therefore, in so far confirms our earlier conclusions. Sympathy reactions run continuously up from animal organic utility adaptations, to the uses of reflective social life ; and so furnish additional evidence that the highest sphere of our emotional nature is not Social Emotion as Such 227 separated by a gap from the more modest social beginnings of lower life-orders. The child passes with no rude shock indeed, he never knows the transition from organic to reflective sociality ; and the presence of the former ministers to the latter all the way through, just as the existence of the former at the start makes the later exist- ence of the latter possible. The same appears also in the emotional reactions to which we now turn. 4. Social Emotion as Such : Personal Opposition 147. The place of emotion in the mental life, and the purpose which it serves, would lead us to expect that, after social life has arisen and become fixed, there would be peculiar forms of emotional experience springing up about the relationships and adaptations which thus become so important in the life of man. Emotion is, by common consent, the accompaniment of habitual ways of action on the organic side, which have become so fixed and regular as to become stereotyped in the nervous system. Given, then, so constant a thing as the social rapport, in all its meaning, in the evolution of humanity, and it would be strange if there did not arise with it a characteristic emotion of society and a correspondingly instinctive way of action. There are two classes of phenomena generally recognized as thus distinctly social, and although, from their very nature, they show peculiarities which make it difficult to classify them under the term 'emotion,' used in a concrete sense, yet the remarks which follow may justify me, I trust, in bringing them forward in this connection. One of them is the class of phenomena which fall under the term 'suggestibility' in current psychology, and the 228 His Instincts and Emotions other class constitutes the sense or emotion of play. These general topics are already in part familiar to us from the earlier descriptions; but there are further considerations to be made out in the present connection. 148. I. In the first place, we may inquire into the facts concerning social 'suggestibility.' The literature of suggestion, and of the social value of suggestion, is becoming adequate in recent years ; and, indeed, the treatment of this topic has given to social psychology its most respectable showing. The writings of Tarde, Sighele, Guyau, Le Bon, and others, have set forth the truth that society is at certain times largely a mob ruled by suggestion and by suggestion only ; and that this case is but an exaggeration of the action of the working of suggestion generally in the social relationships of man. Hypnotic suggestion has furnished important leading-strings of inquiry which have been followed with interesting results ; 1 and finally the conditions of the child's development have been shown to include a large ingredient of incitements of this order. 2 In fact, certain sections of the foregoing chapters of this work show that the influence of suggestion in the individual's progress is sufficiently great. The child's personal growth is not only constantly stimulated by those suggestive influences which we have called by the general term ' tradition ' ; but his progress is also constantly checked by the same system of influences. To say that he is liable to suggestion is therefore to cover with all-too-weak a word what is indeed the very method of his advancing life. Looking broadly at the child's ways of action, we find that social give-and-take becomes a habit 1 Yet both Tarde and Royce make perhaps too much of this. * Baldwin, Menial Da>elopment t Chap. VI. Social Emotion as Such 229 to him, its indulgence a means of great enjoyment, and the denial of it, through isolation, a source of intolerable discomfort, irritation, and rebellion. The anticipation of it is again a constant element in his thought of the worth of life and its distinction. The social circle of a man, too, is the part of his environ- ment which arouses in him, even when he does not actively think of it, the most profound responses of his personal nature. And when he does think of it, it appeals io his highest sentiments of self-respect, dignity, and ideal activity, or the reverse. These subjective aspects of the social life have never been named as have the emotions which carry distinct organic reactions with them, for the reasons that they are so varied in their effects in the mental life, and that they have no precise physical accompaniments. The nearest that one may come to a classification of them in psychological language is perhaps to put them under the two headings of ' Imitation ' covering all the phenomena of social contagion and atmosphere, satisfaction with conven- tion, conformity to style, custom, etc., and 'Opposition/ 1 using this latter word in its widest sense, as covering all tendency to revolution, all resistance to convention, all social obstinacy, love of innovation, etc. The two opposed aspects thus made out cover the antithesis between the ' conservative ' and ' radical ' ten- dencies ; and yet, as we will see, the present distinction is a somewhat different one, since the extreme of social suggestibility extends to novelties as well as to the estab- 1 Since the text was written (and too late to be available to me) M. Tarde has published a work on 'Opposition' which deals with facts and laws con- trasted with those of ' Imitation.' The term ' opposition ' may well be given this technical meaning in social science. 230 His Instincts and Emotions lished usages of society ; and the extreme of opposition, as used in this connection, goes so far as to lead to personal revolt as a habit, no less against what is established than against the newer courses of current suggestion. Both of these aspects represent constant and marked phenomena, which rise to a certain dignity. The former was called ' plastic imitation ' in my other book, 1 the tendency sim- ply to yield to the impulse or emotion of conformity to social.usage, and it is under that phrase that I shall con- sider some of its phases after the brief remarks which fol- low on ' opposition.' 149. The phenomena of opposition show themselves on the side of the individual's independence and self-suffi- ciency, as the phenomena of mob-action show themselves on the side of his sociality. Yet the former spring out of the same general movement of the personal sense as do the latter. There are certain phases of his growth which appear as more or less striking oppositions ; and these I shall point out. They fall, however, under the less impor- tant and more incidental items in the inventory of social happenings, as the full consideration of the oppositions which may arise between the individual and society will make more evident in a later chapter. 2 (i) In the child's 'contrary suggestion' we have a very early exhibition of social opposition. I have elsewhere pointed out that this sort of suggestion arises either through the association of ideas, together with certain 1 Mental Development, Chap. XII., 2. Plastic in view of the mobile condition of the crowd under a strong suggestion. No other term has been proposed for it, so far as I know. 9 On social sanctions (Chap. X.), where intellectual and moral conflicts are dwelt upon. Social Emotion as Such 231 possibilities of muscular antagonism ; or through an actual tendency to the emphasis of the personal as such in the mind of the child. As to the first it may be passed over, seeing that it itself 'passes over' very soon in the progress of the child. The latter reason for his contrariness, how- ever, leads us to a second and more important aspect of opposition. (2) The child's growing sense of self becomes subjec- tive mainly thfough his experience of agency, volition. This has been fully explained above. It is this sense of growing agency, power to work effects for himself, which urges him on in a career of relatively competent and fruit- ful invention. Now to the degree in which this is indulged, encouraged, or even, in some children, merely allowed to grow, it leads the little agent into a sturdy indepen- dence which shows itself as social opposition. He rejoices in the ' self of aggression ' which legislates for others. In the words of a correspondent, 1 " One of the great psy- chologically potent purposes of social life is the purpose to find the self different from any other self." This is per- haps rather strong ; but that the ' purpose ' is a real one there can be no doubt. We see it in the attributes of character so much treasured under the terms 'individuality,' 'personal pride,' 'self-respect,' 'private judgment,' etc. 2 1 Professor Royce. 2 See also remarks made above (Sect. 75). "We find volition brought out on occasion of imitation, a higher kind of imitation called ' persistent,' in which the child does not rest content with the degree of success his old reactions provide, but aims ' to try again ' for better things. Now the imi- tative instinct itself is thus, in this transition, brought to the bar, and vio- lated by its own passage into volition. In volition, the agency of the actor comes to instruct him. He learns his power to resist and to conquer, as well as his weakness and subjection to a copy. And the child comes, just in this conflict between imitation, an instinct, and suggestion, an innovation, to 232 His Instincts and Emotions (3) There is yet another phase of social opposition which has also had some attention in our earlier pages : it is the sense of social esprit de corps which comes to attach to the circle or group within which one's social conscious- ness grows up. The common self of my group, one thinks, is the proper common self; and in so far as other societies do not recognize its conventions and regulations, and the more if perchance they violate its essential prin- ciples, they are wrong. Their ' socius ' is a mistaken one ; there must be opposition between them and us. There thus arises a certain rivalry of clan, family, nation, with a vehement emphasis upon the features in which they are not at one. In all these cases it should be noted, however, that we are dealing with side-events, so to speak, by-products to the main progress, whether of the individual and of the group to whose common life his growth contributes. His imitative growth is the necessary basis of all these oppo- sitions. And in so far as the one is essential the imita- tion the other is non-essential. The main function of such oppositions, in the progress of society as in that of the individual, is that of keeping alive the sense of indi- viduality, of leading to strenuousness of purpose and en- deavour on the part of individuals, with a consequent enriching of the store of imitable materials through inven- break through and make himself an inventor and a free agent. In fact, we have found a type of action realized in the phrase 'contrary' or ' wayward ' suggestion, in which just this revolt becomes a way of action. The boy won't imitate. This simply means that he won't imitate what other people ask him to, but prefers to imitate what he asks himself to. He imitates just the same, of course. But the difference is world wide. A ' contrary ' boy has learned the lesson of volition, has passed from suggestion to conduct, has mounted from the second to the third level, and is available for genius-material " (Bald* win, Mental Development, pp. 430 f.). Social Emotion as Such 233 tion. It also leads to experimentation, and to a testing of rival schemes which forwards the growth of the fit. 1 150. As to the facts of plastic imitation, they are so marked, and so commonly observed, that I shall be content to name certain of the more remarkable instances ; and then refer to the writers who have treated them in detail. One great sphere is that of what is called ' style ' in mat- ters of dress, methods of domestic usage, arrangements for social functions such as calling, announcements of en- gagements, marriage cards, funeral customs, etc., in short all the affairs of our external social lives in which we ask 1 The discussion of Social Progress, in Chap. XIII. below, makes due rec- ognition of this constant inventiveness, and of its necessity for social progress. A view which seems to make much more of opposition of this emotional type than I find myself able to do is indicated in the letter of Professor Royce just referred to, which I take pleasure in quoting here : " I think that there is here one very general factor neglected which de- serves more study. One great region of social functioning consists in deliber- ately producing what I have called ' social contrast effects.' Questioning, criticism, social obstinacy, gossip about one's neighbours, opposition, repartee, the social game of the sexes, in all its deliberate forms, these are functions whose conscious purpose is, not to reduce to unity, not to decrease varieties, but to find, to bring out, and to dwell upon the differences amongst selves. Such functions make up a fair half of social conscious life. They obscure, for most people, the imitative elements actually so universal, so that to most people the discovery of the universality of imitation comes as a surprise, like the surprise of learning that one has always been talking prose. Well, as I notice, a great deal of an individual's inventiveness is a function due to the appearance of social contrast effects. Light up my conscious contents by some new con- trast with the ideas of another, and I see, in myself, what I never saw before, and now I have ' a new idea.' " One of the great, psychologically potent purposes of social life is the pur- pose to find the self different from any other self. The purpose is often vain, and its conscious expressions are full of illusions amusing to the on-looker, but of all grades of social organization, from the children in the market place to the nations stubbornly holding aloof from one another prating of glory, and levying tariffs, one could assert with a force almost equal to that of Tarde's definition, that : Society is a mutual display of mental contrasts." 234 His Instincts and h 'motions 'What is the proper thing?' before we take action at all. The man who is in style illustrates plastic imitation. He shows a certain sensitiveness to the more trivial expres- sions of social judgment which may be passed upon him. All this is a matter of imitation ; for only in the great out- lines can these social arrangements be said to be deliber- ate. For the most part, and in matters of detail, they are conventions which have sprung up by accident or by the suggestion of some social leader, and have been estab- lished through the tendency to conformity which character- izes the average social man. The same tendency extends also to the intellectual life. There is in every community and in every age a style of thinking, a general preference for this sort of topic or that, which is a matter largely of social suggestion and imitation. This may extend only to the lighter things of the mind, in which the newspaper press leads the style ; or it may be discerned as a deeper current in the history of literature and of human thought. Great ideas sometimes sweep suddenly over a people ; ideas which had lain dormant for long periods, simply because no leader in the intellectual world had taken them up and made them the 'style.' M. Tarde has attempted to state the laws of these movements, and I may refer to his book for many details. 1 In the emotional life the same sort of thing is seen in what is called the 'contagion' of feeling. An emotion may sweep through a gathering of people with a strength altogether out of proportion to the occasion of it in the indi- vidual's ordinary thought or life. Sighele has set this forth with much richness of illustration, 2 and a recent writer has attempted to work out a calculus of the effects upon an 1 Tarde, Let Lois dt r Imitation. * Sighele, IM Foule crimjnellt. Theory of Mob-Action 235 individual in a crowd of all the suggestions which he gets from the emotional and vocal expressions of the other members of the crowd. Le Bon 1 has also recently depicted very vividly the ways of action of mobs under the sort of social suggestion which enchains them to the pursuit of the one ear-catching and impulse-exciting idea. 5. Theory of Mob-Action 151. With such adequate portrayals before us in the lit- erature of the topic, we may go on to find the place of this class of phenomena in the theory of social evolution. In the first place, it may be well to say with some emphasis that the attempt to build a fruitful conception of society upon the actions of the crowd under the influence of these imitative suggestions, seems to be crude and unphilosophi- cal in the extreme. If the reign of style in social custom and in thought and feeling, and the reign of suggestion in the crowd, are to supply the data for the formula on which the movement of society to-day depends, then the past and future movements of social development must also be explained on the same formula. Water cannot rise higher than its source. If mob-action be the level of modern social attainment, then the mob must society always have been and the mob it must remain. The real impelling forces must then be the individuals whose law or caprice rules the mob. That we may see the place of mob-action in the social movement, it is only necessary to put the emotional expe- riences which the individual feels when in the presence of strong social suggestion alongside the rest of his mental 1 Le Bon, The Crowd 236 His Instincts ami Ji mo/ ions life, and ask how far it constitutes a permanent element in his sane activities, or even in the social activities which have become crystallized in the judgments and expectations of his time. When this is done, it is at once seen that these plastic influences are in themselves mere spontanei- ties, except so far as they get support from the deeper movements of the social environment, or represent the deeper movements of the person's mental life. Then only do they get vitality ; but not because they are matters of suggestion in the crowd. Their value, on the contrary, comes from the fact that they represent forces already operative. I am disposed to say, trying to put the real character of this sort of social suggestion in a single sen- tence, that the mind of a crowd is essentially a temporary, unorganized, and ineffective thing. And its more partic- ular characters may be cited to show this. It is hardly worth while to go into the matter except that such a social phenomenon ought to be explained, and that the school of writers referred to think that in describing the mob they are solving the problems of social life. With it, we may hope to get light on the subtler phases of social suggestion. The characteristics of the social suggestions upon which the crowd act show them to be strictly suggestions. They are not truths, nor arguments, nor insights, nor inventions. They are fragments hit off, chips, often words and but words. The type of mental process which is required for the reception of these missiles of the mind is also very exactly characterized by the word 'suggestibility.' The sugges- tible mind has very well known marks. Balzac hit off one of them in Eugenie Grandet in the question : ' Can it be that collectively man has no memory ? ' We might go through the list of mental functions asking the same Theory of Mob-Action 237 question of them one by one. Has man collectively no thought, no sense of values, no deliberation, no self-control, no responsibility, no conscience, no will, no motive, no purpose ? And the answer to each such question would be the same : no, he has none. The suggestible conscious- ness is the consciousness that has no past, no future, no height, no depth, no development, no reference to any- thing ; it has only in and out. It takes in and it acts out that is all there is to it. It is receptivity gone to seed, and action gone mad. The most striking things about it are its utter thoughtlessness and its extraordinarily lively excitement. A meaningless suggestion to a crowd may bring an outburst of emotion and action which sweeps away some of the landmarks of a generation. This, again, has been set forth by a recent writer, M. Le Bon. The real question is : What inferences are we to draw from facts which show that the most irrational, capricious, impulsive, and excess-loving man is a collec- tion of men ? Can it be true that these phenomena show either the origin from which society has sprung, as some recent writers claim, drawing from it a conclusion fa- vourable to individualism, or the goal to which society is tending, as others pitifully cry, in justification of social pessimism ? Have we here evidence either that the indi- vidual is the wisest human resource, seeing the pitiful outcome of collective action of this type ? or that de- mocracy finds its fulfilment in social confusion, seeing the omnipresence of the mob ? 152. Of course not, we reply to the first of these ques- tions. Social suggestibility could not be the original form of man's life, for then there would be an absolute gulf be- tween him and the animal world, in which instinctive 238 His Instincts and Emotions equipment in definite directions is supreme. Moreover, the social organization we already have would have been as impossible from such a beginning as the pessimists fear it will be when such a condition of things returns in the reign of pure democracy. The mob which acts to-day and forgets to-morrow, kills to-day and sighs for life to-morrow, builds to-day and destroys to-morrow, would be a poor stock in trade for the spirit of social ideality to start its career of progress in the world withal. No, therefore, the ata- vistic theory of social suggestion is not the true one ; the mob is not a reversion to an earlier type of human life. 1 153. To the other view nowadays sometimes urged, we must also take exception just as decided. The phe- nomena of social suggestibility are not the key to the understanding of the future, in the sense that the mob is the typical and controlling social force. The progress of society is progress in education, richness of tradition, con- tinuity of growth ; these are quite in opposition to the impulsive and casually explosive activity of the crowd. The loss of identity and social continence on the part of the individual, when he is carried away by a popular move- ment, is well struck off by the common saying that such a man has 'lost his head." That is true; but then he regains his head and is ashamed that he lost it. His normal place in society is determined by the events of that part of his life in which he keeps his head. And 1 It cannot be said to represent what we have called ' spontaneous ' social co-operation, since being in the higher reflective epoch it has all the re- sources, especially for destructive action, of established and organized society; and more especially since it has not the sturdy characters which belong to the individuals at that epoch. The tendency to ' contrary ' suggestion and indi- vidual ' opposition ' are quite absent from the mob. Theory of Mob- Action 239 the same is true of the events in the life of the social group as a whole. Such theories repose upon superficial views of the agen- cies at work in the moulding and developing of institu- tions. It is not the mob whether the particular mob be a lynching party, a corn-riot, a commune, a Chamber of Deputies, or a Jingo Senate which starts or directs the fruitful movements of a time ; to say that would be to re- verse the connection of cause and effect. The real forces at work are heredity, instinct, tradition, intelligence, per- sonal power in particular men, etc. These are the causal agencies which, to be sure, give us also the mob and the set of performances which must undoubtedly be attributed to it. The principle of suggestion, which seems to have application in this field, is itself responsible for so much that is more profound, that to have all that undone at the capricious operation of the same principle in the casual intercourse of crowds, would be to refute our knowledge with our ignorance. 154. With so much attention to the theories which make the extremest form of social suggestion and incon- tinence massgebend for social theory as such, we may turn to a more positive examination of the place which such phenomena really hold in human life. This place is clearly that of a Nebenconsequenz, a by-product, an inci- dental outcome of the general movement which bodies forth the progress of society. If, as has been said, the kind of temporary suggestive consciousness seen in the mob is not the original form, nor the final form, of social association, then it must lie somewhere between these two extremes and so represent a phase of social development itself. What this phase is, 240 His Instincts and Emotions and how it comes to be, is easily seen. The emotion of sociality, like all other emotions, has its normal kind of excitant ; and when this is present in extreme degrees, the emotional movement is itself liable to be extreme. The presence of persons is the normal social excitant, and the extreme degrees of social influence come naturally over a man, when he is surrounded, hedged in, embar- rassed in his thinking, by the crowd. A man's normal mental life may be paralyzed by over-stimulation of any kind. Frighten him by an impending physical calamity, and he 'loses his head ' ; give him too much cause for joy, and he becomes ' mad ' with his rejoicing ; let an object of envy, jealousy, hate, remorse, repentance, occupy his mind too intensely or too singly, and his deliberative processes, his memory, his resolution, indeed, all those saner aspects of his mental life which make him a man, are temporarily impaired. It is simply a case, then, of the exaggeration of the normal. One element in his make-up gets complete control of the man. The sort of social influence which a crowd exerts upon the single member of it is precisely the same. That ordi- nary requirement of social life co-operation, with the sus- pension of private interest and judgment in some degree in the interest of a broader social point of view is here enforced ; but the demand made is extreme. The suspen- sion of judgment becomes the inhibition of personal think- ing ; the co-operation required for social life becomes the frenzy of social crime ; the deeds of the individual are no longer his, but the crowd's. So the whole series of facts, which are indeed so remarkable, may be explained on the view which treats them as excesses in processes upon which the very soberness and sanity of social man ulti- Theory of Mob- Action 241 mately rest. If man were not able to take social sug- gestions at all, he would live alone in a cave and shoot his fellow-man at sight. But if he come out of this bondage to individualism into the promised land of co-operation through the give-and-take of social influence, then he must be prepared for the waxing growth of the new sense which his social freedom produces. The more social he becomes, and the more valuable the fruitage of his co-operation, as embodied in institutions, the more danger of excess- discharges in the new channel when the conditions of stimulation are artificial, and the more safeguards must he erect around his institutions, to protect them from himself. 1 The analogy with the individual's own mind is an in- structive one. In order to think, one must have a certain impelling emotional trend, a certain sufficient interest, a plan to which he feels himself committed ; but these very things, the emotive aspect of thought itself, it is that on occasion dethrone his reason, lead him to the extreme excesses of passion, or land him in an institution for the insane. So social thinking, the normal engine of progress both in the creative and in the conservative processes of history, must have the sort of emotive impulse which we call social suggestion ; but to it, when it breaks its bounds and becomes a purposeless function, history owes its cata- clysms. 2 1 Sighele's explanation of the tendency of the mob to action of a low type, is that a sort of average capacity is struck among all the individuals (f.a Foule criminelle, p. 63). But if that were true, excess in crime would he as rare as great virtue in the crowd. 2 Interesting cases from the life of the more social animals might be cited, going to show that with them this mass-action is a departure from their nor- mal life. The following quotation from Hudson apropos of the violent setting of a herd upon its weak members lends itself to our view : "The instinct is, then, not only useless but actually detrimental; and, this K 242 His Instincts and Emotions 155. With this explanation of those more wild and un- bridled exhibitions which men sometimes make of them- selves when acting collectively, we may see also the reason for the more partial and semi-reasonable obsessions which afflict society. The social tendency to be undeliberate, enthusiastic, to put up with the novelty which is most insistent in its claim, and most noisy in its self-commen- dation this tendency is easily led by the schemer and agitator in our midst, whose only hope of a following is a following en masse, when the force of the example of a few satellites carries the strength of overpowering suggestion to the unthinking crowd. For this reason the practice of demagoguery is much older than the theory of it. And then, besides, there are always lines of social influence running here and there in literature, in social theory itself, and in political party strife, which open a network of sug- gestions to the popular mind. All these things, to the degree to which they paralyze the individual's judgment, stifle his thought, or appeal to his intellectual inertia, are really hypnotizing suggestions whose effects the general character of social life itself, with its openness to personal influences, sufficiently explains. 156. II. Another ingredient, also, of the social emotion which we are now considering is to be found in the play- instinct. This class of phenomena has been characterized being so, the action of the herd in destroying one <>f its members, is not even to be regarded as an instinct proper, but rather as an aberration of an instinct, a blunder, into which animals sometimes fall when excited to action in unusual circumstances. The first thing that strikes us is that in these wild abnormal movements of social animals, they are acting in violent contradiction to the whole tenor of their lives and to the whole body of their instincts and habits which have made it possible for them to exist together in communities." (Nat. in I* Plata, p. 340 f.) Theory of Mob- Action 243 in an earlier chapter, and their value in the early life of the child pointed out. It is easy to see that by play the child not only gets into the habit of being social in the normal ways and degrees which his after life requires, but he learns also to give himself up to the social spirit. In games there is the exact counterpart oftentimes of the action of the crowd. The imitative impulse is developed under the lead of the example and injunction of the older and more domineering children. The lesson of self-con- trol has its opposite in the lesson of mass-action and spon- taneous suggestibility. Any one who watches the games of a set of boys in the school-yard or in the streets will see that it is only a small part of the moves of the game which are provided for with any consistent or well-planned plot or scheme. The game is begun and then becomes, in great measure, the carrying-out of a series of cotips et contre- coups on the part of the leaders among the players ; the remainder following the dictation and example of the few. When a leader whoops, the crowd also whoop ; when he fights, they fight. All this social practice is most valuable as discipline in serious social business ; but it is also prep- aration for the excesses of social emotion. And a good deal might be said, I think, of the tendency of adults to be drawn together and to act together through the incitement of gaming. 1 157. Two general remarks may bring this topic to a close. The same relation which subsists between law- abiding and socially continent action, on the one hand, and the explosive action of the mob, on the other hand, also 1 The social influence of gaming should be brought out by some one writing on human games ; I commend it to the distinguished author of the forthcoming work, Die Spiele der Afenschen. 244 -Hi* Instincts and Emotions subsists in the impulses of the individual. One may sit in an auditorium, as the present writer has often done, during an exciting political or religious harangue, and endeavour to keep himself quite cool and unresponsive. He will then be convinced that he himself, even when he sets himself to be rational, is still a creature whose social suggestibil- ity goes deeper than his power of self-control. He feels, in spite of himself, and in the face of his great impatience with himself, the tide of social excitement rising within him ; and the swelling of his bosom is evidence to him that there might be an orator altogether too moving for his resistance. He feels that his footing is his only so long as he is enough alone to keep his thinking processes unentangled in the social emotions which are being stirred up around him. Another consideration, apropos of this general topic, seems of some importance. It is that the relation of the two tendencies thus found in the individual, and in every community, may vary indefinitely toward the excess of the one factor and the deficiency of the other. We can all point to individuals whom we characterize as suggestible and emotional. They are quick to catch a suggestion, a style, an opinion ; they go with the crowd ; they are under such evident illusion as to the independence of their judg- ment that we smile behind their backs. Opposed to these we also know individuals who are as contrary as the way- ward child : men who will be original, coelnm mat. And it is perhaps as often the occasion of remark that there are analogous differences in social communities springing from these individual characteristics. A society may be volatile, excitable, suggestible ; or phlegmatic, stolid, inert. The Latin and the German races are often contrasted on these lines. Conclusions for Social Theory 245 6. Conclusions for Social Theory 158. With so much consideration of the emotions and impulses which urge on the social man, we may now sum up the conclusions, of a general kind, to which we have been led by the consideration of his emotional life. These conclusions may be set forth somewhat as follows : (1) The beginnings of social life are found in the ani- mals. This is proved not only by the emotional life of the animals, but also by the inherited emotional expres- sions of the child (e.g., bashfulness and sympathy), which point unmistakably to animal ancestry. This may be called ' instinctive ' social life. (2) There is a stage of social life which is, so to speak, ' spontaneous.' It follows simply from the social impulse itself, considered as a tendency to co-operative action, which arises out of earlier social instincts. It marks an early stage in human social culture, when the arts of peace and the rudimentary forms of social convention proved themselves useful and served as a foundation for the larger social development based on reflective intelligence. This period is shown strikingly in certain stages of the child's and youth's modesty reactions. On the anthropo- logical side, it is confirmed by the existence of peace-loving primitive peoples, with the modes of co-operative activity seen in their industrial contrivances and in their rites and sports. (3) The child's and the adult's emotional expressions point to a further development, which mere spontaneous sociality is not sufficient to explain. It is marked by the adoption, with modifications, of the emotional reactions of spontaneous and instinctive periods, thus showing unmis- 246 His Instincts and Emotions takably its origin ; but it serves to introduce a further period, which in the growth of the child has its ground in self-consciousness. Conspicuous among the exhibitions of an emotional kind which characterize this period, are the modified expressions of modesty and sympathy which accompany self-consciousness. This is the ' reflective ' period. (4) The general impulse of society, which is common to all the manifestations of co-operative life, itself gives an emotion which appears in the phenomenon of 'plastic imi- tation,' reaching its extreme form in the exhibitions of mob-action. It is an index of the fact of sociality which works by imitation rather than a cause of it, or its main outcome. CHAPTER VII HlS INTELLIGENCE 1 THE preceding examination of the instinctive and emo- tional equipment of the social man has revealed the pres- ence in him of something not adequately expressed in terms of inherited reflexes. The growth of the child has also shown us his progress out of his inherited reactions into a higher sphere of invention and self-education, to which we have given the name 'reflective.' All this evidence of a higher part in man which draws out, utilizes, and controls the powers of his organic nature, and also regulates the assembling of men together for reasonable acts of a co-operative kind, invites us to a more direct con- sideration. It will be well first to try to arrive at an understanding of the nature and sphere of operation of this intelligence of his, and then to seek out more espe- cially its meaning in the social life. i. Nature of Intelligence 159. Upon the first of these tasks we may not linger long, since it falls to theoretical psychology and since recent works have given us genetic principles which serve to bring the intelligence within the purview of natural history. Something of its character has also been seen 1 This chapter is intended merely to give some empirical observations on the subject of the social nature and uses of the intelligence. 247 248 His Intelligence in the chapter on 'Invention.' The intelligence serves cer- tain ends, in the economy of personal development, which may be stated in such general terms that the disagree- ments of opposed theories may not be aroused. I shall set forth these general functions of intelligence in the points which immediately follow. (1) It is by intelligence that complex knowledges are built up. The simple perception of a thing does, to a degree, involve intelligence ; and this the animals have. So, also, have the animals association of ideas and a ten- dency to see their perceptions in related systems or general classes; the statement I am making, therefore, is not intended to mark off a human endowment in any exclusive sense. But if we ask how far the animals go, as a matter of fact, in the development which gives intelligence its opportunity, we have to say not far that is, not far as compared with man. And the limitation seems to be, on the intellectual side, 1 just in this faculty of seeing things in groups, as complex situations, with relations of general extent and meaning, which require for their entertainment the use of symbols such as those seen, in their most devel- oped form, in speech. This, then, the ability to think in general terms, by using symbols which abbreviate and sum- marize detailed systems of associations, is the first charac- teristic of intelligence, as found in human social operation. (2) The other thing to be said of intelligence is cor- relative to this. // is the guide to action in complex situa- tions. All knowledge tends to lead to action. Even the reflexes of instinct are started by sensational processes which discharge through the muscles. The perception of 1 It is another aspect of the animal's inability to judge with reference to self, spoken of in Sect. 86. Nature of Intelligence 249 an object leads the animal to act. And we find that the more complex the knowledges or perceptions are, the more complex also, the more varied, the actions become. And the variety shows itself in a certain show of acting on alternatives, or ' clioosing? as we say of the higher forms of intelligence. Further, in view of this possible variety and choice, we may ask after the motive or reason the particular piece of knowledge which tends to bring out an act of a given kind, calling it the ' end ' of the action. It is charac- teristic of intelligence that the actions which it brings about are directed toward ends ; that they are appropriate to realize, in whole or part, directly or indirectly, the events or situations which the knowledges depict. If directly, then we say the movement reproduces or rein- states the object which the actor is thinking about. This is plainest in a reaction of simple imitation, where the child actually makes his own hands or tongue reproduce the figure or sound which he sees or hears another make. If indirect, then the action is only a means to the end ; only a first term in a series of actions which finally termi- nate in the reproduction or securing of the situation depicted in thought. Advancing intelligence quickly learns to turn all its knowledges into the channels fit to accomplish the ends now pictured, or then ; and shows the ability to use means for its ends. It is evident, of course, to the psychologist that this is a very sketchy account of intelligence. So it is. But I am not aiming to justify any theoretical account of intelli- gence. The books do that, and I may refer to 'them for the justification of the points made and their genetic demon- stration. I am only stating the facts of the intelligence, 250 His Intelligence in their simplest terms, in order to use them in what follows. No one will deny that intelligence gives us gen- eral and abstract knowledges ; nor that it is by our intelli- gence that we use means to accomplish ends. If one doubt this, let him look to the idiot or to the young child for illustrations of the inability to do one or other of these things, and then let him watch the same unfortunate weak- minded, or the same child, and see him learn to do both these things together ; and he will have all the evidence he should require. So if we should throw the two points together, in a sentence, getting a single definition of intel- ligence which should answer our present needs, we should say : intelligence is the ability to understand complex situa- tions and to know hoiv to act suitably in reference to them. 160. With this very brief and schematic account of the intelligence before us, we may turn back on our path and notice that the growth of the child in learning to know of himself and of the world, as depicted in the earlier chapter, is simply growth in intelligence. We saw that his inventions were always just the attainment of ever broader and more complex knowledges, and we also saw that his tests and checks, in all the process, were just the appeals to action by which he learned to use what he had learned. Complexity of understanding and suita- bleness of action are the two points of interest and value in all his development. But the further definition of each of these aspects of intelligence now arouses further ques- tion. The child's actual system of knowledges, apart from the more or less fixed relationships of external nature, is that system into which his social heredity leads him. We have seen how it is that he goes on constantly in t he- paths which the usages of society, the traditions of his Nature of Intelligence 251 elders, the forms of accessible literature, etc., open up before him. It is impossible for him to make his system of truths for himself, and even the advances which his thought does make for itself are constantly brought to social tests, before he accepts them as valid and perma- nent acquisitions. There is, therefore, a large social ingredient in the truths which each individual learns ; and he himself constantly testifies to its power over him by making appeals to society for confirmation. So it is only what we should expect, that his action should reflect the social aspect of his thought, as well as the purely personal aspect ; that he should live normally as a social man in a social environment. This supposition leads us to ask more closely for a definition of the other aspect of his intelligence that which relates to the ends of action. And the attempt to answer this question gets additional interest from the fact that it is an historical question, and that the discrimination and testing of many social theories now in the field is possible only when we get some consistent answer to it. We may state this question in two main inquiries : first, what is the end which intelligent action has in view ? and second, what kinds of action are reasonable with reference to this end ? 161. In coming to a discussion of these topics, we are not called upon to seek out a philosophy of ends, nor to bring harmony into current disputes on the topic. The main antithesis now current turns upon the supposition that one or the other of two views is true, to the exclusion of the other. One class of men say that the end of action is revealed by the action ; that the end is nothing but the statement of the final term of the action itself ; that intelli- 252 His Intelligence gence has its natural history, as an agent in the evolution of mankind, and so the end of intelligence, like the end of the evolution process itself, is to be discovered only by seeing what the outcome really is. The question, to this theory, is a question of fact, depending, however, upon the truth of the genetic view of the mind. This is the theory of autonomy: the man as a whole is law-giving to himself, just because he can get no law which is not the outcome of the very process of development which he himself represents. The other class of theories hold that the end of action is set for the man by some instrumentality outside of him. They hold to hcteronomy. The end is some real and abso- lute end, which it is his business to aim at, whether it arise naturally in his mind or no. The body of the doctrine already set forth in this essay, resting as it does on the general position that every psy- chological outcome must have its natural history and its preliminary stages, and that every function or activity must have its raison d'etre in a content which normally arouses it all this forces us at once to espouse the au- tonomy view. The end of action must be a function of the content which arouses the action. The dog acts with reference to perceptions ; they are the best he can do. The man acts with reference to concepts, with distant aims before him in space and time ; he can do it because he is able to feel the value of the distant and the general. The nature of the knowledge, then, is that which determines the sort of action ; and the action must terminate upon this knowledge, not on some other knowledge be it better, or be it worse knowledge. When we come to apply this, by examining the know- Impersonal Intelligence 253 ledges which are actually found among us anywhere, in the animal, in the man, in society, we are able to dis- tinguish three sorts of ends which come up as functional aims for action in the sense which I have set forth. They represent three stages in the progress of mind. We may say that the ends of action, are, first, impersonal or objec- tive, then they become personal or subjective, and, finally, and with the latter, they are social or ejective. These terms may be described in more detail. 2. Impersonal Intelligence 162. The distinction between the consciousness which has no reflection on self, no thought of a self as a separate being and as the source of the very thought which thinks it, and the consciousness which does have this reference to a personal self or thinker, has been fully set forth, and the development of the thought of such a self traced. The action of a consciousness, then, of the impersonal kind the consciousness which has no such personal thought cannot, of course, have as its end or aim such a self. If the self cannot be thought, ipso facto it cannot be put forth as the end of action. The action is a function of the thought which is there, and if the thought of a self is not there, then it cannot produce action. On the contrary, the thought in a consciousness at this stage is always the thought of an object, this thing or that there in the world; the action ter- minates with this, and, as far as the consciousness dictates the action, that is all there is of it. We, of course, who speculate on philosophical questions, ask, further, what the place is of this action in the system of organic reactions which go to illustrate the evolution theory, and reach a 254 ff* s Intelligence view, perhaps, that the action which is selected and re- peated is that one which gives pleasure ; and so come to say that the end of that action is pleasure. But that is a matter of our philosophy, not of the animal's end. He does not stop to ask for pleasure nor to distinguish his actions on any such basis until he gets a certain association established between the action and the pleasure which it gives. And then he does not reflect upon the pleasure, and determine that he will pursue it. He finds his impul- sive reaction toward pleasure a function of the presence of pleasure, just as the reaction on objects is a function of the perception of the objects. 163. But now we can see that it is the business of natural selection to determine the kind of action which shall find its most radical fulfilment in the world through this imper- sonal thought. As we have seen, this has required, as a matter of fact, that the family should arise ; and that, in turn, required that actions of a so-called co-operative kind should be there. Thus arose animal instincts of a quasi-social sort; but even the complex family instincts and co-operation of the animals do not involve personal, self-conscious thought. They occur in appropriate refer- ence to the objective content of consciousness, and are always a function of this content. The instincts, how- ever inadequately they may seem to be represented in the actual sensory experiences which call them out, neverthe- less seem to have arisen by the growing adaptation of the organism to the stimulations of the environment. The conclusion, therefore, is that these also are impersonal activities. They have no personal end ; neither the ego nor the alter, as such, appeals to the animal. The actual meaning to him of his actions is simply that they happen ; Impersonal Intelligence 255 and their meaning in the doctrine of evolution is deter- mined by the complex setting of conditions of which the actions in question form a part. 164. So when we come to ask the second great question concerning action issuing from such a consciousness, i.e., the question as to what is the ' reasonable ' action, we find a certain embarrassment. The concept of reasonableness does not apply at all, seeing that the animal is not able to reason. If he does not have actions set before him on which he has to pass judgment with reference to their fitness to secure an end, then there is nothing for him to do but to act out each mental content which he gets, just as it comes up. All stimulations stand on the same basis. If he fail to act on each situation as his perception of that situation dictates, then he is but sick or maimed. That is all that we can say ; there is no question of relative reasonableness in his actions. So, as a practical result, we have to say that the co-operative actions by which he supports the family life, possibly at the expense of his own life, as when the mother starves herself that her young may be fed, are just as reasonable as the actions by which he satisfies his own appetite. In each case his mental content is issuing in activity, and the different activities equally express his nature. This evident neutrality of his, say of the companion- able dog that runs beside my horse, as regards any pos- sible standard of reasonableness in his action, may be emphasized here, although no one would contradict it, possibly ; for when we come to the corresponding question about the higher stages of consciousness, we are apt to want just this sort of analogy to help us. It does not make the remotest difference to the dog what we adult 256 His Intelligence men may say about his folly in losing his life to save mine or yours, or about his acuteness in getting his dinner by stealing my leg of lamb. The two actions are equally reasonable from the dog's point of view, because each is an adequate measure of his mental state at the time. The drowning man is his end in one case, because there is the master drowning, and action follows on this situation ; in the other case, the meat is seen and smelt, and action follows on that. 165. The corresponding case is plain in man. We have found in him also many actions to which the predi- cate ' reasonable ' and its opposite do not apply. All the actions of his which he shares with the animals, as far as they represent in him tendencies which his reasonable thinking, his intelligence, does not pass upon, are of this character. This epoch in human development is seen in the child up to its third year or thereabouts, when he begins to grow reflective. We do not blame the child for acting on his instincts. We do not say he is unreasonable in not using means to ends, nor reasonable in accomplish- ing ends by those endowments shared with the animals, by which he sometimes reaches ends without means. He is simply a creature of suggestion, of action in terms of content, first-intention action, as the philosophers say. And, moreover, it is true of him, as it is of the animals, that the end which his actions do subserve, the objective ends to which we by our philosophy find his whole life process to minister, this is an affair of the examination of the data which the evolution process in- volves at that particular stage. If the activities of co- operative instinct are prominent along with the personal, aggressive, individualistic activities, then the end of the Personal Intelligence 257 evolution process must be conceived of as including both these classes of data. And the reasonable aspect of development, the end which it sets out to reach, must be broad enough to hold both these factors together in a single conception. But to justify any such view from the animal's or child's consciousness would be possible only in the later stage of development, in which intelligence becomes personal. 3. Personal Intelligence 1 66. For the mode and method of the mind's passage from the impersonal to the personal and social forms of thought, I must again refer to what has been said in detail of the child's mental development. It has been traced all the way from ' personality suggestion,' which is the merest distinction of persons from other objects, on the ground of characteristic ways of behaviour, up to the full antithesis of ego and alter. And in it we have also pointed out the movement by which he thinks, in terms of one self, of the two, or the other. It now becomes our task to inquire how his intelligence makes these thoughts available in its general building up of knowledge, on the one hand ; and then what of reasonable character the actions which result may consequently get. In short, the two inquiries are those suggested above: i.e., (i) what is the end set up in this personal form of consciousness? and (2) how and to what extent are the actions then performed reasonable with reference to the securing of these ends ? Taking up the first of these questions at this higher level, we find that the trend of contemporary philosophy 258 His Intelligence and ethics may be stated in a broad form, which steers reasonably clear of the discussions of the schools. The problem familiar to psychologists in the term ' desire ' is not now before us ; 1 but the use made of the notion of desire in many of the books on sociology and political economy justifies us the more in giving the topic the meed of attention which our present development needs. What is it that man desires ? 167. The doctrines of the end of desire now current fall together in a series which is in itself significant. We have the end of desire stated alternatively, i.e., as 'an object,' 'the possession of an object,' 'the enjoyment of an object,' 'enjoyment in general,' 'enjoyment of self,' 'the self who enjoys,' 'self-realization,' 'the attainment of a better self.' The theories, in other words, travel all the way from the object to the self. And it is the simplest thing in the world to say why they do so. It is because each of these formulations seeks to elevate the statement of some one aspect of desire into a general formula. As a matter of fact, every mature man of us has all of these desires. And not only so ; there are epochs of development which are characterized by one or other of these ends, as then the great and prevailing sort of desire. The reason for this variety is that the desire is a function of the thought which lies back of it. The desire is the tendency to action which the thought arouses. So the examination of the thought is the necessary preliminary to the determination of the kind of desire and its end. Given the thought which terminates on objects, that 1 See below, Chap. IX., 3, where desire is considered with reference to the sanction ' under which it attains its ends. Personal Intelligence 259 which is quite impersonal, unreflective, and the end of its desire is the object. This in its purity is what is called above the impersonal stage. But given the thought which brings up pleasure strongly, with enough reflection to single out the pleasure and set it forward in something of an abstract way, and the desire then terminates on the pleasure. And yet again ; given the thought of self as the constant being whose interests are represented in the pleasure, whose life demands pleasure, and whose per- fection is the goal of all the highest pleasures, then the desire terminates on the self, and perhaps on an ideal self. All very good. So we must again distinguish between the end of the particular action or desire itself and the philosophy which we reason out on the basis of those particular sorts of desire. The former is the progressive developing thing which the thought itself is; and the latter is the interpretation of one or other, or all, of the stages. This general position once taken, we have to do hence- forwr.rd, not with an attempt to get a philosophical theory of the end of human action which will satisfy all the con- ditions, nor with the attempt to read into each of the stages of development the results of such a theory. Our task is rather to find such general distinctions in the con- tent of thought at the different epochs of human develop- ment as give differences of end at the corresponding epochs. 1 Whatever significance these epochs of develop- ment may have for a general theory of mind, they have 1 Cf. the distinction made below, Chap. IX., 3, on ' Sanctions,' between the ' world of fact ' and the 'world of desire.' Our object in the later chapter is to show that, at whatever stage of consciousness, the 'thing of desire,' or the full motive, rather than the mere object or ' thing of fact,' is what sanctions the resulting action. 260 ///> Intelligence direct significance for the attempt to arrive at a genetic account of the social life of man. The problem has been thus defined in the preceding pages. The three epochs of the genetic development of thought the impersonal, the personal, and the social epochs have been mentioned. The present digression is made in order to justify the use of them from the point of view of the demarcation of our present problem, as over against the philosophies of desire current in social and ethical discussion. To be sure, we might carry our claim further, and say that philosophy, in its search for general principles of construction, such as the theory of end requires, should proceed out from the empirical examination of the actual course of develop- ment, and interpret action in terms of thought epochs. This would be true ; and philosophers need to be told so, I think. 1 68. So we come to ask after the meaning of the per- sonal and social epochs of thought for the theory of end. At the outset, certain points already made come to mind. First, we have found, in the preceding chapter on the ' Emotions,' that there is no break of an absolute kind between the epochs which, on the side of the in- stinctive life, we called respectively ' organic ' and ' spon- taneous ' ; and, on the other hand, there is likewise none between the ' spontaneous ' and the ' reflective ' epochs. This was made plain from two points of vicu : the emo- tional expressions of the organic epoch are utilized in the higher epochs by a natural transition from the lower to the higher type of function. Further, the child shows no great breaks in his development from instinct, through suggestion and direct imitation, to reflection ; at least, on Personal Intelligence 261 the side of the emotional movements of his modesty, sym- pathy, play-activities, etc. His progress is continuous. Each of his spontaneous activities grows right up out of his instinctive performances ; and then each of his reflective emotional attitudes is only a further adaptation and con- firmation of the spontaneous ones. And a third line of evidence was suggested from the side of anthropology. The progress of race culture shows similar transitions from the savage to the gregarious and nomadic, and then to the reflective forms of co-operation. Yet we found it more difficult to conceive the transition from the sponta- neous to the reflective than we did from the instinctive to the spontaneous sort of activity. The reflective seems to represent a new trend of development, inasmuch as it involves, as we now see, the two great characteristics of intelligent adaptation, the appreciation of general and abstract situations, with the drawing of inferences looking toward distant ends, and the adoption of means appropriate to the accomplishment of these ends. The burden of the case, therefore, the cause of the transi- tion, rests upon the intelligence, and its meaning be- comes the further problem. Turning to the other main development of the preced- ing pages, the child's development on the side of inven- tion and personal interpretation, we have more light, I think. We found that the child's imitations are a means to personal growth only in so far as he made the result, in each case, the basis of an interpretation for action. He reaches synthetic combinations of data constantly, and it is these which enable him to act more appropriately. He is like the genius, in that he reaches ever-changing and novel arrangements of the elements of presentation and 262 His Intelligence memory. By the laws of assimilation, motor habit and accommodation, he is quite unable to be stationary. He must see and react to new situations every day. His growth takes place under two general aspects. First, his tendency to generalize is a matter of growth in the facility with which lie learns to act upon things in com- mon or general ways instead of treating each individual fact and event in a special and peculiar way. His growth in ability to reach complex thought is a matter of growing unity of habit in his active life. But, on the other hand, with this comes also the ability to single out the particular and treat it in relation to the group in which it belongs ; this is due to the fact that in his learning to act, in his successive accommodations of himself actively to the facts and events of the world in succession, he has secured a sense of their isolation and a mode of treatment of them in isolation. In this relation of the single fact to the general class, a relation which arises through the joint action of habit and accommodation, 1 we have the ger- minating tendency of intelligence to reach an interpreta- tion of each particular in the general situation which comes before the mind by the system of steps which we call inference and reasoning. This is a very summary characterization of the gene- sis of thought ; and intentionally so, since the genesis of thought is not our problem. We might just assume that thought has a genesis, or, if you please, a beginning, and then go on to ask its sphere in the evolution of social life ; 1 See the detailed treatment of these principles of the genesis of the func- tion of thought in my Ment. Devel., Chaps. X.-XI.; cf. also James on the ' Genesis of the Elementary Mental Categories,' Psych., II., pp. 629 ff. See also Chap. III., 3 above, on 'Selective Thinking.' Personal Intelligence 263 but I have preferred to state in outline what I believe to l>e the real genesis of thought, seeing that it has the peculiarity of making the motor accommodations and habits of the thinker the leading-string to his intelli- gence. This holds together the two positions taken that the end is a function of the thought-content, and that it is by acting to realize ends that thought develops. The child, for example, has the purpose to imitate my move- ments. He cannot have that purpose until he has thought of the movement ; but he cannot arrive at a more adequate thought of the movement unless he act continually on the thought he already has. The former thought gives him his present possible act ; and his present act gives him the new thought. So action and thought grow together as correlative aspects of intelligence. Now we may go on to consider the social interpretation of this state of things in the life of the child. 169. Disregarding the interpretations which the child makes of the impersonal elements of his thought, and so of the progressive knowledges which he builds up of the external world, we may turn at once to the social element in his personal growth. With this distinction, however, I do not wish to deny that there are social elements also in his knowledge of the external world ; there are. But the method of the child's interpretations, in all his knowledge, is the same, and is a function of his personal growth ; so by taking the knowledges which have specific reference to his social surroundings, and inquiring after the social factors involved in them, we bring out most clearly the sphere of social suggestion where it is most important both in itself and for our present line of thought. The question then is: what social elements enter into the 2t>4 tf* s Intelligence child's interpretations of situations of social value, and what uses does he make of these interpretations them- selves? Or, in other words, what is the content of the thought which stimulates the child to social actions, and what are the actions which are ' reasonably ' performed with this end in view. These are the two questions already stated : the end, and the means to the end. As to the content to the child's thought of social situa- tions, that is twofold. The concrete ego and alter thoughts fall together on one side, over against the thought of an ideal personality on the other side. So there comes to con- sciousness, when we follow the child up into the beginnings of his ethical life, a threefold sense of self, each a sort of net for the assimilation and interpretation of new experi- ences or suggestions of personal relationship. He has a thought of himself, the ego with a group of very well- defined emotions of self-interest; this grows more and more solid, circumscribed, and compulsory upon all the candidates for position in his thought. Then he has a thought of the alter, who presents himself from time to time ; and with this the group of altruistic emotions seen in modesty, self-shrinking, sympathy, etc. another mental net always ready to entrap and assimilate the suggestions of personal presence, action, etc., which come and go in the environment. Third, the general or ideal thought of self, around which the higher sentiments spring up. Be- fore going on to speak of the third sense of self, with the sentiments which accompany it, we should define the other two and estimate their importance and relation to each other, recalling what has been said of them in an earlier connection. 170. First, it becomes clear to us, both from the con- Personal Intelligence 265 sideration of the emotional transitions which we have already studied, and from the actual observations of the child, that before reflection arises that is, before the sense of a general self is clearly defined this antithe* sis in relation to the alter is not fully distinct. The thought of you versus me is not there. It is, 'my toy versus your toy,' ' my act versus your act,' ' my voice versus your voice,' etc. The first person is usually in the possessive case. The materials of the antithesis are being gathered, in this way, from the single situations into which instinctive and spontaneous activities urge the child. But then as reflection arises there comes the movement, described above, by which the self becomes solidified by degrees ; and the externals of personal identity also come in to hold the ego and the alter apart. Then, as the self becomes a separate thought, it tends, like every thought, to assume an attitude, and a series of personal actions mani- fest themselves. The child begins to act for himself first, and for the other afterwards. This again this action now also reacts to strengthen and harden the thought of self, and to emphasize its relative- distinctness from the alter, by the reactive influence of action on thought spoken of above. This is the germinating development of reflec- tive selfishness. It means a self actually thought of as in opposition to the alter, together with a series of actions which are calculated to harden and perpetuate this op- position. The end is the self considered explicitly as ' my self, and not your self, nor anybody else's self? J And with this the general self is identified or contrasted in each case of action. ' This shows itself socially in what is called ' opposition ' above (Sect. 149). 266 His Intelligence Let us see clearly, then, how real selfishness arises. It comes by the very movement which establishes reflectively the antithesis between the thought of me and the thought of you. Certain movement attitudes must arise on each side, attitudes which represent my gain with or without your loss, my pleasure with or without your pain, and the reverse. Now it is just these movement experiences, these active attitudes, which constitute, as we have seen, the syn- thesis of reflection as such. Through their appropriate- ness to the ego side of the antithesis in the one case, they fix that side and furnish what we call ' desire ' for the main- tenance of that side of the self-antithesis. I reflect on my- self and act selfishly when I entertain the thought of the opposed actions which the two elements of self-thought tend to arouse, and then adopt the conduct which repre- sents the ego side. The ego then becomes my end simply because it prevails in the synthesis of reflection. The presence of so-called reflection is the presence of tlie clear antithesis of the two thoughts of self held together in a wider synthesis to which all the tendencies to movement, action, conduct, give rise ; and the consciousness of the higher synthesis itself, representing a more or less estab- lished habit, is the general or ideal self. 1 171. With it reflective altruism arises also. It must arise just because the ego and the alter are antithetic thoughts, two poles in a wider thought process. The thought of the alter, as it becomes solidified over against the ego, prompts to a line of action different from that 1 It is ' general ' when considered retrospectively, as finding concrete illus- trations in actual personalities, or as l>eing experiential in its origin; so it is 4 general ' when looked at ' subjectively ' or ' ejectively." It is ' ideal ' when looked at frosfettively, as yet unfinished, not fully experienced, liable to further growth in experience, and so in its actual embodiment ' protective.' Personal Intelligence 267 which is liberated by the ego. This line of action comes to represent a policy in the active life which inhibits or interferes with the habits of selfish action ; and again, by its emotional expressions it reacts to solidify further the thought of the alter. Sympathy comes to be an adopted channel of action to the reflective person whose experience is thus growing in organization and richness. And when he comes to a decision, after this contrast between the two self thoughts and their respective promptings to action has been sharply drawn, as in the child of about three to four years of age, then he becomes more or less cal- culating as to the consequences to be expected from the action itself, and from its social reception by others. 172. Then there intervenes another stage of develop- ment which both sustains the characteristic distinction now before us, and also goes further. The child does not long rest merely upon the first effects of his action on himself and others. A new movement of his intelligence leads him to make use of ' second causes.' The fact that action has now become a means to an end the end of reinstating and securing the ego-self or the alter-self- this does not remain undeveloped. It requires no great increase in the complexity of his thought to conceive the possibility of using other elements of experience to minis- ter to the same ends. Moreover, he is not left to himself to make this step ; in this, as in everything else in the social heritage into which he grows up, he is initiated by his fellows. He sees mother and nurse handle things for the preparation of his food, bed, clothing, etc., all actions which have three terms instead of two, as we may go on to explain. There is the thought of the thing to be done, the 268 His thought of the thing by which it is to be done, and, finally, the thought of the action by which the latter of these thoughts is carried out. We find the child catching this idea at a remarkably early age. In fact, I think he learns it first by the ordinary processes of organic move- ment by which his thought of an object has to be followed by the thought of a movement, in order that the movement made may bring the object into reach, etc. By repetitions of this he is enabled to put a series of movement-thoughts in succession between the thought of the object and the actual end-movements by which the object is finally secured ; it is likely, therefore, that there is a form of unreflective action on means to ends. But in this, too, the development is from a simpler to a more ideational or reflective epoch. Given the thought of self, either the ego thought or the alter thought, and the child (hen fnnis tlic machinery of earlier adaptations of means to ends to the pursuit of that. So he becomes not only a reflective egoist and altruist, but a plotter as well : an agent of man- or less distant personal ends. Among instances of this in child life, I may note the fact that the child soon comes to see the social use which he may make of this turn of things. His egoism prompts him, in a sense, to victimize the alter ; and in this we find another of the highly interesting cases of children's lies. 173. It happens in this way: The child's thought of the alter is read back into the actual alter ; and thus, with a great many contributing details, the child keeps himself and the other apart. He attributes to the alter say his father the set of actions with view to ends similar to his own; and his proof of this is the fact that whenever he acts in a certain way, his father responds by acting in a Personal Intelligence 269 way which fits into his own action and expectation. So common understandings are reached between the two. Not only does the child find that he can depend upon others for the suggestion of thoughts which fit into the surrounding conditions, but he learns that the alter depends also zipon the suggestions which he makes. The sugges- tion-influences he sees to be reciprocal. So he has a way before him of bringing the father's actions into the series of events which contribute to his own ulterior thought. For example, one of the earliest instances I have ob- served is this : the child's crying leads the mother to bring food ; the cry is the suggestion upon which the mother can be counted to act. So very early we find the child using the cry to obtain food or other favours from his mother, even when he is in no need. Pleasurable memo- ries hover before him, possibly simply that of his mother's presence. With them comes up the thought of certain actions of his mother which bring the pleasure ; then he remembers that his cry will be the appropriate suggestion to start his mother. So he makes use of the means and attains the end. The cry is a means to an end once re- moved ; and the interesting thing, from our present point of view, is that the first link in the chain which the child uses is a social link. It really involves using his intelli- gence to direct and employ, for his own private ends, the social influence which we call personal suggestion. Here we have possibly the first use of the social bond by the individual's intelligence ; and in it there lies, by im- plication, all the conscious poivcr and function of thought in the manipulation of society. It means that in thinking self the child-agent thinks a social situation, and that he then uses the other elements of the situation to realize the ends 270 His Intelligence of the self; this is the social function of thought every- where when considered as the instrument of the thinker s use of society in contrast with society s use of the thinker and his thoughts. We shall have to return to this later on in this chapter ; 1 at present let us trace a little further the child's use of this social resource. 174. It is not morally a lie, of course, when the child cries for what he does not need, and by crying gets it. It is not moral, because, like almost all the proceedings which come to be reflective, it is at first merely a matter of association and active adaptation to an associated train of thoughts. It does not matter to the child that it is another person that his cry appeals to. It is simply an accident that the whole train implicates his thought of the alter together with other and impersonal terms. Other trains of thoughts also exist which implicate only his own ego thought and certain external objects, and he acts in exactly the same way upon them ; as, for example, when the thought of a satisfaction arouses his sense of the reaching movements of grasping, and he goes through this series of means to that end. The two cases are just the same to him ; and he can work them equally well, provided that he find the mother's movements fol- low upon his action, just as his own movements would have, if his own had been all that were required in the case. It is then at first a spontaneous use of the social bond by the child. It does not involve any degree of what we call reflective cunning or craft. 2 1 The other question, i.e., that of the function of the intellectual output of individuals in affording to society its matter for adoption and absorption, is treated in Chap. XI., 'The Social Forces.' 3 This would seem to he the case with a dog belonging to an uncle of my wife; the dog lay on a forbidden chair in the drawing-room, and hearing his Personal Intelligence 271 Yet it does not retain this simplicity very long. The child soon gets away from the associated trains which originate in real wants, and involve only real wants and their satisfactions. And the step which he first takes in the path of reflective deception is usually, I think, one of a negative kind ; he uses the social bond to deflect pains and penalties from himself. This, again, is a slight thing in his mental growth, proceeding somewhat as follows : The trains which lead to disastrous consequences, both when he alone is involved and also when the alter per- sonality is one of the mean-terms to the result, get very strong marking and great adhesiveness in his conscious- ness. Anything which comes in as a further term, in the same series, to deflect the result or to lead to other and less disastrous consequences, is again a mere matter of learning by association, and of learning of exactly the same kind as that by which the train was originally started. He then takes one of two methods to supple- ment these disastrous trains. One method is to interpo- late a term which will prevent altogether the action which he wishes to avoid ; the other is the employment of fur- ther means to supplement the train and so render it neutral. The first case is seen plainly in the repressions of his own activity, or of his normal expressions of him- self, which are tell-tale indications to father or mother. Thus he may directly escape punishment, a dose of bitter medicine, or the like. The other is seen in his actually misleading other people by word or action, when the real facts are unknown to them. Instances are common master coming down-stairs, quickly jumped beneath a table near by, and lay quiet, as if asleep. 272 His Intelligence enough. 1 It involves some invention and social know- ledge. The following example may serve to illustrate it. The two children, H. (five years) and E. (three years), were playing in my empty study. I heard E. cry out with pain, and came to the door just in time to see H. clapping her hands with joy and laughing mockingly at E. (whom it appeared afterwards she had slightly hurt in wresting away a toy). As soon as my footstep was heard, H.'s face and manner changed with marvellous quickness, from joy to keen sorrow and sympathy. She dropped the toy, and before I reached the scene her attitude was one of profound sympathy, commiseration, and dis- tress. Then, not satisfied with this, she turned quickly and pretended to be occupied in another part of the room. In this case, not to dwell upon a lesson which is so plain, H. not only suppressed her joy, but feigned grief, and then adopted other means to avert the penalty she ex- pected from me. It is evident that this line of operations brings out various direct conflicts of egoistic and altruistic impulses. So clear is this, that the proper pedagogical method of correction in such cases would seem to be that of strength- ening the latter impulses over against the selfish ones. But that aside, the conflict is itself fruitful to us in en- deavouring to trace the child's development. Inasmuch as the alter thought is involved in the bonds which the child thus learns to manipulate, he must have emotional impulses of a generous kind, to some degree, in all his use of the social bond for his own purposes. And these impulses in turn grow strong enough to lead him on occa- 1 Sully gives instances of the various excuses which children invent to avoid complying with a command (lot. fit., p. 270 f.). Personal Intelligence 273 sion and in some children this occasion is very frequent, as against the selfish use already spoken of to use the same means to accomplish purposes of truth and generosity. The imitative child will find out new ways of being docile and good, and will often surprise his parents with his early tendency to self-reproach and confession directly in the teeth of his fear of penalty and expectation of suffering. 1 All this must be accred- ited to the growth of the alter thought and its emotional value, as expressed in action. 175. Then on both sides as concerning his selfish actions and also as concerning his generous actions he grows more his own master, and makes bolder excur- sions into the realm of social manipulation. The use of the social bond which I have described as negative, tends to enable the child to escape unwelcome events and realities ; he makes the same use of the social bond also to secure positive results. He suggests terms in the series, in order to arouse states of mind in his social fellows which will be fruit- ful in good things to himself; and he does this, again, in both of two ways: (i) in the suppression of the real facts of his knowledge the way of negative mis- representation ; and (2) by putting forward suggestions of a positive kind which he thinks will mislead. All this follows so evidently from the method of his growth into the use of social relationships that I need not dwell upon it in detail before the next event to be signalized, which shows it in its fullest illustration, i.e., the beginning of the use of language for consciously social purposes. 1 As when a child comes and asks to be punished for a fault which he is sure has not been witnessed by any one. T 274 Hi* Intelligence 176. In language, as we have seen, the child finds ready for him a system of nets-for-thought, actually in use about him. He sees, among the first uses of speech, the way others convey their meanings to one another ; how an emotion, an action, any social expression, passes from one person to another with the passage of a word. So it is not at all surprising that the beginnings which he makes in the employment of social suggestion for certain more or less remote ends, should be realized in his speech. He has more than an imitative impulse to make progress in his speaking. He has that certainly ; but besides he has, in all likelihood, also an hereditary tendency in the same direction. And as soon as his sense of the possible use of social means to personal ends gets at all advanced by his employment of facial expression, active attitudes of body, etc., he finds that most extraordinary instrument of the same utility in his hands or rather in his mouth the forms of language. Here it is, I think, that all the progress which the child has been making in his personal growth, as a being with the thought of ego and alter, with tendencies to the series of actions which these personal thoughts stimu- late, with all the groping after self-possession in the relations of his social life, here it is that all these things fall together in a great insight achieved, again, through action. When he speaks and others understand, then he has meanings ; then he is using symbols ; then his plots to catch social influences and hold them to- gether in forms of personal utility of both the selfish and generous types, become adequate to the purposes of real reflection. I think, when the child tells a lie of reflective import to lead another astray, that is, with a Personal Intelligence 275 social motive, not merely by mistake, through misunder- standing, or from concrete association, then at any rate, however it may have been adumbrated in his earlier struggles, he takes his place as a social factor on the plane on which all intelligently social activities are displayed. This develops through speech with its verbal symbol- ism ; the general province of speech pointed out above, 1 where it was considered as an aid to invention. Here we find that the invention which it aids is also social. The child becomes thinker of social thought ; and all his later attainments, from the planning of a snowball-fight to the occupancy of the chair of the Speaker of the House, is a matter of detail. 2 He now illustrates the func- tion of private intelligence in social development ; namely, as tJdnkingthe definite, communicable, and imitable thoughts which furnish the matter of social organization? 177. The method of development, on the intellectual side, has led us to see just what relation the two classes of ends which we call selfish and altruistic have to each other. And it is interesting to recall the relation be- tween the impulses to self-assertion and generosity in the earlier period, in view of the further statement of these opposed tendencies now. We found that the emo- tional states exhibiting themselves in aggressive actions of an instinctive kind were the intrinsic outcome of the 1 Chap. IV., i. 2 The following illustrations of this all occurred in five minutes' conversation when H. was just four years old. " Baby mustn't have the pictures, she wants to tear them that's what she wants, mama." " Oh, mama ! baby has the red book that papa said I couldn't have shall I take it away ? " " I'm going to table with you, mama ; but baby hears and she'll want to go too so we won't talk about it now, mama." These instances also illustrate the intelligent use of the social bond for private ends pointed out in Sect. 173. 8 This is carried further in Chap. XII., on Social Matter and Process.' 276 His Intelligence child's nature as a creature of hereditary adaptation ; and the same is true on the side of the sympathetic impulses and emotions. These latter represent the sort of ances- tral experience which involved co-operation and communal life, as in the family circle. Both, we found, were equally primitive ; and both, inasmuch as they did not involve reasoning or self-determination of any kind, equally rea- sonable for the child to do ; for in the case of each the concept of the reasonable did not get application at all. We now find a similar state of things at this higher or social stage of the use of intelligence. The child's actions have become reasonable in so far as they are out- come of a process of personal self-conscious adaptation to social ends ; and so now the question as to what acts are reasonable for him to perform, is a legitimate ques- tion. But the answer that we see, as the outcome of the child's growth, still requires us to say that neither of the two kinds of action is reasonable to the exclusion of the other. For the thought which the child thinks leads to the type of action suitable to the realization of the end which this thought represents ; and this is true both of the thought of the ego-self, with the train of selfish performances which it stimulates, and equally of the alter-self with its train of altruistic performances. In the one case, selfishness becomes reasonable to the child ; and in the other case, generosity becomes reasonable. It would be unreasonable in any adequate psychological sense of that term for the child to be selfish when his thought of the self-ego is not the dominating factor in the emotional and impulsive state which leads him to act ; and it would be equally unreasonable for him not to Personal Intelligence 277 be selfish when it does. His action conforms to the pat- tern of the present thought. But even at this stage, before we pass on into the development of the ethical and so-called 'ideal' states of mind as such, we should note the great complexity of the processes involved. Every dominating thought is a complex thing, a compromise, an adjustment. For the thought of the ego is, as we clearly saw, in the main the same in content as the thought of the alter; the differences are more external and extrinsic than the similarities. Given emergencies in life when the human as such is assailed, when our esprit de corps is called out, as we see it called out in the child's conscious- ness sometimes, and we learn that ' blood is thicker than water.' The self -notion rises, in all its generic sublimity, and the differences of personal quality, habitation, physi- cal conformation, etc., disappear. So the state of mind, in each act for self or for another, is really a thing of emphasis rather than of essential variety in the thought process. The selfish act can be turned away by a gener- ous suggestion. The soft answer brings out the balance of the altruistic factor, and causes the motive to wrath to turn its back. Mere physical conditions are often enough to throw the balance on one side or on the other, in this delicate adjustment of claims. Or a personal presence may, simply by its intensity of reality, drive out a wicked intention, which the mere memory of the same intended victim did not suffice to keep down. How many crimes are planned among the images of imagination, which never get executed in the realm of fact; and alas, how many virtuous actions also ! The real antithesis between reason and unreason, there- 278 His Intelligence fore, here as earlier, does not cut through consciousness at the line between the selfish and the generous, although in life the practical considerations are often so momen- tous that we assume that it does. Either of them may be reasonable on occasion, as we saw above. The real line lies between deliberation, reflection, and the lack of it. The question is in each case one of action : was there sufficient balance of tendency, sufficient self-continence, sufficient motor unity, to reflect a ' reasonable ' show of intelligence ? Or was the action on the other hand so dominated by suggestion, so led by the haste of the crowd, by the quick reaction of an emotional storm, by the sharp onset of a paralyzing desire, that no clear and steadily embraced end was present at all ? That is the true distinction between what is reasonable and what is not. 178. Then we find, also, when we recall the social func- tion of the intelligence, the uses which the intelligence makes of the social suggestions and informations which come in its way, that these suggestions may be turned to the profit of either of the two kinds of reasonable action. Just as it is sometimes reasonable or intelligent for the child to act for himself, in a selfish way, and then on another occasion it is equally reasonable for him to act for another, in a generous way ; so either the one or the other of these kinds of intelligent action may make use of social factors as means to its end. The child may excite his father with the conscious end that he may join with him in a romp which is pleasurable for himself, the child ; or he may do so to the end that the father may observe and clothe a poor boy whose hands are blue with cold. The latter, again, is as reasonable an action on the Personal Intelligence 279 part of the child as the former is. And, further, when these factors come into conflict when, for example, the child wishes to hand over his own gloves that the beggar's hands may be warm, while his own grow cold, that is reasonable as well; it shows the dominance of the alter thought and the active function which its dominance secures ; to do the opposite, would be also reasonable on occasion, since it would involve the dominance of the ego thought. If the father thinks it is unreasonable for the boy to give the beggar his gloves, it is because the father is not thinking the son's thought; the only way he can make it seem unreasonable to the boy is to secure in the boy the dominance of a different self-thought, either by showing him the grounds for that thought, as they lie in his own mind, or by the force of direct suggestion upon the child, as by command, example, injunction, etc. 1/9. If these things are reasonable, then the function of the reason is to accomplish these things. And we are now able to formulate a general conclusion as to the place of the intelligence in social development. The complexes of knowledge which the individual builds up are what, in the earlier chapters, we called ' inventions ' : the putting together of the elements of presentation so as to reach new interpretations on the basis of them. But the differ- ence between the inventions which involve only or mainly the forces and facts of nature, and those which involve social forces, are somewhat sharply marked. There is no invention without some social reference ; we have seen that social reference is made by the inventor himself in every case. But when he is dealing with the objective world, his materials, the actual cast of the knowledge- elements in his thought, are socially neutral in themselves. 280 His Intelligence But not so with the line of inventions which we have been tracing in this chapter. The child uses the self- notion at every step. He thinks with subjective mate- rials ; and his knowledges are, in each case, interpretations of the way he expects persons to think and act. So he is now dealing with social material suggestions, actions, words, etc. as such. The function of the intelligence in his social life is accordingly this : // uses social materials and interprets them. Each individual in society has in himself a more or less adequate picture of the social play going on around him. He acts with reference to this play. He conforms his own actions to his expectation that others will understand him ; and he directs his actions with the thought that he understands others. Intelligence, therefore, in its social activity, has for its function invention ivith social material. This gives it a twofold importance, both aspects of which we have now considered, (r) It is a means of the individual's own growth and an instrument for his use (Sects. 173 and 179). And (2) it creates the thoughts which have cur- rency in society and become embodied in its institutions (Sect. 176). In this latter function, it has to do with co-operation as such. It is social co-operation become aware of itself. It represents, therefore, when its effects in the body social are considered as a whole, an engine of extraordinary and critical power. We have only to con- sider the mutuality of the exercise of intelligence in a community to see what intricacy its use may be expected to bring about in the history of social progress. I may be allowed to dwell upon this thought at a little more length. 1 80. The conception of mutuality or reciprocity has. Personal Intelligence 281 far-reaching implications. It has pressed in upon us at every stage of our inquiry. The family instincts are reciprocal ; and their effectiveness depends directly on this element. Each instinct is shaped to fit into the same instinct in other individuals. This is what co-operation means. It is the essential meaning of family and gre- garious community life. Again, in the reactions of an emotional kind which we have considered modesty, sympathy, play, etc. the result is what it is because of their generality in the species and their mutual exercise by all the individuals. The very existence, indeed, of the phenomena is conditioned upon it. So always of all social equipment. The intelligence, to be socially available, must also be a thing of mutual exercise. But it is not so evidently so; and it is well to return upon our description of the social element in the work of the genius, to point out one of the phases of the mutuality. We found that the law of social heredity brought the genius under the require- ment that he have the kind of sanity of judgment which represents, in the main, the social judgment which is 'going' in his time and place. His intellectual endow- ment, unless it is to go to waste from a social point of view, must not show too great a variation from the stand- ard or level which the social judgment erects. This in- troduces a social element, an element of mutuality, or reciprocity, into the very endowment which we call reason or intelligence. The lines of development of judgment itself, on its aesthetic and teleological side, are lines of common action ; and in his very preferences the actor is moving in paths of least social no less than least personal resistance. In short, every individual in society is in a 282 His Intelligence measure and the measure frequently measures his com- petence and influence the organ of the social movement which conserves tradition, sets public opinion, and reacts upon his sense of values and upon his preferences, inciting him to work, think, fight for institution, country, and social ideal. It is on account of this more recondite and intimate element of mutuality that the individual welcomes the more open and practical reciprocity of suggestion which he actually finds in the environment, all through the course of his personal growth. We have seen the extent of this latter. He finds the lessons of the actions of others actually available and convertible into his thought of self; he finds it possible to understand what the actions of others mean ; he is able to anticipate their conduct by happy guesses, drawn from analogies of his own feeling ; and he finally comes to depend so confi- dently upon the constancy and regularity of the simi- larities between his own inner life and the life of others that he is able to bend their actions to his own personal ends. This has now been sufficiently described. 4. Social Intelligence 181. We should remember that there is always a tradi- tion element, and, besides, a personal element, in every situation of social import into which the individual comes. The tradition element represents the use which others have made, or are making, of their intelligence as its gains are h inded down; the personal element represents the use which the individual is making of his. And in the mass of suggestive copies, rules, conventions, styles, etc., which Social Intelligence 283 sum up, in any particular case, the tradition element, there is also the second or personal element not his own, corresponding to the particular personal source through which the tradition is administered to the individual. There are differences of temperament, character, personal mood, methods of thought, among the associates of each individual, and to these he is keenly alive ; they tend to check his action and to secure differential attitudes when his action is finally led forth. This leads, in the child, to a further development of certain ideal selves in his thought, whose origin, in the conflicting phases of sugges- tion, we have already seen when discussing the origin of the ethical sense. This progress of his is of essential moment, both in his personal development and in the social complex in which he plays a part. The sense to which he now attains may be likened crudely to a composite photograph. The variety of per- sonalities about him, each impressing him with some one or more peculiarities, exaggerations, deficiencies, inconsist- encies, or law-observing regularities, gradually leave upon him a certain common impression which, while getting ap- plication to all personalities as such, yet has to have sup- plementing in the case of any particular individual. I have traced above, in treating of the ethical sense, certain of the emotional tendencies which this general personality arouses ; and it will recur later on when we come to con- sider the sentiments which the social agent brings to his life-tasks. It is enough for us now to see that this general notion of personality does arise in the child's mind, and to inquire into the method of his intelligent use of it. 1 32. He 'ejects' it into all the fellows of his social 284 His Intelligence group. It becomes then a general alter, a sort of speaking social companion on whose characteristics as a thinking, feeling, approving, criticising agent he stumbles whenever he meets his fellow-man. And, further, he cannot sever this bond nor escape its hold ; for his thought of his own ego is always an illustration of its reality, just as much as is any other person. The latter he may avoid ; but his own presence he cannot avoid; nor can he rid himself of the thought of himself. So the thought of himself stands also for the thought of the general 'other' of society; and he must share the field with him, hear his opinions, feel reciprocal emotions with him, etc., whenever he thinks. This shadowy being, the general self, is his other in the realest possible way. We call the evidence which we have of its presence ' public opinion,' Zeitgeist, etc., and we find ourselves actually responding to its existence by having a great and powerful set of emotions directed toward it. The practical value of this thought of general person- ality, in our every-day life, shows itself whenever the atti- tude of the ego thought is at variance with this general thought. The discrepancy is felt most acutely. It is during the formation of this contrast that the child begins to show those states of mind which arise in consequence of his subsequent reflection on his own actions. All the states covered by the terms ' repentance,' ' self-reproach,' ' personal regret,' ' personal disappointment,' ' remorse,' etc., arise then, and must arise then. They could not arise sooner, because the child did not have sooner the antithe- sis in the thought he thinks which might issue in the double stream of personal tendency which consciousness shows at these times. It is a new stage of thought before it can be a new stage of emotion. Social Intelligence 285 183. It is also a new stage in the management of the social forces. It is the child's deepening hold upon these that gives intelligence its place and power. So the other aspects of this growth in reflective thought may be passed by now, in order that we may look more closely at this. The child applies his intelligence directly in making use of this thought of a general self ; he uses it as means to his own ends, and also as end when it suits him. This appears from certain situations which I may mention, know- ing that the observer of children may readily verify them. The child's intercourse with other children shows direct attempts, on his part, to assume the part of lawgiver, and hold his playfellows up to the requirements of the code which he finds it possible to prescribe. This code is the application to each situation, as it arises, of the general sense of the requirements of the ideal or social self, as far as there are in his actual experience analogies upon which he can go. He repeats the current moral maxims of the family life whenever he thinks they get application. For example, I am accustomed to keep in check the tendency of my children to hasty action and intellectual guessing by telling them in critical junctures or situations such as the opening of a package after a trip to the city to 'wait and see.' This became a formula to the younger of the children in her fourth year. She not only learned, in a measure, the uselessness of haste, but she took my place, in the games and on many more serious occasions, and urged upon the other children, nurse, etc., to 'wait and see.' It was her sense of the proper attitude of a wise and judicious personality, in anxious and exciting situations, to await the outcome with calmness ; and the way she brought the injunction in for the benefit of the 286 His Intelligence other children was amusing in the extreme. This example shows the general tendency of which I speak. No sooner does an aspect of personal behaviour, shown in word, in- junction, suggestion, or action, get some generalization, so as to apply to a variety of instances, than the child seizes upon it and makes it a weapon of social use. 1 Under the show of benevolence the child often hides little intrigues. H., when five years of age, hid her own pictures and then took her sister's in order to ' arrange ' them for her. The employment of such formulas for the securing of personal advantage over others is very common. Chil- dren playing together will often themselves suggest the device of 'taking turns,' in order to satisfy the sense of justice and equal rights which is rising within them. But I have known one of mine to go further. H. has often (fifth to sixth year) secured the ownership of an article of play by the device of suggesting that she have the first turn, and then afterwards suggesting that the game be changed, or that the sides be reversed. Moreover, a child of five or six years will often take advantage of a younger companion's limited insight into personality, or of the other's susceptibility to suggestions of desire, by placing a loud verbal value on an article which he does not want, in order to arouse the sense of value in the younger child, and thus, by leading off the scent, secure the possession of some coveted thing from which the attention of the playmate is diverted. In such cases and there are innumerable of them in any nursery where there are several children 1 For example, when the child legislates for his little brother, hoping to profit by it; refuses to take fruit, etc., first, knowing the others will leave tht larger ones ; makes the plea that he did this or that ' in fun ' ; takes advantage of his mother's pity, charity, etc., by exciting them artificially or unduly. Social Intelligence 287 regularly together we have not only the growth in one of the children, the eldest say, of a sense of the general attributes of character, the essentials of character as such, but also a remarkably acute estimate of the state of the other children's minds in this respect. A will know what B thinks of character and of A's character ; and A will act toward B with insight into the limitations of B's sense of A's character. The moral adjustment of my two children to each other as they are both growing up into the sense of the general self, one some way in advance of the other, is a source of great instruction. As the elder grows to understand character better, she practises her new knowledge constantly on her sister. But this very practice, by which the elder often seeks to circumvent the younger, is an influence of pedagogical value to the little one. Her lessons in the meaning of personality, in the use of intelligence, in the ways that people may be used for personal ends, are set by all the childish schemes of her sister, instead of by the examples of her elders, for which she would otherwise have to wait. Here is one of the great benefits to the child of many companions and constant companionship. 184. Another phase of the same class of situations is brought out when we inquire into the two forms egoistic and altruistic which the child's use of his intelligence in this way takes on. From the instances which I have cited immediately above, and from those cases given earlier, in which the methods of the child's lies were illustrated, it would seem that the egoistic use of the intelligence is more striking than the altruistic. And in spite of what was said above to the effect that the two personal attitudes are on a basis of equality, and that as far as 288 His Intelligence reasonable action is concerned, both are equally reasonable or unreasonable, we find appearances taking on a some- what different form at this further stage in the child's progress. It is evident that even in the earlier stage, in which both of the attitudes are unreflective, one of them might, as a matter of fact, be the prevailing or usual one, especially if there were no adequate expression of the other in the situations of the personal environment. I think the egoistic impulses do tend more constantly to fill consciousness, even at the unreflective period, since the child is so new to thought, and the trend of the organic period from which he has so freshly emerged is toward the preservation and satisfaction of his private tendencies. This drift has to be in some degree overcome before his thought of the alter can come so strongly to consciousness as to lead to regular self-denial. The organism secures this, in a measure, as we have seen, by the provision of organic sympathy and modesty ; and yet, except when these are actually discharging, the bent of action seems to be toward those forms of action which, in their reflex effects, tend to keep the thought of the pri- vate self more prominently before the contemplation of the budding individual. So we should expect to find the progress of the child toward generosity and justice and mutual fairness, in the use of that engine of means to ends, the intelligence, somewhat handicapped by the less developed forms of action which he inherits from his own personal past. This is borne out, in several ways, I think, in the actual behaviour of children at this difficult period, when the ten- dencies toward real personality are just beginning to show themselves. Social Intelligence 289 (1) The child's inventions in the management of other personalities and of social forces are prompted more largely by his sense of personal advantage or disadvan- tage. It is true of all invention, that it is the most urgent situations which bring out the most effective thought ; and this is the case with the child. Sympathy may be abolished by the simple expedient of withdrawing the gaze, or refusing to attend. We adults know this. But personal pain cannot be escaped so easily. The child finds his personal collisions with others vital and pungent with pain and pleasure. It is his own interest which is so often in the balance. It is not so moving when it is the interest of another for whom his sympathies are excited. So the former case has an urgency which brings out his violent and resisting, or evasive, or scheming, or dissembling actions, on occasion, as well as his truthfully direct and franker ones. We do not often find the child scheming to secure an advantage for the sister and brother as he schemes for himself. When he does, it is normal, to be sure ; but it rather surprises us. Differ- ent children differ in this respect, and cases sometimes seem to show that a child may be more active on the side of generosity than of self-aggression ; yet generally it is the contrary ; and the fact simply shows that while both attitudes are equally possible, and from the child's point of view equally reasonable, yet the selfish attitude is liable to prevail. 1 (2) There is reason for this, also, in the method of his progress toward ethical and social standing. He must be personally efficient in order to be socially efficient. Man must live and accumulate for himself and his family 1 See the instance of an inventive social lie given above, Sect. 71. 290 His Intelligence before he can be a public servant. And in the child's life this means that he is to become a man, at all events, whatever else he may become. He must grow up to be an individual ; that is incumbent on him at all hazards ; what more he may attain in the way of being a good or wise or social individual is based on this first presuppo- sition. (3) This is reflected, moreover, in the movement by which his inner development proceeds. It will be remem- bered that we found the child going through three stages of personal thought, called 'protective' (his sense of others before he distinguishes between them and himself), then ' subjective ' (his sense of himself as distinguished from others), then ' ejective ' (the sense of others as like him- self). These three thoughts, we had occasion to say, are not strictly chronological ; the dialectic movement be- tween the first and the second, and between the second and the third, being a constant process all through life. But the logical order is that named ; and it is also a chronological order when looked at from the point of view of the accretions which the child constantly makes to the thought of self. The new elements which he ac- quires from the environment must be first projectivc before he can duplicate them in his thought of himself ; that is, before he can realize them subjectively. And then they cannot be ejective until after he has made them his own in the subjective way. So there is a real chrono- logical movement which takes these three phases. The point of importance in this connection is that, in this quasi-chronological movement, the thought of the subjective self stands midway between the other two thoughts. It is the nucleus of which he is permanently Social Intelligence 291 possessed. It is the measure by which he tests persons. The unknown elements of personal suggestion which claim his attention must have already the 'signs which he finds in his own thought ; and, on the other hand, the known elements of personality which he attributes to those about him must have gone through the testing processes of his own more or less experimental action. So there is a con- stant return upon his own ego thought from both the poles of this two-membered relationship. This being the case, we should not be surprised that his sense of his own exist- ence, rights, appetites, pleasures, pains, property, etc., should be keener than his sense of the similar passions and possessions of other persons. (4) There is yet another reason for this fact. In this threefold thought of personal elements, the actual alter comes last, considered as a finished person, with an inde- pendent existence, and independent rights under the social bond. Each new accretion to the whole complex personal sense has its first application, in action, to the real ego. It is only by this active appropriation of the suggestions from the environment, that the growth seen in the dialectic process can go on at all. So the method of getting the attitudes which come to stand for the relations of personal agents brings t/iem into more or less habitual exercise first in connection with the more private life of the ego. The generalization of the sense of personality really involves something of a new process of accommodation, which must be made first of all by the thinker to whom they are personal. For example, our attitudes for self-defence are simpler and more direct than those for the defence of another or of several persons. Just as it is easier to hold an 2Q2 His Intelligence umbrella over one than over two, no matter how large the umbrella may be, so it is easier to strike an attitude of self-defence than to interpose in an effective way to shield some one else. Apart from any literal meaning attaching to such examples drawn from our adult lives, we may still use them as analogies in our present discus- sion. The self-preservative actions are more reflex, as was seen above on the purely physical side. The child's atti- tudes are set first by his life-adaptations of instinct, thought, and emotion; and the extending of these to in- clude the welfare of others involves some modification and extension of them. The simple fact that the thought of self, when it has become ejective, is more complex and involved, makes it clear that it must be a little later and less spontaneous in its modes of expression and action. There is, therefore, a period of relative selfishness in the child extending from the third into the fifth or sixth years. 1 It is an incident in his growth. It is different both from the unreflective and spontaneous aggressive period, before the child becomes aware of himself as a personal agent, and also from the real reflective self- ishness which comes to be one of his moving principles when he grows to enough maturity to think out schemes for his own advantage at the expense of the interests of others. It is, rather, a period of natve cunning and sub- 1 It is not at all difficult to imagine the place the sort of semi-reflective cunning and craft corresponding to this must have played in the conditions of early social life. The treachery of ambush and broken truce, existing side by side with internal tribal organization and inter-tribal unions for defence, based on 'duties and rights' as for example in the experience of the early settlers with the North American Indians shows both sides of this mental condition. It involves both the factors required in the process of ' social se- lection' of groups: sociality and competition (see Chap. V., 4). Social Intelligence 293 terfuge. It is not real craft, nor deliberate plotting ; and wherein the child seems to be a victim of ' original sin,' this is about all his sin. He has certain unorganized impulses of an organic kind, which, simply from their lack of organization and their tendency to be reflex, get the credit of being bad ; and with them he has, on the mental side, the quasi-reflective selfish tendencies just described, which, if not actually immoral, are going on very fast to be so. 185. Coming to consider further the actual attainment of reflection by the child, we find the transition ten- dencies already remarked upon taking form in a complex and most elusive result. It is elusive because its descrip- tion cannot be a matter of general statement in brief for- mulas ; it is a series of phases each of which represents a host of more elementary forces. The preceding investi- gation of these earlier tendencies gives us, however, as far as it is true, the main lines of influence to which the child is still to respond in the environment, and with them also the main lines of tendency which his responses take on. It is by his natural growth, whereby he becomes reflective and ethical, that he escapes the relatively egotistic use of his intelligence described in this chapter. His further progress we shall discuss under the head of ' Sentiment.' CHAPTER VIII His SENTIMENTS WE have reached a point of view, in the preceding discussions, which gives us an outlook upon those impor- tant aspects of human life which are called sentiments. We need not stop to justify any psychological definition of sentiment ; it is only necessary to say what we mean by sentiment and what its place is in our scheme of social phenomena. i . The Genesis of Sentiment 1 86. We have seen the child's mind showing a finer sort of appreciation of the meaning of the actions of his social fellows, as he grows into the more adequate realization of personality ; and we have found him gradu- ally forming a thought of self which is above the exam- ples of personality which men as individuals show. He reaches on to an ideal self, which represents his best accommodation to self in general ; the regular, law-abid- ing, sanction-bringing, duty-observing self hovers over his thought, inspires it, and regulates its tendencies to action. I say that it represents his accommodations, since, as we have been seeing all along, it is by his action on the ' copies ' which he gets that he realizes and interprets their meaning in his own growth. This general notion of self is, like all general notions con- sidered as general, not a presentation, not a mental con- 294 The Genesis of Sentiment 295 tent, but an attitude, a way of acting; and the child has to bring all the partial personal tendencies to action which spring up on the thought of the partial more isolated selves of his habit, into the way of action which we call ethical conduct. The growth of the ethical sense is a growth in motor accommodation. Viewed on the side of what it has already hardened into, on the side of habit, it shows the man's or the child's actual morality, his degree of actual conformity to the ethical ideal ; and, viewed on the side of the ideal itself, its unrealized part, its tendency to perfect lawfulness and complete submis- sion without revolt, it shows his obligation. 1 187. Of course both of these phases tend to terminate on actual persons ; all attitudes have to have objective termini. The child's actual mental picture of what is good in a person is made up from his own acts and the acts which he conceives as possibly his own ; this is the concrete body of his ethical ideal. And then, so far as he feels it to be inadequate, he seeks to find, in the persons projective to him, some one or more whose actions are better than his. This means 'better' in the vague undefined way that all ' projective ' experience must be. He knows that the father, for example, is good in the way that he understands goodness ; but he feels that the father is also better, in the goodness which is his alone, i.e., which the child cannot yet understand nor illus- trate by his own acts or thought. Now this latter aspect of his attitude is, I think, what we mean by sentiment : it is the emotional or active tendency of consciousness away beyond the confines of 1 Cf. the latter parts of Chaps. I. and VII. with which the sections im- mediately following make close connection. 296 His Sentiments its actual interpretations. It represents the further drift of habit toward its own completion ; it is the way we discount, in feeling, our own future progress in personal attainment and growth. It is essentially 'prospective' in its nature. Just as we get the thought of the ego as a fact, as a thing which is, by a growth upon which we are able to look back in retrospect, and say, ' this is my history ; here is the road which I have travelled up to personality, and to my social place ; ' so we get the ego that is to be, that 'ought to be,' by a prophecy of similar growth along the same path. We hie us onward by anticipation. We long to think of other men as being further on, and we give them reverence by turn- ing toward them the sentiments which stand in us as the guerdon of our hopes. Imitation runs through it all ; imitation is, indeed, the essential method of growth in this active stretch of our energies toward the ideal. 1 For the interpretations which our past actions express were secured by the imitative absorption of the personal suggestive copies of the social environment; and the projective part of the ideal set us by others is, in so far as we picture it at all, a reconstruction, in an imita- tive way, of the same material. And when the actor goes on to attain the new growth which brings him further towards the ideal, it is again by actually finding in the social circle better illustrations of righteousness, beauty, etc., which he takes to himself by imitation. This I need not enlarge upon. But the actual phases 1 In my Handbook of Psychology, II., p. 201 f., I have defined ideals as : "the forms which we feel our conceptions would take if we were able to realize in them a satisfying degree of unity, harmony, significance, and universality." In the province of ' ideals ' we have the general class of ' aesthetic inventions ' referred to above (Sect. iia). Ethical Sentiment 297 of the sentiments which thus arise about the ideal growth of personality may now claim some attention ; since they will be seen in the sequel to be factors of the greatest importance in the organization and progress of society. 2. Ethical Sentiment 1 88. The most general and important phase of ethical sentiment is that known in theoretical ethics as the sense of obligation. Defining this sense, in general, as we have already found it right to do, as the sense of the lack of unity in the highest region of motor func- tion, we may point out a little more fully its mode of acting and its bearings in the mental and social life. The growing habit which is seen in the thought of an ideal self stands as the goal of assimilation for the partial expressions of personality issuing in particular self- ish or generous actions. The fact, however, that these particular actions are not inhibited or modified in view of the ideal, but get performed in spite of the need of further co-ordination and assimilation to the ideal copy, is felt as a state of tension and lack of equilibrium, which accounts for the real antithesis of tendencies which appears in every ethical situation. The sense of obli- gation brings to consciousness two antithetical thoughts of personality : that of the self as it stands, more or less complete in habit, with its well-known tendencies to action ; and over against this the sense of the ideal self, the being perhaps temporarily embodied in father, priest, or whoever-else, the better self from whose actions the copy is to come for the further reduction of the self- ishly or generously capricious self to order and good- 298 His Sentiments ness. I feel that I ought to be like the better person; and even though I cannot see how this better person will act in this case or that, yet I have enough of a habit of submission to him, or enough reverence for his ideals, to feel my personal actions tending to lose their independence and their adequacy in my own eyes. In the mind of the child, this sense of ' oughtness ' arises in a very interesting way, as soon as he has learned to obey in measure sufficient to set the habit of submission on its feet; for, in so doing, the beginning of assimila- tion to the larger copy set by the injunction of another is secured ; and on that basis, the further growth may be expected to proceed by the internal injunction which this very tendency to a larger assimilation creates. From the first, this growing sense of obligation is a social thing in several ways ; and our development requires their statement even at the risk of some repetition of the intimations made in the earlier pages. 189. I. In the first place, the leading-string in the child's ethical growth is, all the time, the presence of other per- sons from whom the ' word of command ' and the sugges- tion and example of goodness, directly come. The very strenuousness of command at first breaks in upon his personal capricious reactions, and so starts his sense of a larger order. Then the constant teachings of the actions of others, their conduct toward each other, to which the child comes as a curious spectator, their ways of leading him out into his imitations, and their com- ments upon the interpretations which he makes when he comes to act more complexly for himself, all this in this sphere as in the wider sphere of personal attainment in general, in which we have already traced the influ- Ethical Sentiment 299 ences which he experiences stimulates, confirms, and controls his growth. Further, he finds two social ways of showing his progress. He constantly exhibits his attainments in this direction, as in others that first ; and then he lays down the crude law of his own right- eousness to the other children, and even seeks occasion to find his elders violating what they have taught him. My child says to me at the dinner table : ' Papa, what do you do with your hands while you are waiting ? ' or, ' Papa, you should take off your hat in the house.' This is a natural and necessary movement in the growth of the ethical sense. It indicates that the child's sense that my assimilation of the self of habit, the self which he has ejected outward and lodged in me, must go on just as his does; and that the conduct of this myself-of- habit which does not show proper reduction to the grow- ing ideal of a self ' ought ' not to act as it does. The two applications of this ' ought not ' that to me and that to him are not really two; they are one; for the very exhibition of self to which the ought-not applies is the same in me as in him. This latter it is which gives its social value to the experience. It elevates the social basis of the emotions, and attitudes generally, right up into the ethical sphere, and shows the moral sense to be essentially a social thing. The child's exhibitions of his morality, and his require- ment that we shall recognize and confirm them by our- selves conforming to them, is an outlet for the intimate and hidden movement of his growth. Without this social appeal and its consequences, he could not be sure of his progress, or have that sense of social security in his judgments which makes his morality really a part of the 300 His Sentiments world morality. In short, what, on this subjective side, is a spontaneous appeal of the child to the social environ- ment for confirmation and support, is on the objective side evidence that the child is growing under direct social con- trol. His attainments in morality represent at each stage a social level or stratum. As far as he does not thus keep his head up, the waves of social influence may go over him and swamp him. 190. II. The second general social feature of the child's subjective ethical experience is seen in the possibility of /ns further progress at any time. As he gets more adequate views of morality, and incorporates them in his own self- sense, under stress of the sense of obligation, his sense of the ideal grows too. His obligations, instead of diminish- ing, only increase. This is again a social phenomenon ; and we have seen the ground of it in the remarks made above on the imita- tive character of the ideal standards which consciousness sets up. In order to grow, the ethical sense, like every- thing else, must be fed ; and its only food is personal food, social food. The child can gain new levels only provided society show the strata which these new levels represent. He must have relationships which give him room to do right, if he would do right ; and the very sense that he should do right can get its growth only in the environment in which it has higher illustrations already. As a matter of fact, the young child's ethical environ- ment is usually so far ahead of him that he is drawn on by strides. His sense of an ideal self is fed so constantly in all his social relationships that his learning is limited only by his own power of assimilating 'copy.' This is the normal case ; the actual way that the child gets his Ethical Sentiment 301 ethical sense. The further question as to what kind of an ethical sense he gets, and what its variations are for good or bad in consequence of variations either in physi- cal or social heredity, that is not now before us. These two social features of personal growth have had so much emphasis in the earlier discussions of the child's progress, that it is sufficient to have suggested them in this connection as applicable to the ethical sense as well. There are certain aspects of the case, however, which get further value from the objective point of view, that which looks upon society from the outside rather than from the individual's own personal experience, and I wish to set them in evidence at this point, again giving r6sum6s of earlier positions for the sake of the special ethical applications. 191. The objective social bearings of the ethical sense come under the wide class of facts which we have con- sidered under the phrase 'social heredity.' By this, it will be remembered, we designated the mass of organized tradition, custom, usage, social habit, etc., which is already embodied in the institutions and ways of acting, thinking, etc., of a given social group, considered as the normal heritage of the individual child. And it is at once seen that the lines of theory which have been already laid down for the interpretation of this group of phenomena (Chapter II.) must include and explain the content of ethical tradition and custom ; for they also involve rela- tionships which the individual must grow up to inherit and maintain. From this point of view we get a view of race solidarity and progress analogous to that already reached in the lower spheres of emotion and instinct. This is evi- dent in the following ways : 302 His Sentiments 192. (i) The physical heredity of a man represents a compromise, as we have seen, between organization, on the one hand, and plasticity on the other. The organiza- tion element fits him for the instinctive actions and atti- tudes which have grown up as useful in race-history, and have not been superseded by the activities of the later periods. So in the case of emotion, we found that certain emotional expressions which were to be accounted for as utility reactions in a simpler and different environment, still survived in whole or in part in the realm of intelli- gence and social organization, and were still associated with the same kind of mental experience as formerly, except that they now serve higher social and intelligent purposes as well. Whatever of the organic period the progress in the new directions did not efface, this was left. Where it was useless, it became vestigial, as the showing of the teeth, lifting of the hair, etc., in certain emotional seizures ; and where it was useful, if only for the purposes of expression itself, there it remained, both to bear witness to the utilities under which it originated, and also to those for which its new stimulations call it out. Blushing has been shown to have arisen in this way, and to have survived, in spite of the apparent inutility of it in socially organized society ; and that the ethical sentiment requires the same theory on this point is shown by the fact that ethical shame brings the same blush that physi- cal shame does. But that these survivals are really a compromise be- tween the two tendencies represented by personal growth on the one hand, and social organization on the other hand, is evident from the modifications which they have undergone. Most detailed instincts of the animal world Ethical Sentiment 303 have entirely disappeared in man. He has, at the best, a lot of so-called impulses which merely show the direction of his former adaptations without leading him to carry them out. They are the merest fragments of instincts, each a torso ; none can find its adequate expression in un- inhibited discharge. All the newer requirements of social and dawning ethical life call upon the organism to develop self-control, to make itself docile, to forget the violent, straight-away kinds of action which formerly characterized it ; to become, in short, intelligent, delibera- tive, volitional, social. This means the snubbing of in- stinct, the putting of a premium upon the sort of heredity which produces creatures who could and would learn new adaptations by social means. This is what is meant by plasticity ; : and the hands in which the child must be plastic, the hands which mould him, if he is to become ethical, are the hands of society. As a matter of fact, in this highest sphere of personal development the ethical sphere there seems to be very little natural heredity, and a great deal of plasticity ; in short, a great deal of social heredity. Apart from the characteristic temperamental differences which denote individuality, the sentiments are common to social equals. The children are at first forced into conformity to the rules of conduct of society ; and by this forced submission the habits are begun which they afterwards cultivate by their own imitative responses to the further examples, precepts, regulations, etc., of the social environment. 193. (2) In the fact of plasticity, in this high ethical sphere, we find, therefore, the real bond between the social whole and the individual. As the child grows up, 1 See above, Sect. 32. 304 His Sentiments under the influence of teacher, friend, companion, his spontaneous reflections and judgments agree, in the main, with those of his social milieu. His ethical insight, as his intellectual inventiveness, only much more, is limited by his limitations of social growth. And since these limi- tations are set by the system of influences which bear in upon him in the social group, and which he cannot transcend, his own opinions and judgments are as strictly a matter of general acceptance as if he and others had been born with a set of ready-made ethical intuitions in common. But it is because these so-called intuitions are progressive things, that society and the individual in society do not stand still in the ethical life any more absolutely than in the intellectual, or in the purely social life. Ethical phenomena are phenomena of organization, that is, in their origin, and the soli- darity of the results, the apparent universality of ethical sentiment, is due to the fact that this sentiment is a thing of common and united attainment. It is in society be- cause it is in all the individuals ; but it is in each indi- vidual because it is already in society. It is one of those ' arguments in a circle ' with which nature so often reasons out the development problem. Of course we must not leave out the actual increments of progress which the individuals make, the ways in which the best individuals improve upon the lessons which they learn from society, and so go on, in turn, to teach society ; but that is apart from the topic of our present interest, the topic which we set ourselves when we inquire into the individual's method of attaining to ethical sentiment and character. The point here is that he learns his ethical lessons from society ; and that means that he learns them from his Ethical Sentiment 305 ancestors to the same extent that he would if they were knit into his original endowment ; and further, that they are of the sam general and universal character as if they had been imposed by some authority upon both the indi- vidual and society, instead of coming by the natural process of learning and growth. 194. This solidarity, in the ethical realm, of the indi- vidual and his social fellows may be shown by the ex- amination of a claim recently made by Mr. Huxley in his well-known Romanes Address, already referred to. Mr. Huxley's point, put in social terms, is that if the ethical sense were the outcome of social relationships, then obliga- tion would attach equally to both the sorts of action which the ethical sense takes cognizance of, i.e., we should feel obligation to perform the bad in which society indulges, equally with the good. Put in genetic terms, this objec- tion would read somewhat like this : if the sense of obli- gation arise from the lack of assimilation of new elements to old categories of actions, of new actions to old habits, then all such cases of lack of assimilation should give the sense of obligation. How, then, do we come to say that we are under obligation to perform certain established actions, and under equal obligation to avoid others which are equally well established ? This objection holds, I think, as against the theories of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Spencer which Mr. Huxley prob- ably had before his mind ; and it is the same objection to those theories which we also have had occasion to urge above. 1 But it does not hold against all genetic theories of the ethical sentiment. If we account for the rise of the sense of obligation in terms of lack of assimilation, 1 Above, Chap. I., 2 (Sect. 20). X 306 His Sentiments pure and simple, then of course all such lack of assimila- tion should produce it. But that is not the true account. For example, if a new action did not assinailate to my ego sense, then it would be obligatory upon me to make it assimilate, or to avoid doing it ; and if another action did not assimilate with my altruistic self-sense, then the same of that. This would at once introduce contradiction and confusion into the life of the child ; and this state of things is actually realized in the life of tJic child before real ethical obligation dawns upon hint ; it is the simple fact of suggestibility. The child does feel impelled to do every action on both sides. A selfish action arouses his selfish- ness, and a generous action his generosity. It is only the concrete cropping out of the general law which has become embodied in the tendency to imitate. And further, we may concede to Mr. Huxley that this state of things is a necessary stepping-stone to real morality. Yet the fact is that we do not call moral this general call to act by imitation, to assimilate every kind of action indiscriminately ; and for the simple reason, that if all acts are moral, then none are we have no need for the category 'moral ' at all. I think, indeed, the state of things which Mr. Huxley depicts is universal in the animal world ; especially striking is it in the gregarious animals, where the antithesis between unreflective egoism and sociality is well marked. These animals have, no doubt, a very strong sense of the impelling character of actions of both kinds. And it seems to me that the ethical theories which base the sense of obligation only on these instincts signally fail, as Mr. Huxley says, to account for the fact that our human ethical sense does distinguish Ethical Sentiment 307 between acts which ought to be done and acts, equally impelling by physical or social impulsion, which ought not to be done. We have one sense of obligation which covers both the positive and the negative instances. Mr. Huxley seems to think that no further statement of natural his- tory factors can account for this ; J and he gives up the solution from an evolution point of view, except to leave open the door for ' spontaneous variations,' which may bring morality in. In this opinions may differ, as may be inferred from the foregoing. The child's imitative growth into a sense of ideal personality sets a higher category of action than either of the two concrete categories recognized by Darwin, Spencer, 2 and the naturalists generally, i.e., those of spon- taneous egoism and equally spontaneous generosity or sym- pathy. It is in the higher realm of assimilation, where it is a question of the assimilation of a new action alterna- tively to a higher or to a lower* category of habit, that the sense of ethical obligation really takes its rise. The child feels the impulsion of all examples, both the selfish and the social, and if this impulsion were the ' ought,' then in- deed he would have two ' oughts,' as on occasion he has two ' musts ' ; but he now feels after the ideal thought of personality has a good beginning in him that some 1 And it is in this that he seems to give support to the intuitionists, as also do Mivart and Wallace on somewhat similar grounds. 2 I know that Mr. Spencer reaches a social derivation of obligation, but it remains a feeling due to customs of obedience, etc., in social life; it lacks the publicity arising from the imitative assimilation of actions to a higher self- thought, as brought out in the next paragraph. See the criticism of Hegel in Sect. 331 below. 8 I use these words ' higher ' and ' lower' in a genetic sense, with reference to amount of organization in the normal progress of consciousness, keeping ' shy ' of their question-begging meanings. 308 His Sentiments of these actions on both sides will assimilate to this ideal, are called for by this, will strengthen and reinforce this, while others will not ; then comes the sense that these are good and the rest in comparison with them are bad. He says : ' I ought to do this, since the good man, my ideal personality, does this ; I ought not to do that, because he does it not.' And further, the reason that he does it not, is just because the action which he does not do represents one of the lower concrete habits, one whose indulgence would tend to set more firmly the antithesis between the partial selves on the one hand, and between them and the higher ideal self on the other hand. To act selfishly or to act capriciously, even though the action be a generous one is to undo my growth toward a law-abiding, reasonable, and, in its high- est sense, social person. 195. And as with the individual, so with the race. Society puts a premium on assimilation of conduct to certain types of action which become formulated in law, convention, institutions, constitutions. Society has its right and its wrong, as the individual has. In society, as in the private sphere, the generous act, as well as the selfish act, may be wrong may violate law. The social ideal represents the reduction of partial ideals, found in this man or that, to a common basis. Each man might say : ' I will do this, and I will do that ; we will all return to nature and do what we please ; ' this is the state of things in society that the theories mentioned would require corresponding to the equality to the individual of all actions in virtue of their equal impelling force. But the alternative here, as in the case of the individual, is not between this force and that law imposed ab extra. Ethical Sentiment 309 Not at all. Society simply goes on developing, and gets the higher form of impulsion, authority, organization ; saying then to every man : ' This is the type of action to which you are expected to conform voluntarily. 1 The his- tory of mankind shows the same gradual refinement of the social ideal, as the history of the individual shows in respect to the personal ideal. This comes up again ; 1 but I may add that I think Mr. Huxley would again be right in saying that on the basis of the factors and pro- cesses recognized by Mr. Spencer, no genetic account of social life would be forthcoming. For the individualist and the anarchist would be each his own justification, in the same sense as would the collectivist and the philan- thropist : the justification which comes from actual exist- ence with the law of growth through habit. Any higher arbiter, which men would voluntarily recognize, would be wanting ; and all social ideals would stand on the same footing. J 96- (3) The relative balance between the two factors, hereditary fixity and plasticity, gives room for the varia- tions which the actual differences of men show in respect to their moral character and temperament. Greater natu- ral fixity is at the expense of plasticity ; and this greater fixity may be either in the direction of less intelligence and personal power of adaptation to social conditions, or of the reverse. The first case gives the atavistic ten- dency : the lack of moral character, due to innate unbal- ance in the direction of nervous discharge of a lower and less inhibited kind. This represents the more inde- pendent action of single reflexes and tendencies ; but it shows greater stability in the particular function which 1 See below, Chap. XIII. 310 His Sentiments is brought into excessive action. The material at the disposal of such a person for learning and for new organi- zation during his personal education is less because of the lower functions whose independent organization holds the nervous substance locked up. The other variation in natural heredity is in the way of better social and moral temperament. It may be simply greater plasticity, with greater inventiveness on the intel- lectual side, or greater docility and imitativeness in the emotional life. This last may go to extremes in the direc- tion of slavish suggestibility, especially in an environ- ment in the home, school, etc. where the lessons of imitation are not supplemented by those of self-control, independence of mind, and sturdy assertion of personal conviction. It is not my aim, however, at this point to determine the details of these and other possible cases ; but only to show that there is room for the ethical differences actually found among men, in the possible variations of these two factors, natural and social heredity, to each other. And it may be well to point out that while the tendency to atavism, or lower organization, puts a premium on an unethical type of character alone, 1 the other possibility, that of greater plasticity, docility, suggestiveness, is not solely or to the same degree operative on the side of the ethical type. For the variations in the direction of plasticity tend simply to make the person open to personal influences of all kinds, not to those alone which inculcate morality, but to those also which set examples of wickedness. In this latter case, the most that can be said is that the child is susceptible to 1 Such as the ' criminal-born,' who is only legally, not morally, a criminal at all, in proportion as he is literally criminal-boru. Social Sentiment as Such : Publicity 311 the influences of his environment ; but then his environ- ment may be good or it may be bad. There seems to be, therefore, in this a brake on the growth of the ethical in human life considered from the social point of view. 1 There is a tendency of individuals to run down hill under the influence of suggestion, and this is notably the case, as we have seen, in the case of suggestion reinforced from the crowd. 197. With this general view of the sentiment of ethical obligation, we find it unnecessary to inquire in detail into the more refined phases which it presents in the varied ethical situations of life. The psychologist has to describe such emotions as remorse, jealousy, repentance, moral pride, etc. ; but we may pass over them with the meed of emphasis of the social element which they have in com- mon with the generic feeling of obligation. They repre- sent special phases of that sense, as different combinations of social circumstance and relationship call it out. Re- morse is retrospective obligation ; repentance has a pro- spective strain ; although each of these, and each of the other ethical emotions, is subject to the most delicate variations and combinations. 3. Social Sentiment as Such: Publicity We have found in actual life certain phases of emotion which were called 'social emotions as such.' 2 There are certain refined sentiments of a similar character in the 1 This allies itself to the egoistic balance found in the individual (see Sect. 184), and accounts for most criminality of the kinds known as 'occa- sional,' and which in many individuals goes on to become ' habitual.' 2 Chap. VI., 4- 312 His Sentiments ethical life. On the social side they are seen in public opinion. This rather indefinite aspect of social organiza- tion has its justification in the movements of personal growth which have already been spoken of. It may be well to speak further of a group of phenomena whose influence is so real, confining our remarks, however, to the ethical form of it, called public sentiment. 1 First, we may point out one or two of the main bearings of public sentiment upon the individual. 198. It is notorious that the ethical sentiment itself is, in some degree, modified by public opinion. ' Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone,' is by no means a useless exhortation to any of us. The sense of social isolation is usually a direct cause of the weakening of moral deter- mination. This extends itself in other directions. The moral judgments which we pass on men and actions are more or less open to influence from the knowledge which we have of their standing in the community, and of the treatment which they receive from others. Even the more subtle and intimate judgments which we pass upon ourselves are liable to the same influence : we judge ourselves in some degree by the meed of reproach or commendation which we receive from the people who know us. Our first feeling of self-condemnation, for example, is often tempered and rendered less acute when we find that it is not entirely supported, in the judgment of society, at the high notch where we have placed it. A potent influence on the side of repentance and reform is the knowledge that our fellow-men await it on our part ; and this, not with reference alone to their opinion as such, 1 See, besides, the remarks on public opinion in Chap. V., 3; also Chap. X, 2. Social Sentiment as Such: Publicity 313 but because our own subjective demand upon ourselves grows and maintains itself through this factor. The actual growth of ethical sentiment, in the consciousness of a man, especially the sense of self-condemnation, with the growth of his knowledge of the judgment of his associ- ates, is a familiar personal experience to us all. There arises a peculiar sense of personal uneasiness, with the vaguest and most detached images of this man or that whose opinion reproves us. The uneasiness increases rapidly, simply from the persistence of these pictures of personal attitude on the part of others. The state finally grows excessively painful, and we seek some mitigating circumstance, either by arguing the case in self-defence with the pictured reprover, or by making appeal with confession to some other friend or acquaint- ance. This latter resort, especially if the ministrations come voluntarily from another, is the best balm to our lacerated self, even though, again, the new opinion have no new facts of any kind to urge. The simple sense of social approval apart from the ground of it leads us to tend toward the same point of view; just as the simple fact of social disapproval also without statement of ground carries with it the beginning of self-condemnation. Furthermore, there is often a lack of sharp condemnation of ourselves as long as our sins remain private ; we are aware of the sinfulness in a general way ; conscience gets in a timid voice, especially just at the time of commission of the deed, and more timidly each time that it is com- mitted ; but there may be no lively emotional reaction, no great agitation of remorse, no desperate attempts to justify oneself by argument, no 'call to repentance.' Indeed, there is in su9h cases often a subtle sense pf 314 His Sentiments secrecy, of the social approval of one's general character as a whole, which comes in to assure the sinner that his sin is not likely to come out ; and that he need not trouble himself about it. But let it once come out ; then his nature asserts itself. The sense of publicity immediately reacts upon his own private standards of judgment. He awakes to the grounds of public condemnation and enforces them on himself. It is now not that he gets new information from the public ; not at all. He finds himself, however, going over the grounds on which his friends are pos- sibly basing their judgment of him. He feels that while alone, he, as an interested party, did not care to see these damning reasons, yet society will now care to see them ; and so he goes over them, picturing them as thoughts of others. This makes the thoughts his own, and the emotional results his own also. The wave of self- condemnation sweeps over him genuine, profound, ethi- cal ; not simply reflected. The social factor has become a real stimulus to his ethical nature. His own best judg- ment is now for the first time elicited. He says with the most profound earnestness : * Wretched man that I am ' ; and with it : ' What a fool I was to wait till now to see it.' These and many other aspects of the intimate depend- ence of the ethical sense upon its social support and many such interesting relationships might be pointed out may be put under two very general heads. First, we may say that ethical approval, both of oneself and of others, is never at its best except when it is accompanied, in the consciousness which has it, with the knowledge or belief that it is also socially shared. And second, the best ethical judgment of disapproval is liable to the same state- Social Sentiment as Such : Publicity 3 1 5 ment. The word ' best ' here refers to the intensity, sure- ness, directness, unqualifiedness with which the ethical attitude, in the particular case, is taken. We may see what this is, and also why these two general points are true, from the application to the case of the psychological principles already put in evidence above. A word or two on this application may be in place. 199. When we come to set out fully the psychological factors involved in the growth of the ideal self which is involved in all the ethical emotions, we find an aspect of it which so far in our study has had no emphasis. The subtler facts of social value in practical life, as now men- tioned, however, serve to bring it out. It is this : the sense of a self that is good, regular, laiv-abiding, ethical, the standard of all my judgments of right and wrong, must be, in my consciousness of it, a public self, This means that when I think of this ideal, when I bring a given action to the test of assimilation to it, for I cannot think of it in any circumstances which do not call for its application to a concrete case of action, a part of the content of my thought is necessarily the thought that the judgment is one of social generality, that others are also making the same assimilation of this act to the same ideal. In case, then, I know that the action is quite private, quite secret, absolutely unknown to anybody else, then the full reinstatement of the conditions of an ethical judgment are, ipso facto, not present. My ideal category of action is not brought out ; for to bring it out requires the very sense of publicity which my knowledge of privacy contradicts. If this be true to psychology, then it is no wonder that privacy destroys much of our ethical competence. This conclusion not only accounts for the facts which we have 316 His Sentiments cited, but goes further, in that by it we discover a phase of social emotion which introduces into our lives a remark- able element of solidarity, and gives full significance to the expression 'social sentiment as such.' Let us see then what the psychological factors are which justify the con- clusion. 200. The sense of the publicity of the ethical self as defined immediately above follows from the fact, which we have found it necessary to recognize, of the unity of the self-content in all its development. We found that the ego and the alter were in great part identical, espe- cially in the part which constitutes them selves as opposed to mere bodies. We found that when I think of myself, I think ipso facto of you; and that the emotion which the thought arouses, and in view of which I take the active attitudes that I do, rests upon that thought, no matter which the real ego in the case may be, as deter- mined by the actual conditions, i.e., be it me or be it you. If we go back to the child of two or three years, we find that a difference of emotion and attitude does arise in view of the real objective differences, and he finds him- self acting in the two ways called selfish and generous respectively, according as the thought of self is objec- tively determined in one way or the other. But these two sorts of action or attitude guaranteed as a matter of fact by the inborn expressions of the organism each remain in so far unreflective ; each takes its cue from the personal environment and assimilates its own appropriate material from the events of life. So far, the child is in- dependent of the opinion which other people may form of him * ; he has no sense of ' publicity,' no requirement that 1 Except as there is a demand for social confirmation after the deed. Social Sentiment as Such: Publicity 317 his act of spontaneous sociality should be known to be what it is. Others are important to him, as giving him personal copy, by example, precept, etc., and for the rati- fication and confirming of his deeds ; and their influence is seen in his growth in these two ways. But the very necessity of making further use of society it is which leads the child on to the additional step seen in the growth of a general or ideal sense of self. This means, as we have seen, the formation of a category of action which assimilates the essential content of self as repre- sented by both the earlier partial thoughts. He thinks of self again as independent of the private objective marks of individuality, bodies, locality, etc. To this thought all personal actions should conform ; and the concrete rela- tionships between the two selves called ego and alter tend to disappear as this form of union is secured. This is what we call reflection. The higher thought of self is brought to judge the lower thoughts. But it is itself a function of the lower. It could not rise except for the unity of content which holds the two together. So the result of the assimilation, the actual attitude taken in any particular concrete case toward one or other in the lower self -thoughts, the attitude which constitutes the sense of ethical well- or ill-desert, this is identically the same atti- tude for all the concrete selves. I condemn the act of you as well as that of me, or approve it, no matter whether it be objectively determined in a particular case as really mine or really yours. And the reciprocal nature of the relation carries the sense over into a general application simultaneously to all the possible other people whose ego the identical thought may stand for. This, then, brings in the ejective thought of you as reaching the same sense 318 His Sentiments of approval or disapproval that I do. Or : the thought that ike judgment passed is actually in the mind of some other is necessary to a full ethical judgment as such. This may be put in a different way. My thought of the ideal self is general ; it must apply in all the particular cases. Whatever mental movement it gives rise to, must be present in all the particular cases. I find it giving rise to a feeling of condemnation, in my case, when a certain action is before me. It must give rise to the same condem- nation in the mind of each of them. But, it is said, this is very different from saying that I must think that it is actually present to them. Certainly ; but we must remem- ber that I cannot think of myself with anything reflectively before me without in the act thinking ejectively on the same content; hence, to think of myself with this case before me is to think of other men also with this case before them. To fall short of this is to think, not in terms of the general thought of self, not with reference to the ideal ; but in reference to some particular partial self to whose know- ledge the case before me is restricted. So it is not enough that I feel what others would say if they knew ; / must feel that others are judging because I judge. 1 201. If this is so, then in the case in which I am con- scious that no one but myself knows the act which I am committing, this consciousness really contradicts an element in the mental psychosis which arouses the ethical sentiment ; and as long as I fully assure myself of this, I cannot get a completely moral judgment. Of course it is impossible to maintain this state of mind in its purity ; the drift toward the general statement of the case in social terms tends to 1 See the formulation in Appendix D quoted from Professor Tawney. Social Sentiment as Such: Publicity 319 establish the proper ethical sense, and imagination supplies the needed elements by whispering what my friends would say if they knew my conduct. But this does not take the place of actual knowledge ; although it often brings on most tragic illusions and hallucinations of persecution, dis- covery, pursuit by devils, bodily occupation by priests, etc. These latter cases indeed would serve, I think, if ade- quately investigated by ethical writers who give themselves to casuistry, to show two very instructive points in the social nature of the ethical sense : first, the point that hal- lucinations of social opinion may come to take the place of personal social thought and of real social tests; and second, that actual social opinion may create illusions of conscience where the personal ego thought is weak or deranged. In other words, there are necessarily the two ingredients, the subjective and the ejective ingredients, in the general thought of personality; either may be de- ranged, to the extent which we describe as hallucination, in different types of real moral insanity. This might be made the topic of detailed remarks based upon the cases to be found in current pathological literature. 1 202. The essential publicity of the ethical sense teaches us that in the growth of this sense the meaning of the claim that man is a social being gets itself very much en- larged. In this kind of sentiment the ' ejective ' phase of the self-thought is incorporated, as an intrinsic element. Here we have a right to say that the private ideal or end of the individual is one with the social ideal and end as such; just for the reason that the social end can get no state- 1 An interesting use of the relation between the self and the social sense is made by Royce apropos of certain 'Anomalies of Self-consciousness,' Psych. Rev., II., p. 433, Sept., 1895 320 His Sentiments ment apart from this 'public' personal construction which the individual is now making. This again we must reserve for further statement, when we come to consider the ques- tion of social progress. 1 4. Practical Reason 203. One thing, however, we may add. This incor- poration of the ejective person, the alter, into the very body of the thought from which the ethical, social, and other sentiments arise, leads, necessarily, to a new function of the intelligence, in its relation to the social forces as a whole. It appeared in an earlier connection that the child uses his intelligence to bend and manipulate the actions of persons around him ; he anticipates the obser- vations, opinions, attitudes, of others, and acts to mislead them, or, at least, to utilize them for certain private ends. This also characterizes an early epoch in the development of man. This is the natural use of intelligence, so long as there is relative independence in the two thoughts of self, the ego thought and the alter thought. They are, in a measure, rival occupants of consciousness ; and when such a new instrument of utility comes to hand in the intelli- gence, developed, as we must think, with greater view to the personal adaptations of the individual, and so tempt- ing him into original sin, it is natural that one of these rival thoughts should get the balance of benefit from it. But now, in the growth of sentiment, social, ethical, religious, this is no longer so. The very growth of reflec- tive intelligence is growth in generality of content. The content of the sense of self upon which the sentiments de- i See Chap. XIIL Practical Reason 321 pend in order to become general, must have reference to all examples of personality, to the alter as well as to the ego thought. There comes into consciousness, therefore, as this proceeds, a direct call to the inhibitions of all the private ways of using intelligence characteristic of the earlier period. The demand for conformity to an ideal is made upon all these partial tendencies ; for, as has been said, the newer growth of the content of self, representing ipso facto the newer function of intelligence, supersedes the old ; so both acts of intentionally designed selfish appropriation and acts of intentionally designed generos- ity now yield spontaneously to this demand for conformity to the higher personal thought, which is of public value. We reach here, therefore, a great turn in the course of personal development a turn which is rich in implica- tions for the interpretation of the social movement. This crisis is to be, in our further study of social development, perhaps the most important factor. It has its match in interest and importance, perhaps, only in the dawn of intelligence itself in the earlier period, whereby the in- stinctive and organic co-operation of the animals yielded to the conscious and intelligent co-operation of men. 204. The fact which stands out most plainly is that already described, in the chapter on the development of the sense of self, as the growth of the ethical self. The sense of relationships of right and wrong is, of course, most momentous, both in the history of the individual and in that of the race. We found that the theories which attempted to state the ethical self the thought of a self who does right or wrong in terms of either of the two selves characterized as the ' habitual ' and the ' social,' are equally inadequate. This result now has support on the 322 His Sentiments plane of the intelligence ; and our results are available to refute the school of thinkers who say that the ethical end is some form of intelligent self-interest the Utilitarians. An appeal to the ethical consciousness is sufficient to show that the content thought of, when the mind is full of emo- tions of right or wrong, cannot be described as the thought- content of a purely intellectual being exercising his ' per- sonal ' intelligence far from it, despite the finished analyses of the Utilitarians. On the lower plane we found that their analyses, being strictly genetic, depend upon the validity of the reduction of the sympathetic impulses to the egoistic ones. This reduction is shown to be quite incorrect by all the facts now presented, which prove that the two tendencies extend alike down into the life of the animals. On this higher plane the attempt to reduce the ethical forms of action to those of personal reflective intelligence, goes no further than is justified by the one-sided uses of the intelligence described in the last chapter. On the other hand, the claim that the generous impulses, the sympathies and altruistic emotions, give exclusive content to the ethical consciousness is equally mistaken. Sympathy is a capricious and lawless thing. Suggesti- bility characterizes the sympathetic psychosis to a remark- able degree. And again, sympathy may be present when there is no adequate deliberative process to support that adjustment of personal claims which the ethical con- sciousness calls for, and which the Utilitarians so prop- erly emphasize. This we saw on the lower plane above ; and now when intelligence is born we find it promptly taking the helm and using the emotions for its own social ends. So if reflective sympathy were all that the advocates Practical Reason 323 of disinterestedness in conduct had to fall back upon, sorry would be their case. The ' good ' would characterize the kind-hearted, and benevolence would sit on the bench of justice. We come to see, therefore, in view of the incomplete- ness of both these historical theories, that we are under the necessity of examining anew the thought of self found in the ethical consciousness, in the light of our genetic results. This leads us to discover that the child goes on further in his personal growth, and really reaches a thought of an ideal self which overcomes the antithesis between intelligent self-seeking and reflective sympathy. It would, indeed, have been a pity, so to speak, if nature had led man out of the appearance of righteousness, represented by his instincts, into the scheming devices of intelligence, and had then taken him no further. 1 On this point, the child's growth seems to throw direct light. The Utilitarians have seen it, in a measure, in their emphasis of the 'word of command.' But they have failed to see that there is a new organization of the child's personal thoughts, an organization which leads to the psychological result found, in us adults, in the sense of law. Law, to the child, is personal in all his transition period to a true ethical self ; it is an embodiment, a self, which is essentially ' projective,' which he cannot represent nor anticipate in detail. It has its analogies, its illustra- tions, in his experience, and on the basis of these experi- 1 It is the recognition of this higher reach of self-consciousness which has given the Intuitionalists in ethics their historical advantage. But they are set against the genetic point of view, and so throw away their best resource. (Cf. ray article, 'The Origin of a Thing and its Nature,' Psych. Rev., Vol. II., 1895, PP- 55 ' fr-)- The Idealists, on the other hand, revert to Utilitarianism by making the ethical ideal an intellectual construction. 324 His Sentiments ences, actively appropriated by his imitations, he grows to understand it more and more. But it is always an ideal, an unfulfilled expectation of the ultimate developments of character ; and as such it is a forward-reaching attitude, which presents, to the novelties of experience, nets for the assimilation of the newly evolving phases of personal sug- gestion and teaching. This the Idealists have taught ; but this is not all. The gradual formation in the child of the thought of self which is law-abiding, regular in its behaviour, not-at- all-capricious, but lawgiving to him and to others this thought is itself subject to the method of growth that we found the earlier personal thoughts of the child to be. The elements of it must also continue to come from the personal environment ; they must be assimilated to the earlier thoughts ; and they must be read back into the per- sons who stand in relationship to the agent. And when we come to see the child doing these things, we see the formation of complexes, in his attitudes, which are the germs of the forces of life and history. But this is no longer simply personal intelligence, the exercise of which we have been illustrating ; it is now ethical intelligence ; thinking for complex social ends ; finding it unnatural and unreasonable to be either self-seeking or other-seeking as such ; but finding it both natural and reasonable to be dutiful. This is the highest reach of intelligent growth and gives its true significance, as I take it, to what ethical writers call 'practical reason.' 205. We need only add certain brief corollaries. There are two ways that the child's assimilation of personal sug gestions might go on. His egoistic, aggressive self might assimilate the actions of other persons and wrest them to Practical Reason 325 its advantage ; thus leading the child to be an individualist pure and simple. But it is plain that even on the supposi- tion that this might be, he would find a certain embar- rassment. His nature has a fund of organic emotional expressions which he would have to suppress in order not to be generous in spite of himself. He would have to undo the progress which even biological evolution has made toward a social type of person. And more than this, we have seen that the two sorts of impulse rep- resented by his spontaneous activities are both equally reasonable to unreflective intelligence ; so such a selfish person would have to indulge in generous conduct on occasion, merely in order to be selfish. There are certain unpleasantnesses of continued sympathy, for example, which he would be wise to avoid by relieving the dis- tresses which are thrust upon him. This picture is not a speculative and artificial one, altogether. There are men whose reflection does lead them very near to it, men whose generosities are remedial agents to the wounds of their selfishness. But this is, to be sure, the finished result of a certain sort of reflection. Another way that the child might develop is that which would constitute him a purely altruistic being a being of generosity gone on to perfection. This is, however, also contrary to the facts which we have just pointed out ; facts which show that he has more properly a selfish period, and that he gets to be generous only by the con- temporary growth of the alter sense. The way he does grow has already been explained at some length, and only a brace of remarks remains to be made. 206. First, the 'practical reason ' is a thing of social growth. This is to say that it springs up in an environ- 326 His Sentiments ment to which it expresses intelligent adaptation. The sense of what ought to be cannot be divorced from the sense of what is. The thing that ought to be is a direct reflection of the conditions which have produced the know- ledge of what is ; and while that which is, and is known to be, sums up the experience of the individual on the side of science, the sense of a possible ought expresses with equal reality and validity the trend of science toward a new statement of further social conditions. 1 All this is so purely a matter of ethical theory that I cannot stop to follow it into its bearings; but an essential fact for social science is found in the group of phenomena upon which the ethical intelligence works. This namely : when the child reflects on his social relationships and arrives at the beginning of a habit of intelligent submission which he then in turn prescribes to others also, he shows a new sort of end not before found in him. None of the partial thoughts none of his private schemes is now his end ; no person completely fulfils his new ideal, his ideal of per- sonality, long or very well. He is now launched on a sea of intellectual turmoil and endeavour, which by its very restlessness and change, its setting of ideals and its viola- tion of them, make social life and progress possible. He now, secondly, turns and judges all things from this ideal point of view. Is it right ? is now his question of conduct ; and, Is he good ? his question of man. And his own disquieting thoughts of himself turn on the same questions as applied to his own conduct and his own pres- ence. Nothing is so urgent in his life as the call to duty ; nothing so utterly upsetting as the penalties which attach, in his own mind, to the neglect of this call. It would not 1 Cf. Appendix C. Religious Sentiment 327 be possible to put too strongly the revolutionary meaning of this intelligent morality. It is not only a great event in life-history ; it marks also a new turn in social develop- ment a turn away from the intellectual as such to the social as such, just as the period of early reflection marks a turn away from the instinctive and emotional as such to the intellectual as such. It may suffice to say in closing that it is by the develop- ment of intelligence that this has been tishered in; that there is therefore no possible theoretical divorce between intelligence and sentiment ; that the child comes up into the theatre of sentiment by a natural process of growth, which, while our philosophy may not have anticipated it, we can still trace when we see it taking place before our eyes. 5. Religious Sentiment A further differentiation of the emotional tone arising about the ideal constructions which we have been con- sidering, manifests itself in the so-called religious senti- ments. In classifying these as sentiments, I am, of course, taking the position that religious emotion is a phase of the wider mental state of which we have had an account in the earlier pages of this chapter. I need not dwell at length, therefore, upon the origin and development of reli- gious sentiment ; since it would be a repetition of the fore- going. But certain explanations are necessary to justify the classification of these sentiments with the ethical and social sentiments, and to mark the points of differentiation both as to origin and as to nature. 207. Confining ourselves at the outset, as before, to the child's development, we find a lack of objective material for 328 His Sentiments arriving at a correct view. Taking what is available from our knowledge of the child's conception and thought, however, and weighing it carefully in comparison with adult emotion of the religious kind, we may make certain remarks which suffice at least to show that the inclusion of the religious emotions under the foregoing account of the origin of the ethical and social sentiments is just. The child's earliest expressions of reverence, love, devo- tion, trust, dependence, are directed to the actual persons of his environment. It is impossible, in these early mani- festations, to distinguish what is ethical from what is reli- gious ; that is, it is impossible to see any marked phase of the expressive attitudes of the child which can be called religious in a distinctive sense. He has one and only one series of attitudes toward the persons about him : that which we have already seen in his personal develop- ment. He reaches a constantly enlarging sense of the richness of personality, by growing up into the lessons set by the actions of others ; and he attains greater intima- tions of the depth and possible meaning of the persons about him through his own reactions to them. So the great line of development of his personal self, with its more and more refined sense of personal character in others this is his one and only source of sentiment. It is evident, however, as was said above, that there are two great phases of his sentimental life, both of capi- tal importance in his higher growth. One is the subjec- tive phase, the growing sense of a self which is he, which he realizes when he has emotions, and for which he is responsible when he uses his organism. To this self the ethical emotions attach, since they arise from a direct sense of the relative poverty and imperfection of this Religious Sentiment 329 self as compared with the ideal personality which is the standard of personal lawfulness and excellence. The ethical emotions arise about my actions, my will, my atti- tudes, my selfishness ; it is always my, my, my, or your, your, your; the deeds of single concrete persons. The emphasis is on the subject-sense, considered distinctly as subject. The very essence of the ethical movement is, as we saw above, just the lack of assimilation of the self we know we are and are capable of being at the present moment, with the ideal self which comes from all our lessons of personal obedience and law. And we have also seen that this subjective aspect of the child's growth has had its prophetic phases even in the instinctive life. It has grown up by utilizing the very reactions of bash- fulness, modesty, sympathy, etc., which were there in the lower eras of mental development. 208. But all our study has shown that there is another, correlative and equally important, side to the whole growth into the full sense of personality ; the phase of it which refers to other persons. This takes on two forms: (i) what was called the ejective person. There is a constant outward reference of the per- sonality sense, an identification of it with real outside per- sons. And with this is always associated (2) a projective element : an element which the child has never adequately learned, which is not understood, which even the ideal derived from all the lessons of personal intercourse has not availed to exhaust. Personality remains after all a pro- gressive, developing, never-to-be-exhausted thing. Now it is these two phases of the personal sense and its growth, I think, which combine to give the basis of religious senti- ment in the child. So there are two elements in it. 33O His Sentiments First, there is the tendency to make ejective the ideal person reached by the road already traced ; to make it real, a separate corporate personality. There must be somewhere, feels the child, a self which answers to all the elements of the law : to the charity, the love, the beauty of the ideal, whose presence in my thought makes my own self morally so incomplete. It is not a new movement of the mind. We have found it always present, and always necessarily present, if the child is to attain ethical and social personality at all, in the proper sense of those terms. He must go on to eject this highest of all personal thoughts just as he does the lower also. The great spirit becomes the way of speaking of this being that is, it is the race- child's way. Second, the other element is also important in religious emotion ; it is the child's expectation of yet more manifes- tations from this highest of all persons manifestations which he cannot anticipate nor cope with ; which he must submit to when they come, learn of only when they have come, propitiate in the ways that please persons, and stand in awe of from first to last. This is also not at all a new mental movement ; it also has been present as an essential motif of his progress from first to last. The projective elements of personality, indeed, were his very first stock in trade, his first social copies for imitation. At each and every stage of his growth he has been able to make progress only as new elements of personal sug- gestion have presented themselves to him. So it would be quite wrong if we expected this attitude of expectation, accommodation ; of readiness for the novel, the self-dis- turbing, the ill-understood ; the lesson of arbitrary obedi- ence if we expected all this to stop suddenly, and Religious Sentiment 331 not urge itself into the realm of the mysterious. Char- acter has been all along to him the mysterious thing. The filling in of the mystery, sufficiently for his life-needs, has taken . all his pains ; but there is always the sphere of mystery still, from which are constantly emerging the unexpected attributes of personal character. Here is the profounder element in religious emotion. The ejective, personifying element, which the history of primitive peoples puts so clearly in evidence, gives positive content to the religious sentiment as mentioned above; while the projective or negative element, as seen thus in this latter aspect of the child's growth, is the awe-inspiring something-over of mystery equally emphasized in the rites and cults of primitive ceremonial. Disregarding now the anthropological point of view, 1 we may examine some of the more prominent emotional movements in the child which this general characterization of the religious senti- ment leads us to expect. 209. (i) The two greater factors now pointed out. may be further distinguished in reference to the current theories of the nature of religion ; and the factor which arises on the side of content, or of ejective personality, may be designated, as the school of Schleiermacher have done, by the general phrase 'feeling of dependence.' Paulsen, 2 in his excellent treatment, calls this side of the religious life the side or element of 'trust.' Considering the great variety of stages which this factor in the religious life goes through in the course of the child's religious development, we may better adhere to the broader phrase of Schleier- 1 Intentionally, from lack of personal fitness; the anthropological references made being suggestions, which are liable to criticism from experts. 2 Introduction to Philosophy, Bk. I., Chap. II., 9. 332 His Sentiments machef, and discuss the matter as below under the head- ing ' Feeling of Dependence.' (2) The other factor, which finds its raison d'etre, as we have seen, in the projective tendency in personal growth, corresponds to the element of the religious life which the students of anthropology, such as Spencer, Tylor, etc., call ' wonder,' and which Paulsen generalizes under the heading of ' fear.' Neither of these terms seems to me sufficiently general to cover the wide projective consciousness in all the course of development through which the child and man go ; so I shall discuss this aspect of religion under the general head of ' Feeling of Mystery,' only venturing to do this for the reason that we are then enabled to classify together all the phenomena which the development of this side of the religious consciousness really shows at whatever stage. 1 These two general topics may therefore be taken up in order. 210. (i) Feeling of Dependence. It is only necessary to recall the stages in the development of the personal sense to see what epochs this aspect as religious emotion may be expected to show. That these epochs are not only legitimate inferences from the fact that we are deal- ing with the ejective phase of personal growth which is present all through the course of the child's development, but that they really are, is observable in the child's life. 2 The stages through which the child's ejective sense of personality goes, and some of the facts which justify the 1 It will be seen lower down that by this method we escape the intermina- ble discussions which turn about a ' definition ' of religion. Such definitions usually characterize different stages of the movement. '-' What is said of children in the following pages is based on close observa- tion, with records, in my own family. Religious Sentiment 333 delineation, have already been presented above ; and we may recall that we found reason for saying that three such stages might well be distinguished, arising from the epochal changes found respectively at the dawn of intelli- gence in the first place, and at the dawn of the ethical sense in the second place. Both of these events mark great deviations of development from its previous course. The rise of the intelligence brings in the reflective and intentional co-operation of men together for social pur- poses, and thus supersedes the organic and instinctively gregarious co-operations of the animals. The develop- ment of emotion through this great transition has also claimed our attention. The other great transition, i.e., from the merely intelligent to the ethical as such, has been the topic of the present chapter; and we found reason to conclude that it again marks a striking deviation of the development of mankind from the purely intel- lectual uses of social co-operation to the truly social uses in which the ethical and social ideal becomes, in virtue of its own intrinsic moving force in every man, the end of progress. If, now, the religious emotions really have their root, in part, in the ejective movement of the mind, which continues to play an essential role all through this devel- opment, then we should expect to find three great epochs in the feeling of religious dependence : first, the epoch of instinctive or spontaneous dependence upon personality, as the child apprehends it ; second, a period of depend- ence connected with the exercise of his intellectual activi- ties, what might be called the period of rational or intellectual dependence ; and third, the period in which his ethical sense calls upon him to eject the ideal thought of self, and clothe it with the attributes of ethical worth 334 ff* s Sentiments the period of ethical dependence. We may look, for a little, at the facts of the child's development with these distinctions in view. 211. (i) The period in which the child's sense of per- sonality leads him to what we are calling ' spontaneous dependence ' is generally recognized. It has been called by different names according to various ways of approach to it. Bain finds in the child a certain ' primitive credu- lity ' ; poets speak of the beautiful trustfulness of chil- dren ; parents, if they are alive to their responsibilities, are weighed down with the sense that the child tends to make quasi-deities of the father and mother. The period begins in the child as soon as he starts in his career of discrimination of persons. The actual person whom he selects as the ooject of this primitive emotion of depend- ence depends upon the incidents of his rearing. The father is more often his first divinity, since he is not exposed so constantly to the child's scrutiny, is often the bringer of the gift or the healer of the larger woes of the household, and also because the lessons of obedience are likely to be enforced in his case by sterner and more inflexible sanctions. All the evidence which is reported in the books on child-psychology to show that father, or mother, or whoever else, is such an ideal personality, is in point here. For it is just the emotional side of this manner of reading of a real person, in which this earliest form of quasi-religious dependence consists. The child's constructions of deity in answer to questions as to what God is, etc., all bear out the truth that his anthropomor- phism at this period is not in any sense an abstract thing ; for all the concrete content that his deity notion has is made up, as his whole personality concept is, from the Religious Sentiment 335 imitative copy-elements which he has learned from persons, stories, and events. 1 It is directly in line with this interpretation, also, that we find the child showing the remarkable tendency to myth-making, liking for fairy-stories, love of heroes and their exploits, in which the ideal man or monster is always victorious, or in which the good divinity overcomes the evil monster. All this has its emotional side, and the sort of emotion is in kind that which, in its later manifestations, when the ideal has become more refined, we call religious. At the start, the sense of dependence takes its rise, I think, in actual physical helplessness. The child learns the distinction between persons and things largely through the stress of his physical needs and the succour which persons bring him. Persons then go on to be the re- sourceful elements of his environment, the source of the gratification of appetites and of the alleviation of dis- tresses. There springs up in the child the sense that in the presence of mother or nurse there is comfort, and in her absence discomfort. It is only a step further to see that this attribution of relief-agency so to characterize the good person in the environment is a large part of the child's actual thought of persons. And this expec- tation of help, in its various forms shown in reflex movements toward the person, with sense of pleasures in anticipation, with the accompanying stress of present unrelieved pain all terminates on the presentation or memory of persons. This is the rudimentary feeling of dependence. 212. (2) A little later on the child finds awaiting him 1 See Barnes' {Fed. Sent., II. 3) and Sully's (loc. cit., p. I2O if.) citations of children's theological fancies. 336 His Sentiments certain possibilities which are not entirely physical. His expectations are not always fulfilled in physical terms. There appears a certain capriciousness in the actions of persons, and it taxes his dawning intelligence to reduce it to any sort of order. And the influence upon his dependence of the newer and less physical conditions of his personal intercourse with others, issues from certain outstanding realities. Punishment is one of the rude awakening factors in the growth of dependence. All sanctions and penalties which issue from persons tend at once to stimulate his intelligence, and to increase his sense of his own helplessness. It is just his helplessness in the presence of natural things which is now reinstated on the higher personal plane. He learns now to think of the other not only as a being who succours and relieves, but also as one who snubs, pains, and refuses to relieve. And this element of capriciousness, or lack of order in the behaviour of others, is for a long time, I think, the dominating motive on this side of the developing religious sense. It comes up more particularly below, in the con- sideration of the ' projective ' element of his growth in religious personality. With punishment, however, and the obedience which he learns through it, and with instruction, comes the dawning of the more intellectual period. Just as in his spontane- ous imitations the child reaches his own inventive inter- pretations of events, and so learns to be intelligent ; so by obedience he is pushed along the same road. But in obedience the emphasis of the personality element is differently placed. In imitation the child gets an em- phasis laid on his own initiative, his own power, his own private self-worth and capacity ; but in obedience the per- Religious Sentiment 337 sonal emphasis is all on the personality whom he is forced to obey ; on the ' law ' element, as we saw in considering his ethical growth. He stands and waits for the com- mand with fear and trembling, and then gazes upon the terrible other person for. reward or blame of his result. Then with this transfer of the emphasis in his develop- ment, from the annoyance of physical pain and depend- ence for its relief, to the annoyance, embarrassment, con- fusion of personal imitation and obedience, and with the lack of information to anticipate results, there comes the transfer of the relief to be expected from the sphere of physical comfort to that of intelligent apprehension and instruction. The child comes to look upon the father or mother as the all-wise, the explainer of problems, the solver of riddles. His sense of dependence comes to be confidence in a higher intelligence than his, and this higher intelligence he places, of course, in the persons who relieve his uncertainties, who compel his obediences, who administer sanctions, who give explanations. 213. This development of the sense of dependence, from the physical up into the intellectual realm, serves to bring out two very marked characteristics of the child's thought of persons. We find the child's thought ex- pressed in two great categories, say from his third year on into his youth : the categories of cause and design. Statistical inquiries into the way children define objects J show these two great features : the causal definition tend- ing to develop before the teleological definition. The causal definition tends to be stated in terms of some more or less comprehended personal agency. A table is ' the thing that the carpenter makes ' : the bread is ' what the 1 Binet, Barnes, z 338 His Sentiments cook bakes': the doll is 'what I play with,' etc. This shows the very strong tendency to think of a person in terms of what he does, of his agency, and to think of things as subordinate to this all-embracing causal activ- ity of persons. This gets a response in emotion and per- sonal attitude from the child himself, and this attitude is one of dependence upon the causal activity of the persons whom he knows. Then there comes, a little later, the period of design : springing, as it seems to me, from the fact that the father's explanations follow generally only after the exhibi- tions of his power. The father explains why he did this or that ; leads the child to construe results in terms of their utilities, of means to end, of design ; and the child quickly generalizes the cases, reaching the wider point of expectation that everything will have its purpose, and that the person who is greatest can give him the teleologi- cal key to each and every situation. 214. Both of these phases of the child's intelligent growth in his sense of dependence upon other persons for the solution of his difficulties, arc strikingly seen in the questions asked by the mild in the epoch called the 'questioning period.' 1 His questioning takes on two very distinct phases ; the first directed to the 'what,' and the second to the 'why.' ' Wa' dat, Wadie ? ' (' what's that, Father ? ') was the cry of the house when my child H. had begun the first period; and a little later, after language was further on in its development, and when the inquiring turn of mind had become more intelligent, ' why ? ' was the word which rang 1 Sally (/of. fit., p. 75 f.) gives many entertaining anecdotes from the child'> ' questioning age.' Religious Sentiment 339 incessantly in our ears. In the first stage of this 'ques- tioning mania' the causal tendency is prominent, inasmuch as the child tends to be satisfied with any 'what' which reveals some sort of living agency. In the later 'why' period, this tendency to seek personal agencies so blankly retreats somewhat, only to conceal itself behind the notion of design. It is no longer enough to tell the child that a thing is what it is, even though the answer convey the idea of a living person or animal acting in his presence ; he goes further and seeks the reason that the action is what it is. To be sure, even in this later period, the anthropomorphic solution is the most satisfying one to every 'why.' If a personal use can be pointed out, some human or animal need which justifies the action of which he asks the why, then so much the more satisfactory is the answer to the child. The bearing of the two main ideas which the child uses in this process of ejecting personality into his environment the ideas of cause or power and design upon the character of his own dawning religious senti- ment is evident enough in itself, and becomes increasingly so in its anthropological aspect. 1 They both illustrate dependence ; but they differ in respect to the stage of development which they respectively characterize. In the sense of cause or personal power the physical anal- ogy predominates ; the force of a person in compelling obedience and bringing succour is, in the main, physical force. And the power illustrated in the general answer 1 So much, without meaning to discuss the exact function of the personify- ing tendency in the evolution of religion, on which one may consult Caird, Evolution of Religion, Sects. VIII. and XL, Tylor, loc. cit., Chaps. XIV. and XV., and Paulsen, loc. cit., p. 266 f. See also Appendix F. 340 His Sentiments to the ' what ' question terminates in the immediate envi- ronment of fact, either physical or mental. But the other idea, that of design, which is seen in the series of ' why ' questions, shows the dependence of the child with refer- ence to intellectual explanations. It illustrates the diffi- culties into which his dawning intelligence gets ; and so the emotion which he has in this case is a higher and more complex thing. The dependence on persons for information as to facts is, of course, intelligent; but that which seeks, from the same persons, explanations as to the ' why ' of the facts, denotes a further and more human attainment. It is then in the latter, mainly, with the use that the child makes of his own intelligence in a reciprocal way upon it, that we find realized the second great stage in the ejective development of religious dependence. 215. It is noteworthy, also, that at this stage of the development of the sense of dependence, there is little or no ethical ingredient. That is a later thing. The evidence that it is so is found in the child's actions in this intellectual period. We saw earlier that the child is apt to make all the use of his intelligence that he can in what we would describe, from our more advanced point of view, as an unethical way. The child is, from the third to the fifth year or longer, more intelligent than ethical; and he does not hesitate to use his intelligence for purposes of personal gratification, and for the decep- tion of other persons. He anticipates his father's reproof, and to avoid it covers his deed under a mask of innocence, or creates an actual device to avert punishment or to gain undeserved reward. He uses his little brother as a screen for his own sins, laying the blame for wrong-doing where it does not belong, claiming as his own actions which he Religious Sentiment 341 did not perform, concealing his own thoughts and actions when it is to his advantage to do so. 1 All of this is the reverse side of his feeling of dependence. If his father did not have the power or the will to punish or to reward him, all motive for guile, deception, double- dealing, pride-exhibition, vicarious claims, etc., would be taken away, as a matter of course. This is proved by the actual differences of attitude which the child strikes in the presence of different per- sons. He does not resort to the same social uses of his intelligence in the presence of persons who do not have the authority or the strength to inflict penalties or admin- ister rewards. He shows an altogether rational degree of independence as to their opinions of him and of his con- duct. Often the differences of attitude toward the father and mother, respectively, on the part of the same child, show which it is that excites the strong feeling of depend- ence of this intellectual kind. There seems to be, therefore, in the life of the child a period of development in which circumvention, pro- pitiation, deception, of the object of his fear and depend- ence characterize his quasi-religious attitude. It must be called, I think, in a broad sense religious, if we are to recognize it as a real phase of the feeling of depend- ence which characterizes religion. Of course we may define religion in such a way as to make the presence of a developed ethical sense necessary to it ; but then we find the difficulty, which has confronted the historian no less than the theorist, of disposing of those phases of primitive rite and ceremony which are mainly self-defen- 1 See the passage above in the chapter on ' Intelligence ' (Chap. VII., 3). 342 His Sentiments sive, propitiatory, and egoistic, both in the child and especially in the race ; and which show the tendency of the devotee to escape the penalties of his deeds by decep- tion, sacrifice, vicarious substitution, or some other conven- tional or intellectual device, which he has found effectual in his intercourse with his fellow-men. The same need of recognizing some such mainly intellectual largely unethical period in the development of the religious sense, is seen also on the side of the other element which goes to constitute it the element of mystery which is to be spoken of in a moment. 216. (3) The final form which the feeling of dependence takes on is ethical. It does not arise until the fulness of time has come in the child's growth. The mental move- ments which we have seen to be necessary to ethical sentiment the construction of the material of personal- ity in the general way called ideal must be there in sufficient force to arouse a positive attitude of mind toward the persons who illustrate the good in the social environment. When it comes, it takes on the several forms which theological writers mention, forms which are such acute factors in the religious life of mankind. The feeling of ethical dependence involves the same personal helpless- ness which the individual felt before in the presence of the excellence of the other person, except that it is now also ethical helplessness: defect of a permanent kind in the presence of the ideal and its demands. This takes the form of the sense of sinfulness, as soon as the matter of obligation crystallizes in the presence of law. And with the sense of sin come various qualitative shadings of emo- tion ; such as remorse, moral shame, repentance, guilt, etc. Religious Sentiment 343 All this is emphatically an ethical ingredient in the sense of religious dependence. Then there is with it the element of undeserved help and favour which constitute the ejective elements as such, characterized in theology as grace and mercy. Here we find the strains of emotion felt as sense of forgiveness, redemption, moral acceptance and favour, religious as- surance, peace, communion with and reliance on the Higher-than-we. In the lower stages, the need is physi- cal and then intellectual ; and the dependence is for the providing of these needs the supplementing of our per- sonal inadequacy by physical and intellectual succour and help. Here, on the contrary, the need is ethical ; and the dependence is for ethical succour and support. In this dependence upon the other for those ethical qualifi- cations which we feel to be incomplete and inadequate in ourselves, the full religious sense of dependence comes to view, and takes its place in the development of man as a factor of the first importance. And this in two ways. 217. First, it is now that the ejective personality toward which the religious emotions are directed takes on the predicates of ethical meaning. In the earlier stages, to be sure, the object of worship, reverence, and reliance has been personal ; the growth of the sense of person- ality lies at the basis of the whole growth of the sense of dependence. But the person thought of has not been by necessity could not be richer or fuller than the thought of self which the worshipper himself has attained ; and that has not hitherto been ethical. The limitations of personality have been proscribed by the worshipper's own personal growth : how can he reach a thought of person- ality who shall be ethical before the dawn of that ideal 344 ff* s Sentiments self in comparison with which the very sense of ethical worth takes its rise ? In the physical period, we should expect the deity to be the great man, the powerful hero, the giant, the being most in likeness to the greater manifestations of physical nature, while yet personal. This to the child is likely to be his own father, the potentate of his circle. In the later intellectual period, again, the deity takes on the attributes of cause, arch-plotter, and designer, a being in which wisdom waits on wrath, and fore-knowledge ministers vengeance to enemies and favours to friends. Hence the singular tendency on the part of the child in this period to anticipate the dictates of authority and propitiate its demands in advance a period which has its illustrations also in some of the most remarkable religious rites of the race. Then comes the ethical period with its great overturning of things in the presence of new ideals. The object of reverence, awe, worship, now becomes also a good person, a person who embodies the law of duty and right ; and the sense of a deity who exhibits ethical perfection comes to be the permanent acquisition of child and man. 218. Second, beside this progress in the way the object of religious emotion is thought from the physical up through the intellectual categories of cause and design to the ethical forms which characterize the higher religious consciousness another general thing may be remarked on the social side. We must say, of course, in regard to the social value of the sense of dependence, what we have said of its religious value that it varies in depth and meaning with the stages of development of the child's sense of personality. In the earliest stage that Religious Sentiment 345 of the first distinction between persons and things in the environment there is no clear separation of the influence of persons, in its results, from the action of the physical agents. The amount of community and co- operation which is present is largely instinctive and spon- taneous. In the next later period, that called intellect- ual, the intelligent co-operation of the child with others takes the form of a recognition of the others as like himself. They are creatures who suffer and enjoy, very largely ; who use their intelligence for personal ends as he uses his ; and who, not being subject to general laws, are essentially capricious. But now in the last period we find the social feature becoming reflective. As we saw in considering the ethical sentiments as such, the ideal self, which the ethical attitude presupposes, involves the thought of another as having the same thoughts of himself and the world as the present thinker has. I think of myself with praise or blame in a completely ethical way, only as I think of the other self, the alter, as thinking of me with equal praise or blame. This attribution to the other of the same reference of par- ticular actions, events, etc., to ideal standards, makes the social ingredient an essential factor in ejective personality in the ethical world ; a place which it does not hold in either of the lower stages in which we have found rudimen- tary forms of the religious feeling of dependence. The ejective ideal self is now thought, necessarily, as in relation to me and to you. The religious bond becomes a social relationship. Deity is thought as a supreme ' Socius,' a being who makes certain social and personal require- ments of each individual person. And this is to say that the deity cannot be thought out of this relation- 346 His St'ni intents ship. To attempt it is to attempt to think of a self without the ethical attributes. Just in so far as a per- son who has himself reached the ethical stage of devel- opment attempts this, he constructs a deity which he himself cannot worship, a deity which can only excite the sort of physical or intellectual compulsion which arouses the lower forms of the feeling of dependence in the undeveloped child ; or, on the other hand, the deity becomes an intellectual abstraction. It is only in this meaning, I think this social and ethical meaning that deity can be considered what we mean generally by the term 'divine.' This term sums up the requirements of the religious consciousness. It carries both (i) the physical and (2) the intellectual reference, under the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience / but (3) it goes beyond these in having the ethical and social meanings of justice, mercy, grace, love, righteousness, which exhibit the feeling of dependence in its highest and richest form. 219. Finally, it may be remarked that the tracing of this feeling of dependence through the development of the child reveals everywhere the essential anthropomorphism of the religious consciousness. The idea of personality sets form everywhere to the thought of the being to be wor- shipped ; and the only possible thought of a person to the child is a thought which goes out from his own sense of self. This supplies the form of the notion of deity throughout. We shall see, however, that the other ele- ment involved in religious emotion the element of mystery tends to set limits to the anthropomorphizing tendency, while it nevertheless springs directly from it. To that aspect of religious sentiment we may now turn. Religious Sentiment 347 220. (2) Feeling of Mystery. The feature of religious emotion which is indicated by this phrase is equally striking with that already treated under the head of de- pendence. Especially do writers on the history of religion find it necessary to dwell on the element of mystery which the products of the religious consciousness of mankind manifest. From this point of view, as well as from one's private appreciation of the religious state of mind for him- self, we are led to think that the phase of the religious experience which is usually covered by the terms awe, fear, reverence, adoration, etc., is very essential and must have had an important place in the entire development of this great motive in human experience. Turning to the child's development, we find this expectation fully realized. 221. In each of the periods of the child's growth already mentioned as respectively the 'spontaneous,' the ' intellectual,' and the ' ethical,' we find very striking mani- festations of the sense of mystery. In the first period, in which the movements of the mind are largely under the lead of the instinctive and hereditary impulses mani- festing themselves in physical actions, the sense of mystery is, unlike that of dependence, very undevel- oped. The child suffers from the unexpected and the unknown, or enjoys its sudden revelations when they are of an agreeable kind ; but, inasmuch as these events, in order to affect him at all, must be largely in the physi- cal world, the reactions which they occasion are in great measure expressive of their immediate impressions on his organism. We very soon begin to find, however, a certain sense of the possible hidden meaning of phenomena revealing itself in the child. The fear of the dark may be an in- 348 His Sentiments stance in point. It seems to have no adequate explana- tion in the child's actual experiences. And even though we should find that the child gets this fear by association, the dark would still seem to have its fearful aspect from the fact that it symbolizes the unknown and mysterious. The child from the first year on also shows the rising sense of mystery in his attitude to new toys, mechanical contrivances, and events which he cannot understand. 1 He waits to test the new toy until father has shown him that it cannot hurt him. He exercises his curiosity with a wise caution, especially when his attention is fixed on living things. The child's first great puzzle of a general kind is pos- sibly that of movement. As soon as he gets the regu- larity of the mechanical movements of the external objects of his environment suitably reduced to order losing his sense of mystery in respect to them, out of sheer famil- iarity with them his sense of the essential strangeness of the movements of animate beings is only made more emphatic, in contrast with the lawfulness and easy self- revelation of things. 2 This first shows itself strongly in his experience with persons, for they are for a long time the only animate beings with which he has anything to do. Persons are par excellence the mysterious things to the child, and in his early years he strives with might and main to understand them. This sense is also, from the first, associated very closely 1 Young children often show fear of strange or unexplained noises. K. . in her third half-year, was greatly frightened by the mechanical ' moo-ing ' of a toy cow, and also by the creaking sounds of a doll's movable legs. 8 So my riding-horse will never, it seems, lose his terror at the sight of a slow-moving canal-boat. Religious Sentiment 349 with the sense of dependence which we have already traced. The father comes to the boy's rescue and saves him from pain ; this arouses both these feelings in a complex emotional state. He is made more dependent, in his own thought, by his father's rescue of him when he himself was helpless; and, at the same time, he is the more mystified by the resources of his father. As he understands more, and reads more of this understand- ing into those about him, making his knowledge ejec- tive, he also grows more aware of their complexity, of his essential inability to anticipate their action ; and he becomes more and more sensible of the profound abyss of the 'projective' and 'prospective' future-of-experience of which he stands in ignorance. This last is a higher sense of mystery. The intel- lectual elements then grow prominent, taking on the two great features of content already pointed out as characteristic of the intellectual categories of religion, those of cause and design. The child busies himself, in the second or intelligent period, with the what and the why of things and persons ; understanding the things largely in terms of the persons. We have seen that his questioning period is full of these two sorts of knowledge. And when we come to ask as to the elements of con- tent which these two types of question represent, we see again that the question ' why ' is both later and more recondite. As soon as he begins to think much, he begins to ask the ' why ' even of the things and events of which he already understands, or thinks he understands, the what. In the great ' why ' period of the child, from the third, say, to the sixth year, his sense of mystery is expressed by a perfect siege of the citadel of the parent's 350 His Sentiments personality to explain the commonest occurrences of life. The ' why-question ' is not only the instrument of intel- ligence that we have found above ; it is also a perpetual index of the child's mystification. With all this the sense of mystery tends to lose some- what its uninstructed and timorous character, and to take on the form of a more intelligent reverence for personality. The category of personality becomes in itself, as we have seen, a somewhat familiar resort of the child for explain- ing both the ' what ' and the ' why ' of events, and with the answer which leads him back to a living agency he tends to rest satisfied. This category of personality, therefore, in this period, seems to absorb and supersede both the other two categories those of cause and design. The child's mysteries in the universe are largely pooled in the one great mystery of personality ; and this in turn ceases to be the simple mystery of a terrifying outburst of force, or a blind agency of wisdom without counsel ; it becomes the sort of agency of which the child himself seems to have an inkling in his own action. 222. It is natural also, for other reasons, that at this period of growing intelligence the child's sense of the obscure and unknown should be turned mainly toward persons. It is then that he is most evidently becoming aware of the social influences, such as those of the family, the school, etc., which lead out his own personality in its growth through imitation and social absorption. Social heredity is first of all a training in personal appreciation of self and others, and an acquiring of social independ- ence through the closest sort of personal dependence. Invention and independent judgment are only gradually achieved ; and all comes through the mysterious leading Religious Sentiment 351 of others' personality. So the child does not pool his mysteries of his own choice, nor is it by any conscious process of his own that it is done. It is done for him by the very conditions of his growth up into the ready-made conditions of social organization. He cannot help finding persons the interesting, instructive, difficult-to-understand objects ; and there springs up in him, spontaneously in the first place, and reflectively in the second place, a sense of the potencies and obscurities of personal life, which only grows more profound as he himself grows more intelligent and better informed. 1 This puzzle of persons shows itself at this period in certain concrete social situations. Having found a sort of solvent of his intellectual difficulties, as respects the what and the why, in the ascribing of personal agency to all mysterious things a general anthropomorphic way of reading the events of nature he finds the mystery again in the singular actions of personal agents ; in their treat- ment of each other and of him. Before his ethical sense struggles up to the light, the ethical situation is an abso- lute puzzle to him. His understanding of the actions of persons is, in the main, a reference of them to one of two of his thoughts of self what have been called the ' habitual ' self and the ' accommodating ' self. He can understand the actions of others which are frankly selfish, and also those which are frankly generous ; but those which do not go clearly into either of these two categories now excite his sense of mystery. This mystery tells very heavily upon the child's life, 1 So also in religious systems, the profoundest mysteries are those arising about the construction of divine personality, such as incarnation, human and divine natures in one, the trinity, etc. 352 His Sentiments in very truth. No one can watch a four-year-old in the household without remarking his embarrassed anxiety in the presence of the ethical controversies, arrangements, arguments, perhaps disputes, which inevitably arise in the family circle from time to time. The elders will some- times come through an earnest conversation on good or evil only to find the forgotten auditor from the nursery in tears in the presence of the mystery of their conversation. Or again, the little fellow will appeal to you to help the beggar, and show his mystification that you do not follow out the generous impulses which you have encouraged him to show to his playmates. The little girl of five fails to understand why the visitor should be allowed to take the biggest sugar-plum in the dish while she has been forbidden to do so. This is the beginning of a standing mystery ; a mystery of all life which we never really un- ravel, although we get to reflect on it more maturely, and to introduce consciously a higher series of personal values called the good and the right. But to the child the mysterious elements have no solvent, and he can only see in the persons who act in these complex ways beings to revere, depend upon, and ' wonder ' at. So in the light of all that has been said, it is clear that the sense of religious mystery is, almost from the first, felt in and about personal action and character ; and in the period of growing intelligence it becomes an intense straining toward the revelation of personal and social life which goes on to be made in the ethical epoch following. 1 223. Coming, then, to the third or ethical period in the child's development, the feeling of mystery is seen, like 1 The anthropological or racial manifestations of this early mystery-feeling or wonder ' have been given full description by writers on primitive religion. Religious Sentiment 353 that of dependence, to take on its highest form. Again here, as with the feeling of dependence, we might inquire whether real religious sentiment has been present before. And we can only answer by saying that lower forms of the feeling of mystery have certainly been present earlier ;. the rest is a matter of definition. But that aside, as the ethical sense now grows up, the growing sense of person- ality becomes the theatre of new and still more profound mysteries to the child. He now gets within himself the new thought of personality called the ideal, which de- mands recognition over and above the rival selves which have hitherto played back and forth in his mind. Here, now, the call to conformity to a set of examples which are essentially mysterious, is no longer altogether outside him ; but the real scene of its rise is in his own breast. The ethical and the social, properly so called, are distinguished from the lower emotional states in just this, that they contain both the ego and the alter sense held in one general ideal thought. The ethical predicates, duty, responsibility, Tightness, etc., come up about the relationships which hold between the partial selves on the one hand, and this supreme ideal self on the other. Now, therefore, when the child comes to make ejective this highest reach of his personal thought, the resulting postu- late of the ethical and religious nature is a divine being whose perfections call out the more refined emotional attitudes of ethical dependence and mystery. All these feelings are now directed toward a being whose nature is essentially ethical and social. The content of the notion of deity in the child's mind, from the time when child- hood is passing into youth, is an ethical and social content. Mystery then becomes ethical reverence and awe; the 2A 354 H* s Sentiments reverence felt by that great philosopher who found 'the moral law within me ' one of the objects of his most profound meditation. This period is so pregnant with lessons that I venture to throw them into certain formal statements which may stand as our concluding words on the development of the religious sense, inasmuch as in them the lessons of both the phases of religious experience are had in view. 224. First, the ethical child and man too must tliink of God as thinking of him ; as having a positive ethical attitude toward him. His own mysterious but imperative self-judgment can only be clear when the child thinks also of the other person as sharing his own self-com- mendation or self-condemnation. The element of social publicity is, as we have seen, a real part of the content on the basis of which the ethical emotions go forth. So, in the process which follows in his ejective religious life, he must think 'Thou God seest me,' just as he thinks in his daily life ' father and mother are judging me.' 225. Second, in this highest stretch, therefore, of the religious life into which the child is now entering, God is a real person, standing in real relations of ethical approval and disapproval says the religious sense of me ivJio worship him. My worship is a recognition not mainly of his existence, that cannot even be a question in the spontaneous religious development of consciousness, but of his excellence. The divine person is, in the religious life, very much the same sort of a postulate that the social fellow is in the ethical life, and that the world of external and personal relationships is in the intellectual life. Religious Sentiment 355 226. Third, yet in the interpretation of this postulate, in the attempt to pass from the stage of sentiment into that of dogma the attempt which is a necessary mental movement, and which even the child makes the intelli- gence is baffled both by tlie limitations of its own grozvth, and by the very ' projective ' and 'prospective ' nature of the movement upon which the religious sense rests. With- out the mysteries, religion would be knowledge to be re- cited the individual's mind would be the only thing in the universe to reverence which is to say that the ideal would be no longer an ideal, but a fact of experience. The child shows this in his very temporary satisfaction with the personal embodiments of his reverence. He must pass on to the stage in which the real thing about char- acter is just the general or ideal thing which no single character completely shows. When he comes to eject this ideal, we see him struggling with the essential con- tradiction which this involves from an intellectual point of view the attempt, i.e., to think a particular individual who yet has not the limitations which it is essential to his knowledge of individuality that they should have. Omnipotence, omniscience, spiritual presence with no local body, social wisdom, ethical perfection, all sorts of infini- tude, these attributes trouble him; and it is just the need of thinking them to which he is driven, at the same time that he cannot find categories of imitative or experi- mental knowledge for thinking them, which plunges him into the most profound sense of mystery, and initiates him into his most stirring religious experiences. 227. Fourth, the essential mysticism of the religions consciousness lives to the last. It takes on certain semi- differentiated forms for which we have words of more or 356 His Sentiments less adequate import. We have seen that the sense of dependence throws the child into certain emotional states which go by different names ; it is only a proof of the oneness of religious sentiment, and of the oneness withal of the intellectual and personal growth which reaches its highest fruitage in it, that the sense of mystery shows itself everywhere in similar attitudes. Here we find rever- ence, which is none the less a sense of mystery because the Mysterious is at the same time that which we trust : awe whose object is none the less good and trustworthy because it is awfully mysterious ; fear, which is none the less whole- some because it leads to deeds of submission, of propitia- tion, of confession, and of faith. 228. This brief survey of the elements involved in the development of the religious consciousness may be brought to a close by a word as to the real matter of which reli- gion, as an institution, takes cognizance. Looking broadly at the result of our thought on the subject, we may gather up our view in the general position that the religious senti- ment is everywhere dependent upon the personal growth of the individual as a whole his intelligence, his conduct, his emotion. The growth of his intellectual constructions of personal reality gives him a basis for anticipating moral and social events, and for endeavouring, by what we may call an act of faith the outreach seen in all the prospec- tive references of his growth, toward the newer event of that on which he depends, and the newer manifestation of that of which he stands in awe, to put himself in har- mony with the general and ideal personal realities of the universe. His striving shows itself in the institutions of religion ; and his justification of it is his faith. So instead of the formula of Matthew Arnold : ' Religion is morality Religious Sentiment 357 touched with emotion,' I should prefer to say, from the study of the psychology of development : Religion is emo- tion kindled by faith, emotion being reverence for a Person and faith being dependence upon Him. So the child who gropes for his father, the savage who bows before his stock, the ecclesiastic who enforces a dogma, the pietist who lives on herbs, all these, as well as the mystic who contemplates the unseen, and the rationalist who still believes something that he does not see, all of them are religious ! 229. The place of religion in social development is, in view of its dependence upon the growth of self at all its stages, that of emotion of the social sort. It becomes most important in its alliance with the ethical life in the higher reaches of human development. This is discussed further under the head of the ' Ethical and Religious Sanctions,' below (Chap. X., 4). PART IV THE PERSON'S SANCTIONS 1 CHAPTER IX His PERSONAL SANCTIONS 230. We have now attempted to trace the development of the social individual in such a way as to get a tolerably complete idea of his equipment at each of the critical epochs of his life ; our inquiry has also, in some degree, indicated the character of the social environment in which he disports himself. Coming to look a little more objec- tively at his actions in society, we see that another very important question arises for consideration. This question has to do with the individual mainly, and concerns the disposition he shows to accept the conditions of social life, and live his life as a citizen good or bad. As a matter of fact, we find that he usually accepts things as they exist. Philosophers have attempted to argue that he should not ; that his life is not worth his while; that he has his fate in his own hands; and that it is at least an open question to each, as he grows to maturity and gets an intelligent view of the human tur- moil called life, whether he will enter the lists or volun- 1 On the general topic of ' Sanction,' considered in its social bearings, the reader should consult Stephen on ' Theory of Social Motives,' Science of Klhi(t, Chap. III. 358 His Personal Sanctions 359 tarily withdraw. Yet, as I have said, men do not generally withdraw, although the means of self-destruc- tion lie ready at hand. This is the fact, and there must be reasons for the fact ; reasons which in some way actuate the man himself in maintaining his life and social place. Moreover, we may see, by a little more reflection, that these reasons are of two general classes according as we take the point of view of the single man, or of society as a whole. If we call all the reasons which are really operative on the individual, in keeping him at work and at play in the varied drama of life, his 'sanctions,' then there seem to be two great classes of such sanctions. (1) We may try to find the reasons which a man sets before himself, the conscious objects which he sets up for pursuit, the ends of life as he is accustomed to pursue them, his own sanctions for the activities in which he engages. Let us for the purposes of discussion call these his 'personal sanctions,' and ask: what are the personal sanctions f (2) The other class of influences which bear on the individual man, to keep him in line with the requirements of life, are those of a social kind which he does not him- self take into account consciously nor attempt to reckon with. They are the agencies which in a measure at least we may say so at the start for the purposes of dis- tinction lie outside his own thought and control, but which he actually recognizes simply because they are there. Such, for example, is the civil law. These in- fluences we may call ' social sanctions,' and ask : what are the social sanctions ? Besides these two great topics, there is then the third and most important of all, in the sequel ; the topic as to 360 His Personal Sanctions how these two sorts of sanctions are related to each other, and how the man comes to act as he does under the influence of the two together. In this chapter we shall consider the Personal Sanctions. 231. We have now grown sufficiently familiar with the general method of development in the mental life to lead us to think that the notion of sanction, in order to have general application, must be wide enough to describe, from its own point of view, each of the great epochs of mental evolution in the individual. The child at six, no less than the youth at sixteen and the man at sixty, must have sanctions for his acts. There must be a develop- ment in the idea of sanction if it is to be a real thing as there is in the mental life to which it applies. The neglect of this distinction seems to have been the source of many fallacies to be found in the works of Hobbes and Comte, on one side of political theory, and those of Thomas Hill Green, on the other. The tendency has been to limit the concept of sanction to the meaning which it has in the higher reflective life : either to rational motives in the indi- vidual, or to formulated statutes and penalties in social life. Thus many writers have been accustomed to understand by a man's sanction his own conscious justification, the reasons which he himself has in mind, in a more or less clearly formulated way, for having an end, rather than the mere having of the end, considered as its own sanction. The difficulty with such a form of thought is that it draws artificial limits by constraint of narrow definition. The theory of political life has suffered from this, much as the theory of ethics has suffered from a narrow reflec- tive definition of the word ' motive.' In the discussion of ends, above, we have seen how the conception of the mind. His Personal Sanctions 361 as a developing thing which never loses its connection with the vitality of the physical organism, leads us to the further thought that mental growth never proceeds per saltum. The broader and more generic we are able to make all the concepts of mental life, the more adequate and unembarrassing will they be. The biologist has long since learned the necessity of this in dealing with prob- lems of evolution. Claiming the right to do so in this case, and leaving to the result to justify the use of the term given below, we may go on to show the actual in- fluences which work as sanctions in the individual's mind at his successive stages of development. The conclusion will show better, perhaps, than words could at this stage of our progress, that the individual's formulation of the reasons for his action are in no sense always the same as the actual reasons ; and that the very distinction between his ability and his inability to formulate his reasons is in itself a vital distinction in his personal and social growth. In other words, the matter is not one of definition only ; but one of material content. The following pages, there- fore, will use the term in this sense : a sanction is any ground or reason which is adequate to initiate action, whether the actor be conscious or not that tJiis is the ground or reason of the resulting action. For example, the senseless outcry of the lunatic has its sanction in the disordered condition of his faculties, although he think himself sane ; and the voluntary calculation of the burglar has its sanc- tion in the reward which he sets before himself. These two cases are given, from the opposite ends of the scale, to illustrate the limits of the term as I am going on to use it. 232. When we come with so much of introduction to 362 His Personal Sanctions cast a wide glance over the details of mental development, certain milestones, which we have now grown accustomed to look for, show out white and make the course before . us less difficult. We have already had much evidence, both in theory and in practice, for the position that at least three great epochs of human life unroll themselves in order in each growing child ; I have called them the spontaneous, the intelligent, and the ideal or ethical epochs. 1 This way of looking at the epochs of personal growth, it will be remembered, arose not from conven- ience, much less from theory, but from the actual stretches or levels of mental attainment on the part of the child, which are, as a matter of fact, so clearly distinguished that it is impossible to overlook them. To illustrate, in the matter of sanction, we may cite three actions : the two-year-old's (or the dog's) cry for food, the five-year-old's run to avoid the punishment due to his lie, and the nun's act of attachment to the consola- tions of religion. I do not mean that these typical men- tal states are on the surface different-looking merely, nor that their differences might not be differently construed by different competent judges ; but what I mean to say is that from the point of view of development, the actor of the first could not with reason with any sanction then present in him perform the second action, nor the sec- ond actor, the third action. All the reasons for the dif- ferences need not be exhausted ; but the real one which includes the rest has been found, I think, in the progress of the actor in the thought of his own personal self. 1 In considering the emotions, we found an earlier ' instinctive ' period, and then spoke of the intelligent and ethical together. We here have no need to separate the so-called ' instinctive ' and ' spontaneous ' periods. The Sanction of Impulse 363 So assuming the former characterizations as in a meas- ure, .at least true, we should expect to find three great classes of reasons for action in these periods respectively, three .great personal sanctions for conduct ; they may be called by analogy with the epochs in which they arise, respectively, the Sanction of Impulse, the Sanction of Desire \ and the Sanction of Right. i. The Sanction of Impulse 233. It is not necessary that we should stop long upon this lowest of all the categories of human action ; espe- cially as it is not realized in its purity outside of the nursery and the reform or criminal institution. In the child we find impulse at its best. It is there not compli- cated by the wreck of higher faculties, as in the insane ; nor by interference from them as in the sane of an older growth ; nor is it restrained by the agencies which give society its influence at a later period. We are amused at the child's innocent impulses, put a screen about him to keep him from toying with the hurtful, and give him the privileges due to his extreme youth. This very toler- ation of impulse, where it is all the endowment to be seen in the creature which shows it, is in itself a sufficient war- rant for the owner's own confidence in his sanction. The natural and the normal is its own sanction, we say, in effect ; and in so far as this is not true, we let it show its own incompetence. It is thus we tolerate the beasts about us. We do not seek to lead them out of what we might think to be a very inferior and imperfect realization of the possibilities of life. The defective classes and the lunatics of the types whose impulses are magnified in 364 His Personal Sanctions dangerous directions, we shut up, it is true, yet not for their sakes, but for our own. But if we were all at their level, if we were all children of the same age, or animals of the same flock, or lunatics of the same lack, even this limitation upon impulse would be impossible. Yet when we come to ask for the reason that such impulsive action, when uncomplicated by higher pro- cesses, seems to carry its own sanction, we see that it is still incumbent upon us to seek it out. In this case it reduces itself very largely to the biological and psycho- logical question as to the terminus ad quern of the impulse. Even the blindest, most unpremeditated, action has a mean- ing in the scheme of life which has some vague representa- tion in the creature's consciousness ; how rich a meaning it may become and still be blind is seen in the creations of the instinct of certain insects. So the question as to the sanc- tion here may carry with it also that of the life-function of the actions of which the question is asked. And it is the more important, since, as we shall see below, this low- est sanction, which expresses simply the general teleology of the life-processes as a whole, never in all the higher de- velopments gets entirely vacated of its force. It is largely replaced, modified, inhibited, and much hidden- in the child's later life when volition, thought, sentiment, come in to enrich it; but the man never ceases to be, with it all, in some degree, a creature of impulse acting with the biological machinery which he has in common with the babe and the beast. Coming to inquire, accordingly, into the meaning and reason of the impulses of the child in this earliest stage, we are able to invoke a recent formulation of psychology which puts the case in general terms. It is now a widely The Sanction of Impulse 365 accepted doctrine that all motor activities have risen through adaptation to environment ; that is, as affording appropri- ate response to stimulation. The fixing of motor processes in the individual is through repetition or its equivalent; and this repetition is secured by the tendencies of the organism to acquire habits of keeping up actions which have proved themselves vitally beneficial. .The species, we may assume, perpetuates such actions through natural selection. It follows that we may at once make the gen- eral statement that any form of action which a creature habitually shows must be directed toward a more or less definite class of sensory conditions or stimulations which the environment furnishes, as a suitable terminus of the acts in question. Generalizing this, we may say that the mean- ing and value of the particular action is found in the stimulus which it aims to reach and secure. The sanction, then, if we care to call it such, at this early stage of devel- opment, is found in the objective conditions under which the action of the organism comes into operation ; and this for two reasons. First, it is by adaptation to these con- ditions that any particular action has come to be what it is, and to differentiate itself from other actions ; and it is only by such a differentiation, and on the ground of it, that we can ask the question of sanction of the particu- lar reaction at all. And second, the future adaptation, progress, and very life indeed of the organism rests upon the continuance of the stimulations which its reaction alone serves to secure. There seems to be, therefore, both a ret- rospective and a prospective reasonableness, so to speak, in the thought that the biological sanction of the reaction is the beneficial experience which the reaction serves to absorb, continue, and render permanently available. 366 His Personal Sanctions But this is evidently not in the mind of the organism, or of the child himself. Whether we ask why he reacts or \Yhy he thinks, still his mind is not filled up with the bio- logical or psychological value of his act. At the lowest stage the purely impulsive when the question is one simply as to what antecedents in the child's own mind issue in this action or that, his mind is thoroughly objec- tive. The object before him fills up his consciousness ; he thinks nothing about it, he simply thinks it. His action goes out in the channels of inherited tendency, directly upon the object. So in it we have the justification of his conduct. Everything is so simple in his mind that it is impossible to make a complex thing out of it. He acts because it is his nature to that is his only and adequate reason. He himself, when we ask him why he acted so and so, says : ' I don't know,' or ' I couldn't help it.' And we say the same of it when we behold the child or an adult of weak mind or overpowering impulse. 234. These two ways of looking at the matter may be distinguished with some emphasis for reasons of clearness in the subsequent epochs of growth, when they become of some importance. Let us call the former the biological or psychological reasons for action which we are able to find out, from our theory of development, but of which the child himself is finely ignorant the objective sanction ; and then we may go on to call the reasons which the agent himself sets before him for his action the subjective sanction. This is a distinction which ethical writers have to maintain in their doctrine of ends; a doctrine with which our present topic has much in common. We then may say, in view of the suggestions made above on the condition of things in the impulsive epoch, that the sane- The Sanction of Impulse 367 tion in this epoch is of two sorts: the objective sanction, which is the sanction of fact or of theory ; and the sub- jective sanction, which is the sanction of necessity. The sanction of fact or theory in the case of all biological prod- ucts is, in the current state of biological opinion, what is sometimes called the sanction of fitness, or the sanction of survival)- The sanction of necessity, on the other hand, is, like the other, equally ultimate from the psychological point of view, since it represents the final psychological fact the initial form of activity which we find accom- panied by consciousness. We may say, therefore, after these explanations, that we have here two ways of looking at the conditions of the problem. Both are at their simplest in this stage of mental development. And we may give them simple com- mon-sense terms throughout the discussions which follow ; i.e., let us call the psychological sanction which is ordi- narily described very justly under the term necessity, as the 'sanction of impulse.' Such usage will carry its own meaning, and be readily understood by psychologists. The other sort of sanction may best be described, apart from biological and philosophical theory, as the ' sanction of fact.' In tracing the development of the ' personal ' sanction, as we have called the individual's reasons for action, as contrasted with those which arise from social organiza- tion, we will have little to do with the ' sanction of fact ' as such ; the further development of the person's private 1 It is evident that ' fitness ' would apply both to the individual's functions and to the racial qualities which survive; and if we agree that the individual's actions are also selected by ' functional selection ' from over-produced move- ments, the test of ' survival ' would also apply to them. Cf. my Mental De- velopment, pp. 1 74 ff. 368 His Personal Sanctions mental life is mainly an evolution proceeding out from the ' sanction of impulse.' 2. The Lower Hedonic Sanction 235. Even in the impulsive life the great facts of pleas- ure and pain encounter us ; facts which no theory of the active life can ignore. However we may be disposed to argue about the place of these facts in psychological theory, we may for our present purpose taking advan- tage of the distinction just made look simply at these states as elements of consciousness which come in to influ- ence action. And throwing the two, pleasure and pain, together under the phrase ' hedonic consciousness,' we may say that the first departure from the simple sanction of impulse which we are able to observe in the child is toward what may be called the ' hedonic sanction.' The child begins very early to act with reference to the hedonic quality of his experience. He no longer takes impulse at its face value, and all impulses at equal value. His experi- ence is wonderfully coloured by pain and wonderfully illu- mined by pleasure. Quick associations are formed between acts and their consequences for the mental life ; and where association is too long a process to wait for, certain ap- pearances suggestive of pain or pleasure are sufficient to warn, counsel, and instruct him. All this is a matter of such general recognition as fact apart from the theories by which it may be explained that we may simply state it without fear of dispute. The direct result of this injection of the hedonic element into experience is the modification of impulse, not only as regards the purity of its issue in action, but as regards the The Lower Hedonic Sanction 369 form of the impulse itself. The hedonic ingredient does not follow upon action simply as its result; it is, by the quick associative and suggestive processes spoken of, welded upon the stimulations to which the organism is called upon to react. The stimulus arising from an object becomes the stimulation of a pleasurable or painful object. And the reaction which follows upon it now represents not the attitude to the object per se, taken alone, but to the whole source of stimulation, including the hedonic quality which the object has acquired. So the object serving as terminus for reaction is now different ; the child is now sharply conscious of the pleasure or pain aspect of the things with which he deals, more conscious in some cases of this aspect than of the mere cognition or presentative elements which before appealed to him for recognition. As a result of this we find a very marked and subtle sense growing up in his mind ; a sense of the worth of the things and events of life in terms of their hedonic aspect. It is an advance upon the simple impulsive consciousness which we have described more or less artificially, it is true in the earlier pages. And to this we have to give recognition in our progress toward a further statement of his personal sanctions. 236. This early effect of pleasure and pain must not be confused, however, with what is ordinarily called love of pleasure and fear of pain ; that is more complex and comes later. At the stage of which we now speak, the influence of pleasure or pain is not an influence distinct from that of the object upon which the child acts. On the contrary, it is a part, an aspect, of that object. In any case of urgency, the situation as a whole it is which 2B 37O His Personal Sanctions appeals to the child for action. He does not weigh the object over against the pain and choose between them. He takes an attitude appropriate to the situation as a whole. And even in the case in which the pain prospect does seem to stand out in opposition to the remaining ele- ments of the stimulating situation, and draw him in a con- trary direction, even then he does not picture to himself the pain as such, as a reason for acting or refraining from action; even here his hesitation is due, I think, to the fact that a new object with a different hedonic colouring comes to oppose an old one ; and he has a conflict of impulses of which one is more especially identified with the highly coloured hedonic cause or event. The cases in which pleasure is intelligently pursued and pain avoided come under the later sanction of desire. 237. I think, therefore, that we may safely say that the individual finds himself sometimes in a position in which the sanction of impulse is complicated by a further hedonic sanction. And the effect of this is that there is instituted an inhibition upon the purely impulsive action. The he- donic sanction comes in to replace and annul the sanction of impulse. The child reaches for the fire by impulse ; that alone, apart from experience, is sufficient sanction for the act; but the pain that follows comes, on the next occasion, to be a part of the very stimulation which the fire as a situation presents ; and now the newer sanction of pain comes in to inhibit the reaching movement. So it is throughout all the life of pleasure and pain. It may suffice to remark that this much is sufficient for the theory of sanction at this stage, far as it may yet be from an adequate statement of a theory of pleasure and pain reactions. The question as to how far the reaction to The Lower Hedonic Sanction 371 pleasure or pain is itself impulsive, is of course an open one, and a theory from the psychological point of view should answer it. Here it is just our object to avoid these psychological questions and to aim only at putting plainly out the actual stages through which the child goes in his development toward a full consciousness of the grounds of his conduct. This so-called ' hedonic sanction ' is not confined to the life of the young child. On the contrary, it is a very gross and prominent feature of our common unreflective life. We say to the man who is wild with toothache that he may be excused from the amenities of polite social intercourse ; his pain sanctions any amount of brutality to the unfortunate who comes in his way. We excuse the man to whom a fortune has been left if his feelings are expressed in a way which annoys his neighbours. The banging of crackers and noise of rioting is excused on occasions of patriotic demonstration high feeling is their sanction. And some of the subtler processes of sympathy and tacit justification, in society such, for example, as the sending of flowers to condemned criminals, the hero- worship of the successful gambler, etc. seem to reflect the sense in some that a desperate or a brilliant hedonic situation is in some degree its own sanction. This is true to the greater extent, according as we are able, at the same time, to reduce the situation, as it takes shape in the actor's mind, to a form which excludes from his cog- nizance ail more intellectual and sentimental elements. It is very difficult to punish the boy who commits an act of daring crime, after the examples of criminal literature ; for we feel that the highest elements of the boy's nature, then so immature, really united in the general hedonic 372 His Personal Sanctions situation which success presented to him. While on the pathological side the expression 'crazed with grief or terror' really shows that suffering or joy may sanction almost any conduct, by breaking down for the moment the higher barriers which intelligence and morality commonly erect. 3. The Sanction of Desire 238. The next epoch of the child's life is that which has been called the epoch of intelligence. We need not stop to trace the development of this stage of his progress, since we may assume, from the former analysis, some- thing of the method of it. The characteristics of the period, considered over against the earlier or spontaneous period, have also been described. It remains here to analyze out a little more closely the reasons for action which prompt him in this great period of his attainment, and see what relation they bear to the earlier forms of his personal sanction. . The word ' desire ' covers an essential aspect of intelli- gent action both in popular speech and in psychological science. In popular speech intelligent action is action which shows foresight. In psychological terms it is action which is directed to an end. The main thing in both these usages is the distinction which they make between such action, and that which does not show fore- sight, or does not have an end in view. The nature of this end we have touched upon briefly on an earlier page, where we saw the difference between the simple sug- gested or impulsive action which looks only to the ter- minus present in the immediate situation or stimulating event, and that which has foresight for what is to a The Sanction of Desire 373 degree distant in space and time. So when we come to ask the sanction for the action which we call intelligent, we are led to ask how the fact of having a more or less remote end complicates the consciousness of action. 239. Appeal to fact shows that there are again two cases which should be carefully distinguished. In the first place, there is the action which is still of the impul- sive type ; and second, there is the action of the hedonic type (applying that phrase to acts which are influenced by the presence of the hedonic colouring, as already de- scribed); both, however, being now at the higher level of desire. In the one case the simple thought of the end or object sets agoing the desire to compass or attain it. This we may call ' spontaneous ' desire. It is relatively compli- cated, and follows more or less deliberation on alternative courses of action, with voluntary choice of the particular end or thought which the actor goes on to realize. But still it has in common with impulse the character that it is the objective terminus the thing or event on which the energies of realization are bent. The object is for- ward and soul-filling in the lower forms of desire. There is very little thought of self, of the remote ends to be striven for, of distinction and choice of means, of de- sirable or undesirable consequences. The child sets his face toward an object, a thing, and lets the action neces- sary to its attainment take care of itself, very largely by the same impulsive and semi-automatic outgo which characterizes the epoch of impulse. As before, the sanc- tion is almost or quite contained in the necessity of im- pulse and suggestion, but these are complicated. 240. But we soon find a change coming over the youth- 374 H Personal Sanctions ful consciousness with the growth of his reflection. We have seen this growth most richly and normally in the development of the child's own personal self; in the thought he has of himself, and the antithesis which he gets between himself and the ' other-self ' of his playmate or parent. This is so all-embracing a growth that other concerns of the child, in the epoch between the second and fifth years, say, sink into relative insignificance. This growth in personal completeness shows itself in ' reflective ' desire. To be brief, we may say that in ' reflective ' desire there is a growing tendency to the implication of the sense of self. The slowly developing synthesis which stands for self is set over against the partial events of experience, the whole against the isolated parts, and just as the syn- thesis of self has already grown to be what it is by the incorporation and assimilation of new elements from ex- perience, so the process tends to complete and extend itself. The measure of success in the past is reflected in the attitudes toward the events of the future. Discrimi- nation in the value of events is due to the operation of the assimilating tendencies which former syntheses have established. The hedonic colouring of the former experi- ences has arisen from the degree of adaptation, or the contrary, of detached experiences to the demands of per- sonal growth ; the ratification of the adaptations, and revulsion from the misadaptations, gives just the twofold attitude of desire. So there comes now into conscious- ness a tendency on the part of the child to reflect to weigh the new as well as the old by the standards of reference supplied by his thought of self. Can I apper- ceive this thing consistently with the former apperceptive The Sanction of Desire 375 system built up in experience, or will it tend to disintegra- tion ? The former demand is presented by my states of positive desire, which are indices of the advantage, the pleasure, of living as a person. The latter represents my repulsions, my negative desires, my states of pain, as I think of myself in the light of my own history. Reflective desire, is, therefore, the concrete determination of the sense of self. It represents motor integrations about to issue in particular pathways. It is the conserving, assimilating, compacting engine of experience, by which the old adjustments of materials in the unity of a self are reinstated ; this on the side of habit, of retrospective reference. But desire is also the agent of the further development of the self-sense, since it is through the imitative aspect of desire, the aspect under which desire secures new accommodations, new satisfactions, that new increments are made to personal attainment, and the self- nucleus is enlarged. It has thus always a prospective reference as well, which is very prominent in the psy- chosis itself. 241. Now if this is what desire is, considered geneti- cally as a state of mind, what shall we say of the sanctions which arise for the intelligent actions prompted by desire ? In answer to this question it is well to look at the so-called ' end of desire ' a little more closely. Remembering our earlier result as to the end of intel- ligent action J that it is simply the content itself which furnishes an appropriate terminus for the act that is a sufficient determination also of the end of desire of the spontaneous kind. But certain of its implications in the case of reflective desire should be pointed out 1 Above, Chap. VII., i (especially Sect. 161). . 376 His Personal Sanctions If the genetic function of reflective desire is to set action in directions which conserve and forward the assimilative and progressive synthesis of self, then, is not the end of desire what the idealistic thinkers are telling us self- realization f Undoubtedly, it seems to me, when looked at from a theoretical point of view. But is it not equally clear that, from that point of view, as illustrated by this philosophy, it is impossible to get at the subjective end of desire at all ? We may say that by his desires the child is reflecting the sort of a self he has found out the way to be, and that his future self is to be gained and enriched through the reactions in which his present desires lead him to indulge. But is not that very far from saying that the child desires to conserve, extend, and realize the self which his present desires are calculated to secure ? This is just the confusion into which, in the mind of the writer, this formulation of the end of desire in ethical theory usually falls. And the confusion becomes all the plainer when we take the child as our subject of investigation at a time when it is evidently absurd to say that he has an adequate sense of any general end which his different desires conspire to realize. If, therefore, we say that self-realization is the end of desire, in the sense that it is the meaning of all the pro- cesses of desire looked at from the point of view of mental development as a whole, we may then call it the theoretical or philosophical end, as before in the epoch of impulse we found a theoretical or biological end. This is so much to the good in our theory of sanction, since in self-realiza- tion we have the theoretical or philosophical sanction for acts of reflective desire. But then we may inquire further into the subjective end as the child himself .conceives it. The Sanction of Desire 377 242. In the first place, it seems essential to the integrity of the objective generalized end which we find to be self- realization, that the individual, in his concrete choices and desires, should not know it nor aim to realize it. For it is a generalization based upon the details of many specially differentiated functions, each of which must do its normal part in the scheme of the whole. Each particular act and desire represents such a partial function, with its own con- crete end. Suppose the child did reflect on its good as a whole, and did come to judge between the desires which normally arise, might it not divert the energies of life into channels very far from the realization of a complete self ? And is not this just what men of mature years actually do, when they come by reflection to construct theories of life, and to set up ends which they wish to realize ? thus interfering with the spontaneity of desire, and deranging the relative adjustments to one another of the different moving springs of our personal nature. In the second place, and more positively, what the child does aim at is still just things and situations. Yet we find a new development in the constructive processes by which he reaches his sense of things and situations. Distin- guishing, as we may, between his sense of things as facts, and things as objects of desire, we may look more closely at the latter as related to the former, and at the meaning of the antithesis between them. 243. In general, there is to each of us, both a world of things as facts and a world of things as desirable objects. They are very different, considered as worlds. The world of facts is common to us all very largely ; the world of desires is very different to us one and another. In a general way, these two worlds coincide bpth with each 378 If is Personal Sanctions other and in different persons, since the world of desires has its points of origin in the world of facts ; and different men are constituted enough alike to make the trend of their desires the same. But in any concrete case, when it is a question as to the desirableness here and now of a particular thing or action, we differ largely in our choices and decisions. Considering the individual, however, we find a sharp distinction between the thing as it exists and the thing as it is desired. A preliminary of desire is a sense of unreality, want, tendency toward a thing that is pictured, but not accomplished. Let us call the thing, object, event, which is now real before me, A ; and let us call it when I desire it, in its absence, a ; then let us see what the differ- ence is between the former, considered as a thing that exists, an A, and the latter, the thing that is desired, the a. The difference is this, that the one, the A, is a hard and dry skeleton of rigid reality held in the grip of so-called mechanical law, whose operation is indifferent to my needs and satisfactions. In its origin, as a fact, I get it just by stripping off my experience of its personal aspect to me, by reading out the personal equation element from it, and leaving out there, in space and time, only what is common to many experiences and to all experiencing individuals who come that way, and get the perception of this thing, this A. Such is the w/iaf, the object, the thing, apart from my desire. But the a, on the contrary, the thing as desired, is very different from this. That bare A, out there in space, is not what I think of when I set it forth with urgent desire. I set toward the fact, the A, it is true ; but I think of -a very different sort of thing. What I think of, in desiring. The Sanction of Desire 379 is an experience, a rich full state of existence, of which the thing of perception is the nucleus, but which flows over and around this nucleus with an overflowing that is peculiar to me. The hard, dry, impersonal fact, A, rigid in its obedience to law, and common to the world of all men the same, this is replaced in my thought by a thing which awakes all sorts of reminiscences of pleasure, excitement, association trains, social intercourse, self-satis- factions, etc. ; and all this is there a great bursting mind-full of treasurable personal meaning. This means what we saw above : that the apperception system which we call self, is involved in the ' thing of desire,' the a. It is the echo of my personal thought of reality, of all my dealings with it, of all that I have suffered and enjoyed in my life with things of the A series, that now gives desire its meaning. It is an assimilation function, a struggle to get at the personal meaning ; this it is that moves me. All this comes over me when the thing is not present, by the very thought of its possible pres- ence ; and I desire the object, the bare thing, only in the sense that it is the consciousness of that, and of the need of that, which serves to excite all this moving turmoil in my breast. If this is so, there seems to be some ground for the his- torical controversy, already referred to, as to the ' object ' or ' end ' of desire. Some have said that men act directly to secure the a, the thing of the world of desire. They wish to bring back all the rich fulness of this experience. Others say no, that is not what men consciously strive for ; if they did, they would never get it. They strive for the thing of fact, the object of external value ; and only so do they come 380 His Personal Sanctions into the gain of more, through the gain of it. This point has already been before us, 1 and our examination shows that the distinction is largely one of development. The pursuit of the object A is typical of what we have called ' spontaneous ' desire. Yet for our present purpose it is important to see that the distinction involved is a real one. Generally, when most spontaneous, men act directly with reference to the object of fact that seems plain. Yet, in that case, there is most often a vaguely conscious distinction between what they pursue, and what they have in mind as impulse to the pursuit; that latter is the a, the 'thing of desire.' This is usually called 'motive,' in the best use of that word ; and I shall call it so, reserving the word ' end ' for the actual image, the thing pursued, in most cases the A, the thing of fact. 2 244. So much preliminary to the question of sanction in this field of desire. In this epoch, the motive is the sanction. What else could be the sanction ? There is no other possible sanction, except the thing of fact, toward which desire is directed. But this is not eligible because, except in cases of purest ideo-motor automatism, it is not the real content of consciousness. Even spontaneous desire and pure impulse, we have found merging, as soon as experience widens, into that state in which a hedonic element enters into the motive-complex. Besides, the thing of fact is a common element in many states of con- sciousnesses, perhaps, and in many persons at once ; and the differing attitudes and acts which result call for very 1 Above, Chap. VI., Sect. 167. * That is, ' motive ' includes all the affective, subconscious, and .motor processes additional to the intellectual or representative images which consti- tute the ' end.' The felt self is largely a ' motive,' and not an ' end ' element. The Sanction of Desire 381 different sanctions. In other terms, the rigid stationary A, the thing from which all character for consciousness and personal life has been abstracted, just for the purposes of abstract and common indifference in multiplied situa- tions, the bare thing, which is simply there at all times and for all men, cannot be at the same time the justi- fication for the varied and differentiated actions which different men, at the same time, and the same man at different times, perform with reference to it. The only sort of intelligent activity that it could sanc- tion would be the pursuit of itself, found in the description of the facts of the world as such ; that is, in science. Science is justified of her own children, the A's ; but desire may rebel against science, and inevitably seeks to supple- ment it. Science cannot be called upon to legitimate the children of desire. 245. The pursuit of science, however, represents a real and normal sanction. For it is typical of the more general use of intelligence seen above in what we called ' selective thinking.' l The selective criteria of the value of his thoughts, considered as survivals, are generalized in the thinker's mind under the wider term 'truth.' The corre- spondences discovered and tested between the thoughts and the things of fact are held in a system of truths ; and the activities of the man, no less in society than in the private laboratory, or in the fields of external nature, must terminate first of all upon this system of truths. Seeing, further, that the satisfaction of desire the realization of the motive entertained is conditioned upon the attitudes suitable to reinstate things of fact inside the relationships of truth, truth itself becomes a recognized subjective or i Chap. III., 3. 382 His Personal Sanctions personal sanction. Truth, thus defined, is one of the great and controlling sanctions of desire, since it thus becomes motive. 246. If this be really the psychological sanction of desire, i.e., the motive, defined in the broad way that it has been above, then an act would seem to have objective sanction just in proportion as it is really the action to wliicli the present motive in its fulness prompts. Does this action which I now contemplate really carry out the desire which I have toward a given object of fact ? Normally it must, if it issue from the full state of consciousness which con- stitutes the desire. Then, in that case, the appropriate- ness being granted, the action secures the thing, in greater or less degree, and with that the desire is satisfied. The sanction, then, is maintained in consciousness in propor- tion to the success of the action to which the thought prompts ; and we reach the general truth that, for intelli- gent action, prompted as it is by desire, the objective sanc- tion is success. 1 247. Success becomes the subjective sanction also when it is made motive in reflective consciousness ; and it so soon becomes the individual's criterion of the desirableness of an action that we may speak on occasion of the sanction of success as representing the individual's motive. Of course there are cases in which the action which follows on a desire is not really appropriate to it : cases in which the action does not succeed. Then the man laments his conduct, seeing that he has not done well. 1 This simply means, from the point of view of the imitative character of volition, the reinstatement of the ' copy ' (motive) series which releases the action. It illustrates also, in concrete cases, the philosophical sanction of self- realization. The Sanction of Desire 383 In such cases we have really no departure from the formula reached just now. For in that case the man is lacking in intelligence or in experience. For him the action was sanctioned ; for us it departs from the intelli- gent type. He may say, 'what a fool I have been to do this,' or ' how I was misled in this scheme ' ; but objectively his object of desire was not attached to the proper objects of fact; or his construction of the object of desire did not proceed by a proper interpretation of experience; or the train of action was so complex that he could not trace out the end from the beginning, and so missed a link or two ; or perhaps he did not estimate the bearing, upon his scheme of life, of the influence of the desires and conduct of others, or the presence of his own changing emphasis upon other things of fact. All these influences and many others make his actual success problematical and so seem to take away the sanc- tion when his consciousness comes to take an ex post facto point of view. At the time, doing the best he could, his action was sanctioned for him by the motive ; but in its results, both for the on-looker and for him, it finds its sanction in the success which it proves more or less suited to bring. Success considered as personal sanction is also rein- forced by the sanction of truth. For every truthful corre- spondence between thought and fact represents the suc- cessful carrying out of the thought in the world of fact. So we are the more justified in speaking of success as the sanction of intelligence, seeing that it is operative in both spheres, i.e., those of fact and desire. 248. There are further psychological questions which arise here ; but I shall only take up a phase or two of the 384 His Personal Sanctions case by which our inquiry may be advanced into the social life, at this epoch of intelligence. The child's thought of self is, as will be remembered, identified with two somewhat opposed systems of emotional and active expressions. It was one of the results of our examination of the early sense of self, that we found it showing a certain duality in the midst of its growing definiteness. There is in action a necessary distinction between the self of aggression, self-assertion, selfishness, in short ; and the self of imitation, sympathy, accommoda- tion, altruism. If this be true, then what we have found about the sanctions, both in the impulsive and in the in- telligent period, must be held to with a view of these two forms of the thought of self. If actions are so different as to be worthy of the two opposed terms ' egoistic ' and ' altruistic,' then the motive-sanctions from which they spring must be different too. As to the impulsive period, the difference is not of much theoretical importance, since the whole active life is given over to impulse ; but it is then a question of great practical importance whether the facts show both these two kinds of reaction in the child. Is he a creature of so-called gen- erous as well as of so-called selfish impulses ? The facts give no room for doubt, as I have had occasion to point out above in some detail. The child acts under the sanction of impulse or necessity whether he act in one way or in the other. This may be left here, only stopping to say that the consideration of the social sanction which is to fol- low in the next chapter takes it as its point of departure. But coming to the epoch of intelligence, to the ques-- tion of the sanction of desire, we find it necessary to make further distinctions. If, as we found reason for The Sanction of Desire 385 believing, the motive, the object of desire, the thing of the world of desire, as opposed to the thing of the world of fact, is a construction in which the sense of self is the assimilating thing ; if it is this thought which goes out in its own power of attractiveness to absorb the things of fact into its forms of personal construction, then we have to ask at once, which of the two normal thoughts of self is it that does this. Is the thing-of-desire an egoistic thing- of-desire or an altruistic thing-of-desire ? Is it I, the self- ish, aggressive, self-asserting, domineering self which desires ; or is it I, the imitative, teachable, generous, altru- istic, self-denying self which desires ? Or is it both, or is it neither ? Of course it must be both, either separately or together. It cannot be the two together at the earlier stages of the growth of the sense of self ; since there has not yet arisen the assimilation of the partial thoughts of self which "brings them together. But it is the characteristic of the later epoch of sentiment ethical, religious, etc., as has been said, that there grows up a generalized thought of self in which the combined motive influences of all the personal thoughts take form in an ideal thought to which the par- tial semi-detached thoughts are more or less consciously subordinated. If, then, we keep over the examination of this ideal epoch for separate inquiry in the matter of sanc- tion, denning the epoch of desire strictly in terms of the growth of intelligence, and the ability to use intelligence for personal purposes ; then we must say that the two thoughts, representing self, the ego, and self, the alter, both act in turn to stimulate conduct, and so each gives its own sanction to the sort of action which it begets. 249. If we look at these two cases in a somewhat 2C 386 His Personal Sanctions artificial way at first, we see what sorts of personal action would thus get sanction. Action done from personal aggression, pride, self-assertion, eager egoism, would have the private ego thought as its motive assimilating to itself the things of fact, the circumstances of social life, the acts of others, the content of experience generally ; and success in bringing all these agencies and materials into subjection to the selfish movements of the individual would be its reward. This seems to be realized, in the main, in the period of childhood from the second to the fourth years (say). I have already cited some of the facts which show the selfish use which the child makes of his intelligence when he is just learning that he has it and can use it to his personal advantage. He hoodwinks his juniors, circumvents his attendants, attempts to deceive his elders. The use of intelligence in this way is one of the first reasons for the genuine ' lie ' in child life. His sanction is success ; simply that. That is his rule of action, and he has no reason for hesitating to apply it, except as his acts themselves or the copies which he is called upon urgently to imitate bring out the other and different thought of self, so arouse his sympathy, and bring on a conflict for temporary supremacy between the two thoughts of self. There are also men in society whom we instinctively class as selfish, and often they are very gifted in the matter of intelligence. Such men use the social environment for their personal advantage. And there is, of course, the criminal whose selfish line of con- duct not only illustrates his life under the sanction of personal success, but who also puts to defiance the sanc- tions which society attaches in the way of penalties and rewards to actions of a different kind. Tke Sanction of Desire 387 While not intending to discuss social theories at this point, yet it may not be amiss to point out here the ground which an individualistic theory of society has to rest upon when we consider man simply from the point of view of intelligence operating under the sanction of personal de- sire. The stress of individual competition tends directly to justify the pursuit of success. ' Nothing succeeds like success ' is its motto. There are great departments of human competitive life in which this sanction is never repealed nor even much modified. 250. Yet to say that this is the only sanction of intelli- gent conduct is to deny the other motive which is correlative with this. The thought of self as an ego is psychologically impossible without its correlative, the thought of self as an alter. The reaction of emotion and conduct to this latter is as original as that to the former. The child does seem to show a great liking at the period of dawning intelligence for the selfish exercise of his newly acquired power. But the other side of his nature does not die. I have already pointed out reasons for the one-sidedness of his develop- ment for a time at this epoch. It is mainly for purposes of exercise, training, practice, strengthening, that the intel- ligence is used so much for selfish ends at this period. We very soon find in the child a sort of reaction to the other pole. He begins to widen the circle of his concern. His selfishness varies according as he is in the household or out of it. He begins to show actions of meditated generosity. All this has already been dwelt upon. The essential thing is that this generous conduct also has its sanction in exactly the same sense that the selfish conduct has. The self which now constructs the things in the world of desire is an alter ; it fills consciousness ; its normal issue 388 His Personal Sanctions is in sympathetic, disinterested action ; the sanction belong- ing to this type of motive is success in the sort of action which is normal to it ; and that makes success in being generous a tiling of normal intelligent sanction. It is quite analogous to the normality of impulsive action of both kinds, that which seems to be selfish and that which seems to be generous ; both are so elementarily natural that the presence of each is the sanction of each. So in the sphere of intelligence, where a construction of desire is induced upon the thing of fact on which the desire terminates, the construction takes two equally nor- mal forms. The theoretical determination of the sanction of desire, therefore, in terms of success must include both cases, and extend to action of the two distinct types : action of the strenuously selfish competitive type and action of the self- denying, generous, co-operative type. Each represents an intelligent form of success. 251. Another point may be taken up before we go on to more complicated stages of development. It is the rela- tion of the sanction of intelligent action to that which jus- tifies impulsive action. The former supersedes and inhibits the latter, whenever it is a question between the two; or it tends to do so. In case it does not, then there is a violation of all sanction in the mind of the actor. Impulse is the servant of reason. If it becomes the master by its intrinsic intensity or by the weakness of the sanction of intelligence, then action be- comes unreasonable, and impulse is again the only justifi- cation as before the intelligence arose. But when the intelligence recovers itself and begins to judge the situa- tion from its own point of view, then the absence of any The Sanction of Desire 389 sanction higher than that of temporary necessity comes into consciousness as a sense of profound regret. Again the actor says: 'What a fool, child, lunatic, I was.' When taken in the general economy of personal develop- ment, this is a thing of great importance ; for it repre- sents the passage of consciousness into the new and all-important sphere of intelligent adaptation to men and things. As long as impulse is uncontrolled, there is no governor on the wheels of the human machine. The bio- logical justification is the only justification. Impulse is a thing of blind action, save to the theorist on the principles of biological development. But when intelligence comes upon the scene with its selection of means to ends, and its utilizing of the forces of life and impulse for the accom- plishment of designs all its own, thus bringing some meas- ure of control and balance into the warfare of impelling activities, then a new era begins, not only in the individual, but, as we have had reason to think from the point of view of his social equipment, also in society. Think of the dif- ference between self-control and license, between the judge and the mob, between the child kicking against the pricks and the man removing them by his genius, and you have something of what the entrance of the sanction of intelli- gence means in the history of man. Consistency arises out of chaos, steady purpose and plan of life succeed capricious indulgence in fragmentary enjoyments, econ- omy of mental and vital energy follows reckless waste and unavailing struggle. What a wonderful thing is self-control, even where it is directed to ends not the best ! How great is success even when its sphere is igno- ble ! And how the man with a distant end lays his game for the self-betrayed man of impulse and emotion, not only 390 His Personal Sanctions maintaining ends of calmness and sobriety, but using the other's forces perhaps wherewith to accomplish them ! 252. Finally, it may be pointed out that the distinction between the world of things and the world of desire extends itself into the realm of social activity as well ; and in it we find certain of the most subtle and interesting movements which inspire and agitate the individual. Persons as well as things are different in the kind of existence which they have. A person may be to another an A in the world of fact, indeed must be, and also an a in the world of desire. A person as a mere A, a fact, a thing, from which experiences are expected, as they are from a chair or a door, is only a recognized object; and he may also be a matter of desire, or he may not. His existence may be as indifferent to me as that of the chair ; but it may be as vital to me as is the mother to the child, or friend to friend when ' help faileth and the mourners go about the streets.' The ego may knit this or that alter to itself, so that there is one self and I am you ; or the alter may be the enemy to life and peace, and tolerance of him cease to be a virtue. This development of the personal presences of others into objects of desire, while they remain also things of fact, is fruitful of much of our intelligent action. I may treat you as a thing, in order to win you as a person. Or I may cater to you as a person with a pretence of affection when to me really you are as a thing, and my end, my real desire, goes beyond you. In other words, intelli- gence may manipulate its personal material, as it does the external world, bending the things to secure the desires ; and having the same sanction for so doing as in the former case as merciless as it seems the sanction of success. The Sanction of Desire 391 Except and this is where there arises one of the subtleties of the situation except that in this case the use of the person as a mere thing, a means to some remote end, tends to conflict with the necessary thought of the alter as one himself having desires, and intrinsically arousing sympathy. This is a complication which actu- ally arises in society as well as in individual conduct. For example, the opposition to vivisection, and in general the unwillingness to use living animals for human purposes, illustrates just this case. Here the intelligent end requires the use of living things simply as things, as means, deny- ing them the right to be elevated in themselves to the rank of objects of desire, or of personal worth. But the sympa- thetic impulses go out by necessity toward the thought of a suffering alter. So a conflict. Of course there is no reasonable conflict. Sympathy is an impulse, and its sanction is necessity, considered apart from any ethical sanction which other elements may give it, while the intelligent end is a thing of adaptation, and so claims the right to precedence. The end sanctions the vivisection, i.e., the successful solving of the biological problem that is set. Whether the solving of the problem in a particular case is a worthy end that brings in again the ethical standards at a higher level ; but if intelligence sanctions vivisection, that is sufficient as against merely impulsive sympathy. The complication is seen also in the cases where we give pain to an individual for his own good. Many a mother knows the fearful character of this situation ; when she is driven to torture her child for his larger happiness, as in the case of a necessary surgical operation. In this case there are no less than three thoughts of the same child in 392 His Personal Sanctions the mother's mind : the child of fact, diseased; the child of sympathy, suffering the knife ; and the child of desire, cured. The first of these, the child of fact, is in a meas- ure an abstraction ; but unless he be enough a reality to lead to the inhibition of the impulsive action of repelling the surgeon which finds its sanction in the child of sym- pathy, the action of intelligence could never be. For then there could not be constituted the child of desire from which this action of intelligence proceeds. These situations are sufficient to illustrate the embarrass- ments into which consciousness may fall, even at the rela- tively low stage of development before the rise of ethical and social sentiment. How weak appear the constructions of the political and economical writers who treat desire as a sort of constant quantity, which may be multiplied into the number of individuals, and so serve as a basis for a theory of value ; or identified with ' demand ' and so be correlated with ' supply." And this complexity is nothing to that which develops in the higher realm into which con- sciousness grows, as personality takes on its ideal forms. 4. The Higher Hedonic Sanction 253. The development of consciousness in the way now depicted leads to a refining in the sense of pleasure and pain to the actor. We saw that the hedonic colouring of experience goes over largely into the sense of self, pro- ducing attitudes of the personal self toward individual things. And this is the basis of the ' thing of desire ' as op- posed to the 'thing of fact.' The thing of fact remains a thing of knowledge, science, observation ; the thing of desire becomes that rich hedonic experience with which the self is immediately identified. The Higher Hedonic Sanction 393 But in the reflective consciousness another movement often takes place ; indeed, always takes place in reference to some one or other type of experience in this mind or that. The discovery is made by the actor himself "that there is just this distinction between things as facts and things as objects of personal d^ire. He comes to see that it is not the object per se that he strives for, but the states of self which come through the realization of the things of desire. The state of happiness which this involves is thus isolated, in a measure, in his thought, and set up as itself a thing of desire. He generalizes the hedonic experience as such, sets it before him as an end, and pursues the objects of fact, and even also the customary objects of desire, for the sake of this new and derived object of desire, pleasure. In this form of reflection we find, therefore, for the first time realized, a pure hedonism of the subjective consciousness. It is an outgrowth in the sphere of desire, as the corresponding lower hedonic sanction already spoken of is in the sphere of impulse. The child acts first impulsively toward objects as things, then comes to act impulsively toward them as painful things, and even as pure pains (and pleasures), but still impulsively. So in the sphere of desire, the first action of reflective desire is toward the object of desire, which takes the place of the simple thing of fact. The object of desire is constituted by the clustering up upon the experience of all those highly coloured pleasurable and painful states which go to pro- duce the personal attitudes of the self. Then, finally, the pleasure as thought comes to be itself the object of pursuit, and the agent is, when acting thus, now a refined reflective hedonist. For such a person there would really be a 'hedonic calculus.' 394 ff* s Personal Sanctions This is, then, the final and much-talked of hedonic sanction, the pursuit of pleasure as such. It represents the most refined egoism, in the sense of individualism. 1 It shows the culmination of intellectual development consid- ered as affording a type of sanction for conduct. We will see, later on, under what conditions it is actually present in social life. 5. The Sanction of Right 254. In the earlier, more psychological consideration of the development of the personality sense, we saw that the growth of a general or ideal self is gradual, coming through the continuation of the process of imitative accommodation, which is the engine of all mental progress. It is by assimi- lation that growth proceeds ; and when consciousness is able, under the leading of the personalities which illustrate and enforce law, to assimilate both its partial thoughts of self the selfish and the generous self to a new ideal thought which stands for this law, then it enters the sphere of duties and rights. Following up this progress in the child with the question as to the sanction of conduct done at this highest epoch of personal development, we find before us a set of conditions of great complexity and diffi- culty. The interest of the topic, however, culminates here, as do also the practical bearings of it in social matters ; so we may try to get some glimmerings of light on the sub- ject, mainly from the carrying out of the principles which we have found reason for accepting in the simpler con- ditions already explored. 1 Yet not necessarily as anti-social or unaltruistic in the channels of its expression ; for the pleasures of society or of benevolence might be pursued simply as pleasures. Cf. also Sect. 260. The Sanction of Right 395 The subjective sanction of right, that which impels the agent himself to recognize and perform duty, is just the sentiment called 'ought,' of which we have endeavoured to find out something, from the genetic point of view, in earlier pages. In theory, it has been called the ' categorical imperative'; in popular language it is called 'conscience.' It is not within our province to pursue speculation further about this sentiment, but only to ask how the presence of this sanction in the individual's own breast modifies the reasons for action, and consequently the actions themselves, which we found him' performing in the earlier epochs. Impulse leads to action by ' necessity ' ; intelligence leads to different action, with view to ' success ' ; both of these remain, the latter modifying the demands and the author- ity of the former. Now what new complications arise in the operation of both of these, when oughtness comes to its fruition, and man feels impelled to do ' right ' ? 255. The first thing to be remarked about this new sanction is its similarity, in the person's own mind, to the sanction of impulse. It comes with no adequate or detailed construction of content by the thinker. He cannot ex- plain his reasons for pronouncing conduct right ; he has no reasons. He cannot picture to himself or communicate to others a general plan of life which will cover the details of action, as new circumstances arise ; he only gets a single morsel of sanction at a time a morsel appropriate to the emergency in which he is immediately called upon to act. In this, ethical action is impulsive. It represents habit facing toward law. And it is impulsive, also, in respect to the form of quasi-necessity with which its in- junctions come upon him. In this case, it is true, it is a new form of necessity ; it does not play itself out in con- 396 His Personal Sanctions duct through the immediate pressure of nervous conditions. But its imperative is categorical, and it executes its com- mands under the form of penalties as real, though not the same, as those which the lower impulses inflict. It is from this character, as quasi-impulsive, that the ought-sanction gets its relation to the others. 256. The sanction of right tends to supersede the earlier sanctions, in the main, and that because it repre- sents a more inclusive form of mental synthesis. The generalization of the thought of self cannot proceed with- out the subsumption of the healthful and normal but par- tial selves. We can have no ideal thought of self without using the partial thoughts which contribute, in particular instances, material for the ideal. The impulsive self, with its self-seeking and its capricious sympathy, must be there; and the crafty, intellectual self must be there ; and each must urge its own sanction, for it is only through the rela- tive claims of these thoughts and the fitness of their cor- responding appropriate actions, that the lawful, regular, ethical thought, and its appropriate action, can be con- stituted. If it be true that the ideal thought requisite to the rise of ethical sentiment comes by the generalization of the partial and lower thoughts, then the emerging forms of action which now get sanction must be, in some way, a reduction of the earlier forms to a single novel type. This leads us to the recognition of two conclusions : first, that the conduct which is sanctioned by the ought-sense exists normally and naturally by the side of the other forms of action in the same person ; and second, that it is only through the vitality of impulse and intellect and their normal pressure out into conduct, that this new union and higher adjustment of elements can take place. The Sanction of Right 397 257. The entire normality of the ethical sentiment, and the sanction which enforces it, deserve emphasis in con- trast with the tendency of certain writers to look upon them as in some way foreign to humanity, and as only kept in operation by divine agencies, belief in supernatural penalties, and rewards, etc. As opposed to this concep- tion, we see that the sanction of duty arises from the natural play of the impulses and intellectual operations among themselves, just as we have also seen the higher forms of religious sentiment come up naturally from the ethical. The growth of intellectuality, considered as breadth of view and competence of personal judgment, carries with it normally growth in sensitiveness of feeling and Tightness of ethical attitude. Intellectual power is primarily growth in the sense of personal worth and char- acter based on widened social experience. This growth involves the entertainment of the sanction of the gener- ous desires and impulses no less than that of the selfish desires and impulses. So the outcome the higher and more adequate understanding and organization of the material of personal and social life brings, by its very happening, the sanction of duty. The sanction arises just in this way, and in this way only ; its adequacy and fulness of influence are just functions of the adequacy and comprehensiveness of the synthesis on the intellectual side. Hence no dualism of thought and action can be held in this highest realm. It is as untrue as would be a corre- sponding dualism in the realm of intelligence and desire, i.e., a dualism which should hold that the picturing of an object is natural and normal, but the tendency to desire and struggle for it is a thing of extraneous origin. The only possible opposition between the intellect and the 398 His Personal Sanctions sense of right, is that which arises, as in particular rases, when the intellectual process represents the lower synthe- sis of personal and social values whose sanction is success or pleasure. Then the opposition is sharp enough. The assimilation of the act which intelligence, at this lower stage, urges for performance, with the ideal personal thought about which the sense of duty hangs, is hindered or thwarted. It was therefore a real intuition of the Greek moralists that they made ethical insight, insight reason, a perfection of apprehension, in opposition to the opinion and perception and illusion of the lower cognitive pro- cesses. Practical reason is reason still. But the Greeks shared the view which we are now criticising, on the side of the origin of this intuition, inasmuch as they found it necessary to account for it by a principle of illumination which could not come by the development of the natural processes of experience. A dualism between reason and sense or opinion ran through Greek thought very much as the dualism of thought and sentiment is current now. As opposed to both dualisms, we must hold to a develop- ment process with two aspects, a constructive aspect and an active aspect. The constructive aspect undergoes de- velopment from sense to thought ; and with it, representing the constant outcome of it, the active aspect undergoes a corresponding development from impulse to conduct, from necessity to duty. 258. The other point mentioned above is also suggestive of certain reflections. It opens the question of actual con- tent and play of functions in the healthy ethical conscious- ness. The determinations already made show us that impulse and intelligence must be there, and that the normal growth of the ethical sense depends upon their The Sanction of Right 399 growth. But it is evident that further definition may be made of the influences which give more subtle colouring to the phases of the life of duty phases whose variations produce the various inequalities and pathological tenden- cies in the moral life. The first great distinction which comes up, in prosecut- ing this inquiry, is that which we have already found between things, considered as objects merely, things as facts ; and, on the other hand, things considered as more or less implicated in the progressive thought of self, tilings as objects of desire. We saw that, even in the life of intelli- gence, a comprehensive distinction exists here. The world of things, opposite to the world of desire, constitutes a series of reasonably constant manipulable terms, which ' remain put,' so to speak, in certain relationships, are capa- ble of more or less exhaustive description for personal and social purposes, and have a relative neutrality of presence to us, as respects our active lives and attitudes. It is only as these things, on the other hand, take on certain rela- tionships to persons and personal uses to society, in some way or other, in short that they are then constituted ele- ments or details of the world of values. The mere judg- ment of existence, which is a mental attitude of the widest generality and of the least importance in the progress of our development, since it is the presupposition of it all, yields to certain graduated judgments of value which are the measuring rods of desire. It follows from this that there may be two very different courses of development in the intellectual life according as the material with which it prevailingly deals belongs in one or other of these fields, the world of facts or the world of desire. One person's life-development may be 400 His Personal Sanctions typical in that it is the pursuit in the main of facts, truths. The pursuit, of course, is motived in desire ; but not in things as objects of desire, or as elements in the social world of desire. This sort of intellectuality we have al- ready recognized in the scientific tendency which, as such, scouts utility and seeks only truth. The self-thought is ignored largely by the very statement of the material ; the ideal of apprehension is without prejudice of personal interest. Tfee only reason for mentioning this here is that in such intellectual development we see the absence of values just in so far as all human and social desire is absent. Value comes only from the introduction of the personal thought, and the measure of it is the measure of the possible assimilation of the new knowledge which a thing affords, to the attitudes of desire. When this is done, we reach the opposite pole of intellectual operation, and in it we find certain obtrusive characters which involve the ethical sanction. 259. The ethical life is pre-eminently a life of values. Its objects are things of desire, and things of desire at the highest level, where the self-thought is general or ideal. As to the line between thoughts of self which are general, and those which are not, it is usually certainly in the developed consciousness quite impossible to draw it. After the ethical sentiment has once arisen, in conscious- ness, through the assimilation of the partial self-thoughts, a habit is started of just such general assimilation ; and it is then doing violence to the normal drift of growth to isolate either the ego thought or the alter thought and attempt to adjust the issues of life to either alone to any great extent. The whole life of desire takes on a normally ethical character. ' What ought I to do ? ' becomes the The Sanction of Right 401 mind's spontaneous response both to the demands of impulse and to the attractions of success. This leads to the recognition of a social value in all the acts of life, except those whose performance is so usual or so trivial that we call them indifferent. But it should be noticed that real indifference cannot be predicated of any actions which have a personal motive. All actions which have such a motive are ethical and social, whether they be egoistic, altruistic, or seemingly neutral, simply because after consciousness has once fallen into the way of referring the partial personal thoughts to the ideal thought, all actions which are personal at all have a tacit or overt value as compared with action from the ideal point of view. The result then is this, that all action which is in any sense interested is ethical ; and upon it falls the ethical sanction, after the person has once entered the ethical epoch of growth. The intellectual sanction of success, and the impulsive sanction of necessity, both have to yield to the higher requirements of duty, or to violate them. But in either case, the requirements are there, and consciousness is different by reason of their pres- ence. The ethical sanction has a direct inhibitive influ- ence upon the operation of the lower sanctions, inasmuch as no one of them is to be considered the final sanction of the act which emerges from the crucible of ethical deliberation. That is the province of the sense of ought or of duty ; and it may ratify any or none of the actual courses of conduct which the earlier sanctions would otherwise have called out. 260. This leads us to see that even the relative conflict between the intellectual and the ethical which seemed 2D 402 His Personal Sanctions to arise under the hedonic sanction (Sect. 253) is seldom real. The pursuit of the dictates of self-interest may seem to represent a form of rational conduct in full opposition to the forms enjoined by the ethical sanction. The sanction of success may be enormously developed in an individual and in a society, without a corresponding devel- opment of the ethical. This refinement of individualism would now seem to be in some degree abnormal. Such intellectual development, as far as it is self-interested, must involve normally the conscious violation of the rights of other persons, and so must arouse some ethi- cal feeling after such an individual has once come to be ethical. Pure intellectualism may arise, as we saw, before the conditions are such that the ethical is devel- oped ; but after that, the very violation of moral require- ments the very antithesis which we are discussing is, in the individual consciousness, a lively sense of the ethical sanction. The sanction is then negative, as re- morse, sense of ill-desert for the outrage done to the imperative ; but it is ethical. The very dissatisfaction at- taching to success is evidence that success is no longer the only sanction which consciousness has come to recognize. 261. The relation of this sanction to the other and lower ones, together with the variations which these rela- tions may show, suggest interesting problems for the moral pathologist and the criminologist. The latter sci- ence, criminology, has to deal with the social applications and bearing of the ethical sanction, to which we come again below; but there are certain derangements of the individual's private moral life which may lie at the foun- dation of his public conduct, and these it may be well to point out very briefly. The Sanction of Right 403 The pathology of the moral: life seems- ta be, 'like mental pathology generally - apart from hereditary de- fect in the same direction, simply lack of normal organ- ization or systematization of experience. The works of recent pathologists find in impairment of mental synthesis or organization the method of decay, and psychologists find the relative success of the particular mind or of the particular mental function in effecting unity of attention and thought, the measure of sanity and of moral probity. 1 The work of the French pathologists, headed by Charcot, 2 has shown that alterations of personality, will, moral sense, etc., are due to the falling apart of the material of acquisition into different or disaggregated centres and syntheses : to the failure in ability to get hold by attention of all the material of experience and memory, and so to order life from the basis of the whole. The sort of mental disease found, in each case, depends upon the sphere or class of the experiences in which the disintegration takes place. In the ethical sphere dis- ease manifests itself when the synthesis of social and personal materials, necessary to the form of organiza- tion called the personal self, is not normally effected. Diseases in the moral life are essentially diseases of self-consciousness. And all diseases of self-conscious- ness are moral diseases, in so far as they disturb the sense of social and moral values by impairing the ideal thought of self, or the normal subordination of the par- tial thoughts of self to this ideal. All these perturba- 1 I have gathered evidence for this general position in my Mental De- velopment, Chap. XIII., making much use of the researches of M. Pierre Janet (Automatisme Psychologique) on the pathological side. 2 Charcot, Lemons sur Us Maladies Mentales ; cf. Binet, Alterations of Personality. 404 His Personal Sanctions tions find direct social reference in the disturbance of balance between the sense of the alter in relation to the ego, and misadjustments in their common relation- ships in the community. In practical cases many interesting instances show the reality of this sort of disturbance and the havoc which it plays with the balance of sanctions in the moral life. The individual may become exalted in his thought of his personal self, with a corresponding debasement of the alter and violation of social and ethical rules. Or he becomes melancholic, through debasement of self, with correspondingly exaggerated sense of the impor- tance, domination, persecution, etc., of others. In these cases, the intellect is likely to be sharpened into cunning and subterfuge at the expense, and in consequence of the failure, of the ethical. There is always a tendency, through the general loosing of the bonds of higher inhi- bition and synthesis, to lapse back into the life of craft and impulse. There results often a creature of impulse and suggestion. His fixed idea leads the rest of his mental life a wild chase ; or the failure even of one idea to intrench itself firmly leads to the general besot- ting of the powers in a life of animality. All sorts and varieties of pathological conditions arise, and the general concept of the anti-social comes in to play its important part, and to set the social problems which arise about the criminal insane. 1 1 So also the case, spoken of in Sect. 201, in which the relative balance between the private and public ingredients in the ideal self is disturbed. CHAPTER X His SOCIAL SANCTIONS: SOCIAL OPPOSITION 262. THE social sanctions are those reasons for action which bear in upon the individual from the social environ- ment. They are the influences which have become in some way representative in social life, and which consti- tute the more important elements in the moral atmosphere of the group in which a particular individual lives. It will be remembered that we have already had a concept similar to this in the matter of so-called ' social heredity,' 1 except that social heredity has reference to the bearing in of these influences upon the individual to affect his inherent and normal personal growth ; that is, social heredity describes the individual's indebtedness to the social influences and the method of his reception of them. It does not attempt, however, to define the specific forms which they take on as motive influences in the mind of the individual. Nevertheless to answer the question of social sanction is to carry further the theory of social heredity. We have also had before us another topic which comes into close connection with the present one : the topic of the 'social aids to invention.' 2 These 'aids' we found to be certain instruments of social use which the child ac- quires, and which serve as indispensable helps to his 1 Chap. II., I. 2 Chap. IV. 405 406 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition growth into the social heritage. The conclusions, as well as the methods of analysis of the section on ' social aids,' may be taken as showing the channels through which the social environment administers its lessons for the indi- vidual's growth especially, it will be recalled, in the great spheres of language, literature, art, and play. 263. Allowing these more or less adequate develop- ments, therefore, to set us our further problem, we find the task now before us somewhat shortened. It becomes the question : what are the leading objective categories of social life through which the elements of the individual's ' social heritage ' have crystallized into representative insti- tutions during the growth of society ? and in what way do these institutions normally exercise sanctions upon the active life of the individuals ? We find, as a matter of fact, the following sets of insti- tutions in society, each exerting in its own way a sanction upon the acts of individuals : Institutions exercising Social Sanctions 1. Natural. 3. Civil. 2. Pedagogical and Conventional. 4. Religious. These different types of institutions we may pass briefly in review, not at all for purposes of description nor of theory, but simply to show the way in which they do, as a matter of fact, bear in upon each member of the com- munity and afford him more or less urgent sanctions for his conduct. i. The Natural Sanctions 264. By the 'natural' institutions of society I mean those sorts of social organization which arise directly out The Natural Sanctions 407 of the nature of man. Such, primarily, is the family. The relationships of the family are typical of a set of in- fluences which have already been briefly indicated. They are characterized by natural esprit de corps. The family esprit de corps has such a firm root in the breast of the individual that family action is as necessary to him as action in his own private interest. The naturalness of such action from family esprit de corps is seen in the powerful place it has in animal life. The natural sanctions extend, however, beyond the family. The influence of kinship may be traced out into all the ramifications of blood-relationship. Not only so, but a similar natural bond, which the historians of society trace back to the family, extends to the various natural aggregations into which the social body falls at different periods in its development from the family to the village community, then through the various stages of tribal and patriarchal organization. This we need not dwell upon. Nor is it necessary to follow the development through the more enlightened periods for which we have the historical records from the feudal in Europe, the civic unit in Greece, and the other forms of restricted communal organization all based upon the natural bond, up into the forms of higher political and social institutions. This esprit de corps shows itself also sentimentally in patriotism, race feeling, colour prejudice, etc. Students of philosophy, also, need not to be reminded that the race was many ages getting its concept of uni- versal brotherhood. The distinction of Jew and Gentile, bond and free, Greek and Barbarian, in its innumerable forms, is not yet entirely obsolete in the popular mind. National spirit is only a form of natural esprit de c.orps. 408 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition Each successive widening of the bond only serves to show its reality. The family bond remains, although the family relationship is no longer massgebend for all social organiza- tion, nor prohibitory of wider social attachments. Civic pride, which in our modern life is near to family pride, yet allows the wider forms of natural organization to per- fect themselves beside it. National life, with all its fly- ing of flags and blowing of horns, nevertheless does not supersede the family nor the city attachments; nor does it altogether deaden that most sublime of all the natural senti- ments, the sentiment of humanity and universal brother- hood. So not only has this natural social sanction had its history ; it has become more varied and influential the far- ther down in history we trace the evolution of humanity. 265. It is only a step further to recognize the forms of sanction which the natural esprit dc corps of man brings to the life of the individual, reflecting themselves in his conduct as immediate reasons for his action. They are generally unconscious or subconscious. We do not hear a man questioning with himself as to whether he shall expose himself to the weather for his child, nor whether he shall go out to defend his city. The school hero whom we had occasion to cite before does not ask the question which school his own or the one around the corner is more worthy of his devotion and of his fists. And hav- ing settled that point on more direct grounds than argu- ment, he does not fall to arguing before he pitches into the town boy who reviles the school which he himself has just before attacked. So it is in the larger affairs of the adult, who fights for country when country is attacked; for race when race questions succeed those of country ; for family when its honour is impugned ; for himself when The Natural Sanctions 409 his brother treads upon his rights. He does it all with the spontaneity which shows the action in each case to be natural in the most intimate sense of the word. Its naturalness is its justification. To say that he has no justification is to say that things which are not natural to him might yet come to him with a stronger appeal. The only solution in such a case is the solution of a conflict of sanctions a condition which is common enough. But admitting that men do act on these direct natural sanctions, the important further question then is : what relation does this social or public sanction have to his own private sanctions, those which we have been pointing out in the preceding chapter? This question introduces us to the line of inquiries which bring in a contrast between the sanctions and actions upon sanctions of the individual's own nature and those of society ; a topic which serves to focus the main theoretical positions of the earlier chap- ters. I shall, therefore, take it up here, and also again in connection with each of the sorts of social sanction which we have to consider. 266. What relation, then, exists between the natural sanctions for actions done from family and other forms of esprit de corps, and the private sanctions which the individual has for his personal acts ? Evidently these are not two classes, but one. It is clear that in actions done from natural esprit de corps, the individual is acting simply and only from impulse. The fact that he does not reason, that he does not hesitate, nor ask even for ethical or social justification these facts show that he is now in the region of just that form of compulsion which we called, in the consideration of his impulses, the sanction of 'necessity.' T9 be sure, the arena of his action is now a different one ; 4iQ His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition it is now the social arena. His action has reference to a wider circle, family, school, league, city, state, and he is conscious of this reference. The content of his consciousness is different, for his mind is filled up with the being or beings for whom he is acting. But that does not alter the fact that the sanction is simply that of impulse. To make it anything else is to say that he appeals to other sources of influence for his reasons ; and it is quite impossible to point out any other sources. When we ask him why he fights for his brother, he re- plies simply, as was said above, ' because he is my brother.' He cannot tell you by what law a man should defend his brother. He may be quite willing, indeed, to confess that his brother is, from the point of view of reason- able desert and ethical worth, quite unworthy of his pains; but then he still fights for his brother ! The sanctions drawn from more remote social regions or from the re- gions of his own higher social and ethical nature simply fail of application. He acts because he must, and there he stands, saying with that devotion to his personal nature which Luther put in words for all time : ' I can do no otherwise.' We have seen reasons, in our study, for the coincidence between this form of social sanction and that of the individual's impulsive nature. The instincts of natural affection, of natural esprit de corps, are engrained in the very nervous organization of man. They stand on the basis of private possessions to him, much as his more self-seeking and defensive reactions do. Their relation to the other and, in many ways, higher influences of life are just those which subsist between all his impulses and his higher sanctions, the relation spoken of above, The Natural Sanctions 4 1 j where something was said of the interaction between the different forms of personal sanction. The conclusion, then, to which we come in reference to the relation between natural social sanctions and personal sanctions is this : that the former are identical with the sanction of necessity in the personal sphere. There are not two spheres of personal action in this realm of spon- taneous conduct, one private and the other social ; the antithesis is a false one ; there is only one sphere, that of the sanction of necessity. The social reference of the action is as natural to the individual as are his private references; and the sanction is one. 267. A case illustrating the extreme force of these natural sanctions perhaps the most striking case is found in the care taken by parents for the next genera- tion. " Why is it," we are asked, " that a man will sub- mit to all sorts of social restrictions, will work his fingers to the bone, will deny himself comforts and necessities, that he may lay by money for his children ? " It is not the sanction merely of personal success or happiness that prompts him, for that would lead him to calculate the chances on the basis of reflective egoism, in most or all cases, and, if carried to an extreme, lead to the neglect of his children or to the suppression of the family instinct, that there might be no next generation at all. But we do not find men acting commonly in that way. The sanc- tion of the impulsive nature comes in first to decree other- wise. The denial of that would, as the event shows, be to most men harder and lead to more distressing conse- quences especially when we come to see that the family instincts are immensely reinforced from the social im- pulses as well than the gratification of it. 412 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition Nor can it be called unreasonable to indulge it. The sanction even of intelligence is not, as a matter of fact, necessarily on the side of egoism ; this we have already seen. Purely selfish and egoistic action is the exception ; and considering the entire equipment of the average man, *'/ is unreasonable. On the contrary, the intelligence comes to ally itself normally with the impulses of social and family life. The care of children, with all the social consequences which it entails, is as deep-seated as the impulse to think. 1 The measure of intelligence, in these matters, is seen in the degree to which the self which is identified with the end of desire and choice is the full self, with all its normal springs of action. 2 It is intelligent to act for this self ; and this self is also, as these social impulses show, in great measure such a social self as is the father of children. 1 Phylogenetically, of course, it is more so. 2 See Chap. IX., 3, 5. The claim (cf. Kidd, Social Evolution) that action for posterity has no ' rational sanction ' contains a further confusion arising from the failure to distinguish betsveen the ' philosophical ' and the ' subjective ' ends attributed alternatively to the actor. To the utilitarian or hedonistic theorist the gain would be on the side of the suppression of the sexual instinct, for example: philosophically that would be 'rational'; but to the actor, himself, the only real end present before him is the psychological end which the instinct itself brings up. If he has no other strongly impelling end in consciousness, how could he 'rationally' adopt any other? The only practical result from his considering family life irrational in case he adopts the philosophical or the hedonistic sanction arises from the possibility of his adopting preventive measures before the natural sanctions arise in force; that of taking occasion, while he is not socially moved, to provide for his own ' rationality ' when his social movings come on. There must be something of this kind at work in what we may call the diminishing family returns among the higher classes, and in France notably among the people, as statistics re- port. It seems to be due to a mixture of pessimistic social philosophy with practical hedonism; a combination of sanctions which being possible in indi- viduals would, in the case of such a question, have direct results upon society. The Pedagogical and Conventional Sanctions 413 When, indeed, the thought of self has once become ethi- cal, the extreme egoistic reference of the intelligence is normally inhibited in this sphere as in others. 2. The Pedagogical and Conventional Sanctions 268. The second class of social institutions which claim our attention are those which we may describe as peda- gogical, in the broadest sense. The word has reference to the training of the individual member of society for his place and activities in life. It is evident, from a survey of society, that such institutions play an important place in the social economy, that they bring a most important series of sanctions to bear upon every sane member of the community. With these go also the ' conventional ' institutions, by which I mean those which owe their continuance to pub- lic opinion, economic and industrial necessities, etc., stop- ping short of the legal and civil, which have executive agencies to enforce their enactments. No detail of the institutions of education or convention is necessary here, since the sanctions which they bring are the same in kind, whatever be the varieties of organi- zation which they show. The school, the university, the apprentice's bench, the clerk's desk, the business rule, all require the individual to submit to certain regulations, both positive and negative in nature, which are vital to his success in becoming an effective member of so- ciety, in the way which his choice of life-conditions pre- scribes. These ways, in which the fact of having to learn in order to act comes to set the reasons for the actual course which the person pursues, are the essential 414 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition considerations to us now ; and the ' reasons ' themselves are social sanctions. 269. For preliminary purposes, we may contrast the cases of action from these influences into two great classes : the actions of submission to regulations to which the person is compelled to submit, on the one hand ; and those, on the other hand, to which he voluntarily or spon- taneously submits. The latter class, it is evident, will include many sorts of restraint, discipline, etc., to which it is necessary that he should submit ; but the fact that he chooses to do so voluntarily suffices to throw them into the second class mentioned. 1 First, as to the influences of an educational kind in the broadest sense to which the individual social learner bows his head submissively that he may learn. These actions evidently belong to the pedagogical discipline, which comes rather late in life, when the student or social actor has free choice of the course he intends to pursue, and of the means, degree of excellence, etc., which appear to him good. The reason that we find it well to throw all these influences together for remark, is that they are not in any sense peculiarly social influences after the individual has once made them personal to him- self by choosing them. This is the more evident when we throw the consideration of them on the side of sanc- tion. The sanction becomes at once personal, in becom- ing the conscious reason on which the individual acts, although they remain also social. They are always social, since they are the prescriptions which society 1 Many of the regulations to which he is compelled to submit fall under the class of ' civil sanctions' (see Sect. 275), a class which cannot be separated by any strict division from the present, as the final result will show. The 'Pedagogical and Conventional Sanctions 415 makes for success in this or that career. But it is not as social prescriptions that the individual pursues them ; nor are the sanctions which society brings to bear on him operative only because they are prescriptions of society. By making choice of this line or act of conduct, he sets them up in his own mind as objects of desire; and thus makes himself, in these particular spheres of action, liable to the personal sanction of desire. The consideration already given in the earlier section (Chap. IX., 3) to the sanction of desire, therefore, covers this case also. And we may at once say that, as for the social prescriptions of a pedagogical or conventional kind, which the individual voluntarily embraces as objects of desire, they are without further change personal prescrip- tions, and so have his personal sanction. Any antithesis between the social and the individual in regard to these influences, and the actions to which they lead, is ip so facto impossible. 270. Passing, then, to certain remaining pedagogical influences, those to which the individual submits by example or by suggestion, without choice or without knowing that he is under them, we have to inquire into the kinds of sanction which they bring, and the re- lation of these to his personal ones. It may be well to indicate the fact that this class and the foregoing are not mutually exclusive in their actual range with different individuals, or even in the case of a single individual. The same social prescriptions may be accepted voluntarily by one man, and rejected by another; such cases are common enough. And the same prescription may be now accepted and now rejected by the same man. In disposing, therefore, of the class of cases already spoken 4i 6 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition of, we have not settled the place of any particular social regulation ; we have merely found that, in all cases of a certain conscious attitude, on the part of the actor, toward a regulation of whatever kind, his sanction is then deter- mined by his attitude. In this second case that is, in cases in which this atti- tude is absent we have a series of interesting instances. All the phenomena of social heredity, already spoken of in detail, come in here ; phenomena which show the child or adult absorbing without effort or explicit choice the details of his social birthright, from the earliest lessons in deport- ment to the last imitative responses which he makes to the 'copies' in style, dress, opinion, etc., of those about him, and in all the larger spheres of literature, art, political opinion, humane and philanthropic sentiment, and general social conformity. What are the sanctions for these per- formances ? 271. There are two general concepts which have about equal application to these phenomena ; both concepts with which we are now fairly familiar. These instances of action seem to get their sanction about equally from the individual's 'social emotion as such' as we have found it well to call it (Chap. VI., 4) on the one hand, and from his sensitiveness to ' public opinion ' on the other hand. By ' social emotion as such,' it will be remembered, we understood the phenomena of collective action, contagion of feeling, mob-influence, etc., which is a favourite topic just now with psychologically inclined writers on social themes. Our earlier examination of the phenomena enables us to give these factors of collective action their' right place with reference to the individual. We came to the con- The Pedagogical and Conventional Sanctions 417 elusion that the phenomena are only exaggerated instances of the gregarious tendency or impulse, upon which all social life rests, and consequently that they arise through the imi- tative relation. This is the type of function to which all these tendencies may be reduced. 1 The whole growth of the individual, both in his instruction and in his inven- tion, proceeds by imitation. It is the law of his acquisi- tion. The socially characteristic attitude in man must, whatever else it include, include the impulse or instinct to imitate. Once give this impulse a chance to operate without restraint or with encouragement in a group of men, and free action of the collective or co-operative type results. Besides the opportunities to show itself afforded to this impulse by collective suggestion, the extreme case being mob-action, the sphere of education gives it all the while its chance to get in its work. In education, not only is imitation not restrained ; it is, on the contrary, constantly appealed to and encouraged. The child that does not imitate does not learn. It is only a short step, therefore, to the conclusion that the individual's reason for acting in accordance with the educational and conventional prescrip- tions is simply that he feels moved to imitate spontaneously whenever he can ; and his reason, that is his sanction. 272. The same follows, also, from the analysis of the individual's process of conceiving himself. It would be trite to repeat that the sense of self grows by constant absorption from the personality suggestions thrown in the way of the child by his social fellows. He must learn of his fellows if he would grow in knowledge of him- self. But the only way that he can learn of his fellows is 1 See also below, Chap. XII., 4. 2E 4i 8 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition by doing what they do, so as to fed as they feel and know what they know. Again, the only way after he has made his imitative interpretations in his own self-thought that he can enrich the personalities of others with the same attributes, is to read back imitatively into them the things he knows about himself. The point of value to us now is this : that both of these are imitative processes. They proceed by imitative steps ; and the real sanction that the child or man has for all the acts of general social con- formity, represented by his personal emotions and atti- tudes, is the sanction which his imitation expresses. Imitation, however, is an impulsive and spontaneous thing. In all the forms of action to which it gives rise it falls under the head of impulse, and so has the sanction that impulse in general has : the sanction of psychologi- cal necessity. 1 We reach the conclusion, therefore, that the sanction of all those elements of action, in the pedagogical realm, which spring from the spontaneous conformities of the individual to the imitative lessons of the social body the sanction of all these actions is necessity ; and we come round again to the personal type of sanction. 273. The same reduction to the personal sanction holds also, it is just as well to say at once, of the other ingre- dient in these acts of educational and conventional con- formity : the element spoken of above as the influence of public opinion. This has already been described and treated in connection with social and ethical sentiment. 2 1 Where it becomes voluntary, as in ' persistent ' imitation and volition, it falls under the foregoing head, i.e., under action having the personal sanction of desire. 'Chap. VIII., 2,3. The Pedagogical and Conventional Sanctions 419 The word ' publicity ' has been used to describe the social reference which characterizes ethical actions. Its place in the growth of the ethical and social sense has been indicated ; and we have only to recall the position which the alter thought holds in all the personal development of a man, to see that public opinion gets its sanction not from the fact that it is public (in an objective sense, as common or open to all men), but from the fact that it is privately conceived to be public (has publicity ascribed to it in the individual's private thought). All social know- ledge must have both public and private value to me, if it is to have any influence on my actions in the way of giving them sanction. The private aspect then makes the sanc- tion personal. To make this plain, we may recall the truths that even in the spontaneous period of action the child cannot treat others with the deference due to personality the defer- ence due to their opinion, his public's opinion without taking the personal attitudes which make the thought of the alter, of the public, also the thought of himself. His thought of an act, as good, or sanctioned, for them to perform, is necessarily the thought of it as also good, sanctioned, for him to perform. It is good to perform, that is as far as he goes ; and it is a matter of indifference whether the performer be he or they. This follows from the oneness of the sense of self. When we track the matter of public opinion into the intellectual period, we find it possible again to utilize at once our earlier results. The sense of public opinion may be distinguished from the simple fact of public opin- ion. Public opinion may influence a man's intellectual processes, although he may not be thinking with refer- 420 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition ence to public opinion, nor even know that it is influ- encing him. Each such case is one or other of those just considered : either a case of unconscious social conformity by imitation, so falling under the sanction of impulse, or a case of social and ethical judgment and sentiment which falls under the sanction of desire. But the man may act with explicit reference to public opinion in one or more of certain other ways which we have come to recognize. Either he acts with a view to changing, appeasing, persuading, his fellow-men, in which case his action has again the personal sanction of desire, or he acts from the vantage-ground of more or less adequate knowledge of others' approval or con- demnation. This latter case proceeds upon the analysis just made above, where we found that his sense of another's judgment involved himself, as passing the same judgment through the reciprocity of the relation of the ego and alter personalities. This makes the sanction, now ethical, a personal one. We come upon it again later, in considering the more ethical influences which society exerts upon the individual. Or yet again, the man may act with a view to utilizing public opinion, or some other form of social influence, for some indirect personal end, a process which we have described at some length as characterizing the child's advent into the intelligent period. This, it is clear, brings the influence of public opinion out of the social sphere alto- gether into that of private ends ; and makes the sanction again clearly one of desire. So we have to conclude that the influence of public opinion is exerted entirely through sanctions private to the individual in the first instance, however common they The Civil Sanctions 421 may be to different individuals; and that, in this realm, the antithesis between personal and social sanctions is again false, since there are no exclusively social sanctions as such. 274. There remains only one other aspect of the peda- gogical problem which bears upon this matter of sanction : that of the compulsory social conformities. There are certain things which the child and the adult must learn in order to live socially ; just as there are some things which he must do certain duties to society in order to live. The things of his learning, however, fall really in the other category, that of doing. Learning is a thing that he must do. And as the sanctions of our next cate- gory, called the ' civil ' sanctions, take cognizance of these cases of doing in the compulsory meaning of the term, this sort of learning may be brought up again under that head. 3. The Civil Sanctions 275. We come now to consider those great institutions of social life which exist from generation to generation as monuments to what is most human : institutions of gov- ernment, law, justice, etc. It is evident, of course, that we cannot attempt within the limits of the present essay even if we were prepared to do so to develop a philosophy of these great permanent social and political institutions. The very classification of them together in the scheme of treatment now proposed shows that it is only a single aspect of them which is to be brought forward. That aspect is their sanction aspect, so to speak. And the justification of the grouping together of things otherwise so disparate is here. I mean to say that the 422 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition sphere of all those institutions of a social kind to which the individual must submit as a good citizen and to which he must still submit in a more imperative sense if he be a bad citizen is the same from the point of view of their sanction, which we may call the ' civil sanction.' The question which comes before us, therefore, in this connection concerns the nature of this civil sanction. Do we find here, in the things which society and its institu- tions require of the individual man, a reason or sanction for action which is distinctively social, that is, a sanction for which the individual has no equivalent in his own nature as a personal actor ? 276. At first sight, it looks as though we should have to answer this question in the affirmative. And those who are familiar with the socialistic literature of the pres- ent day will see that the affirmative answer to this ques- tion is the first and unanimous assumption of modern socialism. It is, of course, characteristic of the nihilistic and anarchistic positions to claim that society represents in its great institutions of law, justice, vested property, etc., a great power which is enforcing its regulations upon the individual against his will, and, in many cases, against his reason and judgment. It is as well to recognize the extreme form of this doctrine in order to trace it also in the milder forms in which it presents itself in socialism. The socialistic propaganda to-day seems to me to get its strength from two elements in its teaching : first, its real return to individualism : that is, its full recognition of the autonomy of the individual, acting under the personal form of sanction ; and second, its supposition of a real antithesis between the interests and sanctions of the indi- vidual and those of the social group as society is at The Civil Sanctions 423 present constituted. The first of these elements is seen in the assumption that the individual is capable of gov- erning himself without the compulsory machinery by which society administers the accumulated and still de- veloping wisdom of the ages. This position, of course, opens the socialist doctrine to the criticism that the indi- vidual is a very poor creature after all, and to trust him to do better, after he has undone the work of the past, is not convenient. Yet I do not care to discuss this question, since it is the other element of the socialistic position which principally concerns us. This other element the assumption that there is a real antithesis between the demands made upon a man by the civil order of the time and the demands of his own nature seems to me to be present in all this modern development. And there must be in some sense a real antithesis here, since these writers seem to illustrate such an antithesis in their own personal attitude. 1 The relations of the individual to his social environment are such, however, that we are led to make two state- ments, under which we should expect the different aspects of the case to fall, if our previous discussions have brought us to correct views. These we may state and then de- velop, in view of the asserted antithesis between the two factors. 1 It should be said, in order not to be unjust, that the socialistic ideal involves only the first assumption : that of complete harmony between the individual in society and the central bureau by which he would allow the collective affairs to be administered. But it is just this assumption which his practical attitude toward civil institutions seems to contradict. Such an ideal could be approached only by some show of harmonious action on the part of the two interests, through which society and the individual might grow together toward their common goal. 424 His Social Sanctions : Sofia/ Opposition I. We find reason for distinguishing between the average man and the exceptional man ; the man socially normal on the one hand ; and, on the other hand, the man socially remarkable, such as the genius at one extreme of mental variation and the mentally defective at the other. II. The antithesis between the sanctions of the civil and those of a personal kind arise only to the exceptional man, or to the exceptional judgments of the average man. 277. We may consider first the ' average man ' with reference to both of these statements, dwelling a little on the first ; for, while no one would deny that there are average men and exceptional men, yet the sense in which it is to be enforced below requires that it be clearly under- stood from the social and ethical points of view. I. The socially ' average ' man is the man who passes normally through the stages of social learning represented by the pedagogical sanctions already spoken of. We saw, in asking as to the qualifications of the candidate for the heritage which society offers, that they were two : he must be born to /earn, and all must be born to learn the same things. 1 Only on the assumption of these qualifications in the individuals is the development of social institutions at all possible. For, as we also saw, if a large proportion of the young of any generation should be born to rebel against the pedagogical sanctions of their group, or with strains of heredity which make it impossible for them to profit by the teachings of society, so soon must society go to pieces ; unless, indeed, it have some resource apart from the appeal to individuals for the enforcement of the sanctions which its organization prescribes. There must always be an average person who represents two things : Chap. II, I. The Civil Sanctions 425 first, the degree of social hereditary endowment which normally develops in the channels of established social usage and requirement; and second, he must represent in his mature opinions the usages, sympathies, and formu- lated demands of social conformity as such. This latter requirement is more difficult to see, but it is real. The development of the ethical, and of the pecul- iarly social sense which goes with the ethical, gives that ' publicity ' to the ideal judgments of the individual which, it will be remembered, means that the public knows of the private act and agrees with the private agent in his judg- ment of it. This is a necessary thing in all the maturer members of society. The decrees of society get their pas- sage, in the first instance, only through the recognition by many individuals of this publicity of judgment with the objective agreements upon which it rests. They then pass into legal enactments and so become crystallized in institutions. But back of them there still remain, and must remain, the individuals who represent just the aver- age social attainment embodied in the public civil" enact- ments. In these individuals, who establish the social level, so to speak, society finds the court of appeal ; not as indi- viduals, but as the standard bearers, in their collective or public capacity, of her own standards. Of course, the two qualifications of the average individual are not dis- tinct ; it is only through the first that he gets the second. Only through his pedagogical training can he grow into the judgments, sentiments, etc., which make him finally a fit bearer of the public standards of his time. And the psychological reader will see the meaning of it all in the individual's own development. It is the essential growth 426 His Social Sanctions : Social Opposition of his personality which is concerned in the attaining of social conformity of personal judgment, in the first in- stance ; and his growth into that ' publicity ' of judgment, which makes him at once a loyal supporter of the social institutions of his day and place, is an equally essential and momentous phase of his personal development. 278. II. The second of our points may be raised in reference to this average man. Can there be an antith- esis between the social sanctions under which his life of conformity is lived, and the personal sanctions which his own nature lays down ? Is it possible that he may conform to the civil enactments of his country and time under protest of his personal nature ? We have in this matter one of the most subtle phases of the developed social consciousness, and we may not hope to say anything final. I think, however, that the distinctions now made serve to give us the main lines of a partial answer. The distinction between the normal and the exceptional has to be carried further in two ways. i. First, indivitjuals vary in their normal, about one or other of the personal standards of sanction which all have in common. We have already remarked that some prefer the intellectual sanction ; in them it rules the impulsive, and, in some degree, also the ethical. Others, on the contrary, naturally live lives of impulse ; while a third class exhibit a most refined ethical sensitiveness. This distinction in individuals within the class of aver- age men represents one possibility of a conflict between the social and the personal sanctions ; that shown by the theorist or dissenter as such. Here is the man who argues about society on the basis of the intellectual sanc- tion alone. The majority of socialistic writers to take The Civil Sanctions 427 one case only seem to me to fall here : men who them- selves represent, in their training, the average which comes from a life of normal social conformity, and who generally represent standard judgments also, as to the usages and customs of society ; but who proceed to reason beyond these standards by their application of the intel- lectual sanction to problems which do not permit of purely intellectual solutions. For their argumentation does vio- lence to other sanctions which are still in force, and upon which the institutions of society are built. The important thing to be noted in this case is more than the antithesis between the social and the personal ; it is the antithesis between the two sorts of personal sanction. There is an average social judgment, but it is unsupported by the intellect: a conflict of personal sanctions results. The individual theorist gets a result from the joint action of his personal sanctions, different from that which the average man gets ; an adjustment in favour of new intel- lectual conclusions, with their social corollaries. This leads him to raise his voice, on intellectual grounds, in opposition to the existing social order ; at the same time that his personal endorsement of the social sanctions keeps him within the sphere of practical conformity. As an extreme example of this interesting strife of sanctions we find the anarchist. Here is a man whose in- tellectual, hedonic, or economic sanctions lead him into open rebellion against the social order. He seems to me, however, to fall outside the class of average men, since his private reproduction of current social sanctions is so inadequate. 279. 2. The second way in which the distinction between the average and the exceptional gets application, in the 428 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition sphere still of the average class, is in the judgments of the single individual himself. The average man's judgments vary from the usual to the exceptional. Here is the com- mon case of the hobby. Many of us are practically insane on some one topic. Our friends grant us indulgence when we strike our hobby. The psychology of hobbies is well written ; it is the case of a preferred apperceptive system grown to an inordinate size. And it is not difficult to con- strue it in terms of the play of sanctions. A man may see so clearly the reasons for a thing be they personal, social, intellectual, ethical that he allows that thing to overshadow in his mind other things for which he would also see the sanction if he once gave their thought a chance. 1 And inasmuch as these other things do get a chance in the minds of others, and perhaps get a more urgent sanc- tion than the one thing upon which his thought dwells, he comes into conflict with them and their institutions. The current revolt fortunately largely literary and theoretical against marriage is a capital case in point. The senti- mental sanction which the emotional life seems sometimes to give to the violation of the law of marriage gets, in the mind of Mr. Grant Allen, to take an instance of one who, by publishing his opinions, has made himself fair play for criticism, an importance which justifies a revolt against the social prescriptions of established society. The social sanctions for marriage seen in the existence and separate life of the family with all that this means to the theory of social sanctions, especially in its pedagogical and ethical aspects, all this is overweighed in the mind of such a writer, we may suppose, by the sanction of a 1 Or his opinions may have in his mind the ' sanction pf truth,' which, however, should be viewed in a larger whole of truth, The Civil Sanctions 429 personal kind represented by the opinion: la mariage, cest r injustice. But this is not primarily an antithesis between social and personal sanctions ; it is rather again a controversy among different sanctions arising about a particular problem, in the mind of an individual who is, in other respects, a man of conformity to the judgments which the institutions of society represent. In so far as it does come to the test of argument between men, it fur- nishes a case of the opposition between the intellectual and the social sanctions, to be spoken of again below. There is here also a form of conflict which takes its rise in the ' private opposition ' of the individual, whether from contrary suggestion, exaggerated self-competence, or mere love of social contrast between himself and others ; a set of phenomena pointed out in an earlier place. 1 This con- flict is quite on the plane of private impulse, except in so far as it takes on intellectual and ethical form. The sanc- tion for such actions of private opposition is, therefore, in any case, personal. 280. The general conclusion already intimated seems just, therefore, that so far as the average man is concerned, his sanctions are not of two kinds, one set social and the other set personal, between which there arises chronic or acute opposition ; but on the contrary, he has only one set of sanctions, those which he regards as his own. The actual oppositions which do arise in his life and opinion are rather apropos of questions regarding which he finds room for discussion, and for the more thoroughgoing appli- cation of the intellectual sanction. 281. 3. Before we leave the consideration of the aver- age man, however, a single further point may be indicated. i Chap. VI, 4. 430 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition We see that, so far from finding opposition between the social requirements of life and his personal sanctions for conduct, his tendency is quite in the opposite direction. As a general thing, he lives so well under the shadow of the social roof, that a certain social discount is put upon originality of view, and more still upon originality of action. The average man is reduced to the size of the social crevice into which his rearing and his obedience have thrust him. So far from finding it a trial to con- form to society's requirements, he finds himself in tor- ment when he is forced out of them. There is a certain benumbing effect upon the individuals in this social rela- tionship ; an effect which is conspicuous in the type of attitude already called 'conservatism.' This great force in society becomes crystallized in a prevalent spirit of con- ventional conformity to type, and a certain veneration for age and rule which make social excellence out of the average, and put a discount on progress. If further evi- dence were needed to prove the absence of opposition between the social and the personal sanction in general, and in the average man, it would be found in this con- servatism. It becomes a habit of mind. It makes a virtue of dulness and a vice of invention. It is but another case of that tendency of which we have seen several examples before, the general tendency to social inertia and habit. It is largely in reference to this, it seems, that the intellectual opposition between the personal and the social, as just pointed out, gets its development. The oppositions which arise through the use of intelligence upon social and political questions is first of all joined in an issue with the formulations of the conservative The Civil Sanctions 431 extreme. And many of the oppositions really cease there. The opposition is very sharp, however, in many cases ; and it is often in the intolerance of conservatism, with its social tradition, that ' radicalism ' finds its oppor- tunity. I do not mean to take up again 1 these two opposed forces in social and political life, a topic worthy, however, of fuller consideration, but only to point out that the actual opposition of the acute kind seen in political strife, and in the many controversies which have marked the path of human progress through the ages, has had much of its motive in the artificial intensity of these two habits of mind. Real as may be the opposition of the intelligence and its sanctions to the established forms of government, religion, and social convention, and its reality is of the first im- portance for the life and progress of the social as such when the intelligence is on the side of the higher and the ethical, yet it must not be considered as finding its true measure in the tide of passion arrayed on the side of one or other of these two habitual attitudes of mankind. 282. Coming now to the exceptional men, we have a very different state of things. Men may be social ex- ceptions in many different ways ; and possibly the best method of describing some of them as well as the shortest way of answering our question in reference to them is by looking first at the cases for which society has special or exceptional forms of treatment. It would, of course, be impossible to deny opposition between the personal and the social sanctions for conduct in cases in which society takes direct cognizance of just this op- 1 Cf. what has been said on 'conservatism' and ' liberalism,' above, Chap. V., 3- 43 2 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition position. The treatment may be brief, however, seeing that some of these social variations have already been mentioned. 1 First of all, there are the defective classes. These do not recognize the regulations of society simply because they cannot. Their presence does not affect the progress of society, because they are not elements in society one way or the other. They are a problem for society to use its wits on, that it may carry them with as little loss of energy as possible ; that is all. Among the defectives we may include all kinds of defect, physical, mental, and moral, up to the cases in which the defect becomes of actual or threatened damage to others in some way ; in this case, we begin to have various sorts of violent and criminal persons. These, again, society deals summarily with. The opposition is real ; but it is not fruitful. And what I mean by saying that it is not fruitful is this : that these men have no following, they do not rep- resent an influence of vitality to come into opposition to the organizing and reducing forces of society. They fur- nish problems both to society and to the individual, but neither finds in them an ally. 283. Yet there is one interesting aspect of the defect recognized as moral, which brings it in some degree within the range of our earlier topics. Crime is con- tagious. Crime is a defect which becomes, from the sphere in which it develops, essentially anti-social. So the contagion of it, the following that it gets from the fact of ' plastic imitation ' already spoken of, leads to a semi-organized revolt, in some cases, against the highest sanctions of society. It is clear, however, that such 1 Above, Chap. II., 3. The Civil Sanctions 433 movements of contagion in crime, as similar movements in the acts of the mob, fall within the sphere of impulse in the individual's consciousness. That is all that need be added to what has already been said. 1 284. There remain, however, two great classes of the 'exceptional.' They are the intellectually exceptional and the ethically exceptional. When we come to put the question whether in these there is any opposition between the personal and the social sanctions, certain truths imme- diately come to mind, drawn from the consideration of the genius in the earlier chapter. We found that the man of exceptionally good intellect- ual endowment might be a variation in one or both of two ways. He might be a great thinker and a man of good social judgment the true genius or a man of great intellectual ability and of poor judgment the pseudo- genius. We also saw that a man of either of these types might come into direct conflict with the sanctions of society : the genius, to instruct ; and the pseudo-genius, to rebel. Let us rest for the present in this conclusion, referring for its justification to the earlier section of our essay ; and say, as a net gain to our thought, that real opposition may arise between the personal and the social sanctions of a man on the side of his intelligence. He may not judge true what society judges true ; and he may not submit voluntarily, or at all. This may take two forms from the point of view of such a man's sanctions. First, the ' sanction of truth ' may be invoked by him in his theoretical thinking, and he may adopt ends different from those currently pursued. Second, he may invoke the ' sanction of success ' both with refer- 1 Above, Chap. VI., 5. 2F 434 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition ence to the action which society requires of him and with reference to the regulations which are social by success understanding the expediency and appropriateness of the results secured to the ends which he and society agree in setting up. This conclusion may be added to that of the same kind reached above, where we considered the case of the excep- tional judgment of the average man ; and we have the view that there may be direct opposition between the sanc- tions of the two kinds, social and personal, in the intel- lectual sphere, a confirmation of the general statements made at the beginning of our consideration of the civil sanctions. The consideration of the corresponding ethical conflict which is due to the individual's moral variations follows on a later page. 1 It implicates the entire theory of social progress, which is still to be expounded. The normal ethical and religious sanctions, however, are considered in the next paragraph. 4. The Ethical and Religious Sanctions 285. Coming, finally, to ask about the ethical and reli- gious sanctions which the social life imposes upon men, we find it possible to be very brief ; for in this sphere the distinction between the personal and the social is not generally made, even in society itself, in our day. It seems evident from the discussions of preceding pages that there can be no opposition between society and the individual in the matter of the essential demands of the moral and religious consciousness. The fact of * Chap. XIV., 3, 4. The Ethical and Religious Sanctions 435 ' publicity ' in all religious and ethical thought makes it necessary that the same ideal should be erected in the individual and in the community in which the individual is reared, since the growth of the ideal self-thought in the individual depends constantly upon the absorption of moral and religious suggestions from the social environ- ment. This has been spoken of at sufficient length. Both the individuals and society must be moral and reli- gious, and similarly moral and religious. Speaking, then, of the ' matter ' of the ideal consciousness, as it is realized in the 'ought' judgments, on the one hand, and in the feel- ings of dependence and mystery, on the other hand, we may say that opposition does not normally arise between society and the man. Their sanction is the same, a function of the necessary movement of the human mind in its devel- opment toward an ideal self -thought. 1 In the ethical judg- ments this sanction is administered exclusively by the individual conscience. It is a personal sanction ; yet the ' publicity ' of it makes it also a matter of mutual judg- ment, to which each individual is, as we have seen, peculiarly sensitive. The same may be said in the main of the religious life. Historically, it is true, there has been a real question here; and history shows us the possibility of an acute opposition in the religious sphere. Religion has been given an arti- ficial civil sanction. But yet it is true, as a matter of fact, that there is now, at least in the countries which separate State and Church, and make the right of worship a matter of the individual conscience, no question about public 1 The identity of the social ideal with the personal ideal is also the outcome of the detailed discussions of social progress which are to follow. 436 His Social Sanctions : Social Opposition religious sanctions, since religion is no longer a thing of recognized social sanction at all. 286. As far as there is, however, in informal urgency about religious conformity, a sort of sanction exerted upon the individual through the social usages and strenu- ous beliefs of his community, this comes under the head of pedagogical sanction of the more conventional type seen in public opinion, of which we have already said enough. The average man yields so readily to suggestion in this sphere, and goes, indeed, so readily to extremes in his suggestibility, that the sphere of religion becomes and has always been a stronghold of the conservative spirit. This is the more emphasized in history by the dogmatic claims of religious systems, which amount to civil sanc- tions of a supernatural kind, so to speak, coming to rein- force the pedagogical sanctions, and so to create what may be called a new sanction altogether, that of divine authority. The relation of this to the other forms of sanction does not concern us directly, except as raising the new question as to the autonomy of the individual in his action under the sanctions which he finds personal to himself. Considered in this light, it is well to look a little more closely at what I may designate the sanction of religious authority. 287. It is when we come to what may be called the ' form ' of the religious sentiment, the institutions, and more especially the doctrines, in which it is cast at this time or that, that we find this influence in operation. A genetic theory of doctrine of which religious doctrine is the best instance remains to be written. But when it is written, it will have to answer the question as to the general relation of the human intelligence to human senti- The Ethical and Religious Sanctions 437 ment, and the social uses made of the intelligence in influ- encing sentiment. The problem of the rise, progress, and sanction of religious doctrine really rests upon that of the relation of these different personal functions to one another. In the first place, we have seen that the essential utility of the intelligence, both in race development and in the individual's personal growth, is its use in opening the avenues and directing the expressions of feeling, emotion, and sentiment. This appeared in the checks and inhi- bitions which we saw the child exerting upon his own con- duct as soon as he came to act intelligently. It appeared also in the social uses which we saw him so acutely making of the attitudes, emotions, actions, of others in his social environment. We saw reason to believe also that this is so important a factor in social progress this intellectual control of the social agencies that its advent marks one of the great crises in race-history. We should expect, if this be true, that this all-directing power the power of thought would not leave this highest province of our emotional nature free from its constructive endeavour, either in the one province the individual's private judgments or in the other, the reli- gious judgments of the race. This expectation is realized in the very relation which intelligence bears to sentiment. This has also been inti- mated. The content of religious sentiment takes on, by the very conditions of its rise in and with the individual's personal growth, certain forms of rational statement. The categories of personality, cause, and design are among these constant intelligent moulds of the religious ideal ; and the concrete filling which they get, once and again, has its char- 438 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition acter from the degree of refinement which the personality constructions, sustaining the ideal, show at this epoch or that. There must always arise, therefore, religious doc- trines in the individual and religious dogmas in society. 288. We have also seen that there is a necessary ejec- tive postulation of the intellectual content of the ideal ; in this case, of the religious formulation. The existence of the object of worship is a function of its very thought ; for there is no divorce between personal thought and per- sonal belief. Reality comes only by an artificial abstrac- tion from thought. So there is always a direct objectifying of religious sentiment in the world. Men are theists in some form. 289. And man is not isolated. His sense of the pub- licity of his beliefs makes him, in a sense, a legislator for others. His own sense of ethical obligation is just this element of publicity itself reflected subjectively. So the obligation to do what he ought and to make others do what they ought is never absent from his sense of the divine being who is the embodiment of what ought to be done, and the source of its sanction. There arises, therefore, ipso facto, with the religious sentiment, some public religious institution. It is a social institution. In early times, before the differentiation of the sentiments, it is also a political institution. This institution becomes, from the element of publicity, more a rallying-place for conservatism than any other institu- tion. It has the supernatural sanction direct from the personal divinity. The individual who is so far excep- tional in his personal growth as to reach an intellectual construction of the religious ideal different in its form from the form thus divinely sanctioned, is a rebel against The Ethical and Religious Sanctions 439 society and against God. And it is only a step for society to conclude, in such a case, as it concludes in all the cases of anti-social individuals who are harmful to established institutions, that such an individual should be suppressed. History bears witness to the strenuousness of this convic- tion. 290. Religious doctrine is an attempt to put into in- tellectual formulas the ideal which shall satisfy the sense of dependence, mystery, sin and all the phases of reli- gious and ethical emotion once for all. It must be once for all, since its very ideal demands its finality. But this once-for-allness, with the legislative character for all intel- ligences which goes with it, makes it impossible that it should provide for the very process of development which its own genesis and social progress require. So when there arises a reformer, a prophet, a new systematizer, he can get recognition only in one of two ways, both of which are interestingly represented in great historical per- sonages ; either (i) by making the revelation which he brings purely practical, i.e., in the social and ethical sphere of personal attitude, in which improvement is directly en- joined, or (2) by showing that his doctrines are but new interpretations of old truths, serving to confirm the faith of society and the teachings of the ecclesiastical circle. But it is evident that either of these may be a subter- fuge ; a surrender to the finality which the supernatural sanction attaches to religious formulations. It remains to ask how religious progress is possible, if this supernatural sanction continue in force. 291. I think the solution of history goes far to prove the theoretical solution of the conflict between the per- sonal and the social sanctions given above. There has 440 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition been a gradual reduction of the social form of religious sanction, claiming both supernatural and civil authority, to the ethical form of personal sanction. As long as the supernatural sanction had its locus in society, 1 so long did it necessarily weigh on the side of conservatism and lead to social stagnation and decay. For then the formulas in which it was embodied, having no part in the progres- sive social movement which the individual's personal growth represented, remained final, dogmatic, and extrin- sic as well to the more refined and subtle movements of social and ethical sentiment. It has been just the growth of ethical sentiment, with the ever renewed and revised adjustments in the social body, to which it tends to lead, which has made possible the reduction of the supernatural sanction to the personal form. This has led to a gradual entrainment of the religious sentiment in the channels of ethical culture, with a corresponding emphasis upon the religious autonomy of the individual, while this in turn has strengthened the personal form of the religious sanction, as of course it must ; since it has brought to an end the conflict between the sanctions of personal duty administered by conscience and those of religious rites and observances administered by an infal- lible but external authority. The place of the social reli- gious sanction, therefore, in human progress has been, like all other social sanctions, available and advantageous for progress that is, apart from its conservative function only in proportion as it has reflected essential ethical growth ; and so it has been constantly undergoing restate- ment, as the demands of the developing ethical conscious- ness have been enlarged. In so far as it has tended, in 1 Generally in the state. The Ethical and Religious Sanctions 441 this epoch or that, to divorce itself from the ethical sense of the community, and to crystallize into dogmatic state- ment to which consent and submission were arbitrarily enjoined, so far has religion, or, more properly speaking, theology, been a limitation to be transcended a strait- jacket to be thrown off. It is thus that the great reforma- tion movements of religious history have arisen. 292. Finally, it should be remarked that the reduction of the social sanction of religion to the ethical form of personal sanction reverses the relation which is often assumed between morals and religion. The higher forms of religious sentiment arise by the same mental movement which issues in ethical sentiment also ; that of the devel- opment of the ideal or public self-thought. Hence it is impossible to separate the two sanctions except in the way just indicated as that of early history, by which the religious sanction was lodged in society, whether in Church or State. So the question as to which has priority in the purely personal realm is largely a fictitious question. Yet inasmuch as the ethical involves positive mental con- struction, and reflects the actual thought of the social situ- ation, it must be the nerve-element in the development of the individual, and with him, as we shall see later on, 1 of society also. The religious sentiment is in a sense an added thing : not mechanically added at all, but considered as lying less near to the centre of personal growth, and as being a further outcome, in the life of emotion, of the process of growth. The individual could not believe in a good deity until he had conceived the good person and become aware of the obligation in his own breast impelling to the achievement of like good personality. Before thi$ i Chap. XIII., ? . 442 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition the thought of deity is without the attribute goodness, because the self-thought is without it. There is then a continuous upward progress in the religious life keeping pace with the progress of the ethical life. If the question should still be put, therefore, in the form in which a recent writer, already referred to, 1 has put it, making his answer the keynote to his theory of social progress, we should be obliged to answer it in a way which directly antagonizes his theory. Instead of considering the religious sanction as the leading motive to human progress, and that despite the lack of support from the ' rational sanction ' so called, we should say that the religious is an outgrowth and constant index of the ethical sanction, that its social value is mainly on the side of its conservative influence, and that the ethical is the most im- portant as well as the most ' rational ' of all the springs of human action, whether public or private. 293. It has been said that the identification of the religious and ethical sanctions in the breast of the indi- vidual tends to emphasize the religious and give value to it ; a further word may be in place to show that this is true. We have seen in our earlier expositions of the ' dialectic of personal growth ' that the social tests to which the grow- ing results of personal interpretation and thought are all along brought, are essential to the growth of personality itself. A function of the ejective personalities, which are our social fellows, is just to afford constant confirma- tions, checks, touchstones, to the individual with respect to the value of his creations. It is through the operation of this intrinsic social checking, that the judgment of the 1 Mr. Benjamin Kidd. The Ethical and Religious Sanctions 443 individual upon the worth of his personal thoughts arises and grows to be more and more adequate. If this be true of the lower stages of development in which the concrete personalities of our environment serve as monitors and guides, how much the more in the higher reaches where the ejective personality represents the ideal, the good, the perfect, the Deity. The subjective move- ment whereby the ejective ideal of the religious life is constituted and given real existence and personality, is essential, at each stage of ethical progress, to the continued erection of the subjective ethical ideal itself. The religious consciousness is, therefore, in its integrity both a cause and an effect. It is the effect of the ethical construction which has gone before, and which is embodied in the content of the accepted religious beliefs. But it is cause in respect to the complete acceptance and loyal pursuit of the ethical ideal ; and it is also, in so far, cause in respect to the fur- ther progress of the ethical construction, which involves, among the elements which go into its establishing, the full social confirmation derived through personal relation to the ejective personality which the religious life postulates. Religious faith and with it religious institutions are, therefore, indispensable to humanity, because they repre- sent normal and essential mental movements. They are necessary at once to ethical competence and to ethical progress. Yet it still remains true, as we saw immediately above, that in social progress they exert their influence indirectly, through the ethical sanction which is personal to the individual. 294. So much for the philosophy of the religious sanc- tion. It bears directly on our present topic. It shows historically the possibility .of a direct opposition in the 444 H* s Social Sanctions: Social Opposition ethical and religious realm between society and the indi- vidual ; and for us its main lesson is there. In our present stage of civilization, as was said above, it does not com- monly take this form ; yet it sometimes does, as is seen in religious, ecclesiastical, and even ethical ' boycotting,' and other forms of interference with the individual's per- sonal life. We are emancipated from this form of the opposition, so far indeed as we are, only through the bat- tles which individuals have fought, largely single-handed, with society and its institutions. The reality of this conflict between authority and thought is now to be found in our own bosoms. We feel the finality of the religious teaching of our childhood very strongly perhaps ; it has all the weight of social heredity and the formal shape into which our social growth has moulded it ; and if so be that through'that rest- lessness of thought which makes man at once the inventive and the social being that he is if once through this we find our ethical ideal taking on another embodiment than that which the religious sanctions of our training have ear- lier given to it, then is the conflict a long and hard return, in our own life, to the scenes of strife which have marked the saddest periods of human history. 1 1 I think it may be said, also, that purely ethical conflicts between society and the individual are largely reduced in number by the tendency of social morality to clothe itself in religious form, and so to get a further sanction from positive religious authority. The reverse is also true. The ethical re- former becomes the religious prophet, thus adding to his word of social and ethical reformation the sanction of divine revelation. It may not be amiss to say here, also, that this discussion brings nowhere into debate the possibility of an actual supernatural influence in human prog- ress. However that may be, the human mind works as it does. Suppose, for example, that the Christian Scriptures contain an actual revelation with a super natural sanction, the content of the revelation would ttill have to undergo The Ethical and Religious Sanctions 445 295. We have now completed our survey of the so-called social sanctions. We have found that, while it is right to call them social sanctions, their opposition to the personal sanctions is largely fictitious. Indeed, we are justified in saying that there is no social sanction which does not both in its origin and in its function rest upon the per- sonal ones. The oppositions which may arise between society and the individual are, in each case, capable of being construed as oppositions between the sanctions which the individual's own personal nature prescribes at different periods of his growth, or by reason of shifting emphasis in his mental operations. Of these oppositions, only two cases stand out as real factors in the social problem on the one side, and in the ethical problem on the other side. These two oppositions are those which represent the individual (i) in intellectual and (2) in ethical revolt against the prescriptions of society. The revolt of intelligence is the motive of the theoretical reconstructions with which men wish to reform society or to instruct it, in this matter or in that. The ethical re- volt takes the form of protest or of attempted reconstruc- tion in the spheres of the ethical, religious, and generally sentimental usages to which society is committed. In each of these realms, the opposition brought out by this revolt of intellect or sentiment is so sharp that its meaning becomes the outstanding problem of social and ethical theory. It remains to see whether the further application of psycho- logical principles will throw any light upon its meaning, successive reinterpretations with the growth of ethical consciousness, and the sanction would be ineffectual and quite lacking in vitality unless made over into the personal life of the individual and so reinforced. The law of God could not be law to man until man legislated it, so to speak, to himself. 446 His Social Sanctions: Social Opposition and upon the terms under which its ultimate solution may be expected. 296. This application of psychological principles, how- ever, leads us to undertake a broader examination of the historical movement of society itself, in which the oppo- sitions between the individual's intelligence and sentiment and the requirements of social conformity naturally show themselves. We may then hope to see the function of the very opposition itself; finding that it contributes a factor to the philosophy of the whole movement. In that case, we may finally find a sanction for the opposition a sanction of the philosophical kind. So we may now turn to the question : what place in social development, if any, has the opposition between the personal sanctions and the social sanctions ? BOOK II SOCIETY Strive to be whole, and if thou lackest the powet, Be part of a whole, and serve it with faithful heart." SCHILLER. PART V THE PERSON IN ACTION CHAPTER XI THE SOCIAL FORCES WE have now come to a point in our study at which the varied lines of inquiry concerning the individual may be drawn together, and certain indications of a general kind made out for the main topic which concerns us ; the rela- tion of the individual's thoughts and actions to those which society adopts. We may call it, in a sense, a syn- thesis of the earlier chapters, in that the positions now to be developed include the points of view arrived at in the foregoing pages. 297. If we use the phrase ' social forces ' to indicate the more broadly distinguished influences at work in society, when it is considered as a progressive organized whole, we may distinguish those influences which have their locus of origin in the individual, from those which seem to have their point of departure in the social organization. The presence of the individual thinking, struggling, buying, selling, loving, hating, quarrelling, peacemaking indicates a type of activity of which we have seen many illustrations in the foregoing chapters. This is a constant presence, and it constantly serves in many respects to interrupt and modify the social organization and its movement. The 2G 449 450 The Social Forces genius we have found to be such an influence ; and so also is the criminal. These are exaggerated cases. But all individuals have some degree of social initiative ; so we may put the individual on one side as representing a type of social force. Then over against him we find the social body existing as an organization, with a set of laws, con- ventions, institutions, customs, etc., all its own. The movement which it represents we may characterize briefly as a movement also actuated by a social force : that in- herent in the existence of organized society itself. 1 These two types of ' social force,' the more exact defi- nition of which is to follow, do not represent a dualism in the social body. All our conclusions have been in quite the opposite sense. No such dualism is possible in the philosophy of human life ; if, indeed, such a philosophy be possible. On the contrary, the social body represents formulations which in some way aggregate or synthetize the progress made by individuals. On the other hand, the individuals, considered as embodying a social force, only give particular and variable statement to the social outcome, through the process of social heredity. This truth has become evident in the foregoing chapter, in which the oppositions between the individual and the social body have been seen to reduce themselves to two, representing the revolt of the individual's intelligence and sentiment 1 As ordinarily used the expression 'social forces' denotes a great con- geries of agencies of different orders, physical, mental, industrial, military, etc. I see no hope of results in this field while such use of terms prevails. The two ' forces ' which I speak of are both psychological; and inasmuch as only psy- chological functions can be intrinsic to a psychological movement, there can be no further tocial forces. The geographical environment, for example, may limit or hinder social life, but it cannot be a force or moment in that life; only its representation in somebody's mind can be that. Distinction of Forces 451 against the social sanctions. This being admitted, it now becomes our task to see whether, in this very revolt, with the relative and partial dualism which it seems to create, we may still find any constant principle binding the two factors together. i. Distinction of Forces 298. There is a further line of distinctions which comes up to help us ; also based upon fact. It will be remembered that it was the average man whose individual activities were found to equate so snugly with the social demands of his environment. And the reason was found to be that the demands of the social environment reflect historically just the social activities of the average man. The law of the majorities in political life and the need of 'campaigns of education ' to effect even the most evident social reforms, show that society is on the side of the average, as we should expect from our theoretical considerations. The will of the majority is not an abstraction. It is a great fact, both from the point of view of what society has already effected, and in view of what it is still to accom- plish. We never hear of society suddenly making up its mind, in a collective way, to do this or that ; it is always individuals who work upon society through other indi- viduals. The result is reflected in society through the growth of public opinion, and in those other forms of social outcome in which the exertions of individuals get themselves recorded and made vital for collective action. So it is safe, at the outset, to say that the force found operative in the collective social body corresponds to the average, conservative, less original, and more suggestible individual activities in the community. 452 The Social Forces Leaving this statement in its general irtfm, and its fur- ther justification to follow, we find a coftresponding fact on the side of the force represented by the individual person as such. Just in so far as .he is a separate social force, in so far is he the exceptional individual ; the man who by !his personal endowment or attainment finds himself stand- ing relatively alone, with the peculiar duties and satisfac- tions which such a position creates. If this be so, and if such men represent any general tendency in the social movement, have any general meaning anywhere in the history of humanity, then it is to them that we must look for the redemption of society from the conservatism and hard and fast solidification which would come from the law of the average, seen in the social outcome due to the activities of the majority. This again seems so evi- dent that we may content ourselves with this general inti- mation of it ; and now go on to make a closer formulation of the two general functions which have thus been assigned to the two sorts of social force. 299. I may first state the formulations which I shall maintain, and then attempt to justify them : 1. The individual is the particularizing social force. 2. Society is the generalizing social force. 300. The best way to get a broad general view of the activity of these social forces, in their operation together, is by using a biological analogy. Biological progress is, as is now believed, the result of two co-operating agencies, both of which come to view in the phenomena of heredity. Gallon and Weismann have shown that there is a law of 1 regression,' called by various names, by which in the case of the cessation of the process of natural selection together with the continued free intermarriage of individuals having Distinction of Forces 453 all sorts of characters, as in human society, the further perfection 1 of any specific line of characters is rendered impossible. There is a tendency to the recurrence of what Galton has called the ' mid-parent,' a fictitious quantity or individual, who represents the average or mean between the two parents, in each case of offspring. When this state of things is continued through many generations, and with many pairs in each generation, there is a certain set- tling or establishing of values, in respect to each function or character, about a constant mean. In human society to-day this is true of our physical characteristics ; since the artificial preservation of the unfit of all kinds the diseased, halt, and weak gives approximately a case of free intermarriage of all degrees of perfection and imper- fection. In animal companies, however, in which there is still the struggle for existence weeding out the inferior cases, a chance is given to another, and second factor. It is the principle of variations, which has already been cited above. Nature produces both fit and unfit, and all degrees of each. Reproduction, moreover, is the source of count- less individuals, among whom are some which would rep- resent a higher type, in this direction or that, if they could escape indiscriminate intermarriage, and with it the law of regression. Among the animals nature secures just this. The weaker and more unfit do not live to intermarry at all ; there are no hospitals nor physicians in the animal kingdom to keep the diseased alive ; no free dispensaries to supply the hungry. So the stronger which survive intermarry only with the stronger which survive, and a stronger race 1 I do not accept Weismann's view, however, that positive decay of estab- lished characters arises from this state of things, called by him ' panmixia.' 454 The Social Forces is the result, since the next generation tends now to a higher mid-parent represented by the mean between two representative individuals, each of whom is more excellent. Progress in biology, therefore, hangs upon two things : (i)the regression of the whole body of characters in a species to the mean or mid-parent value, and (2) the sur- vival of the best individuals. Without the regression fac- tor, there would be no central mass of relatively fixed characters representing the species as such, and establish- ing the mean about which the individuals might vary within safe limits in the given environment and conditions of life. Without the variation factor, on the other hand, there would be no individuals of unusual excellence to set higher up, by their intermarriage, the value of the mid-parent or collective mean. The assumptions, moreover, are at least two : physical heredity, to give regression its opportunity, and natural selection, to give the variation its opportunity. 301. In the biological sphere, therefore, we see the two sorts of influence at work which I have called, in the formu- lations above, the ' particularizing ' force and the ' generaliz- ing' force. The tendency to the mean or mid value is the generalizing force in biology. It is accomplished by physical heredity. The new values introduced by variation show the particularizing force. It gets its value through natural selection. The generalizing force, in the progress of a species or character, is represented by the mean or average values of the individuals or characters taken gen- erally or collectively ; the particularizing force is seen at first only in the particular individual. This is not the place to go into a discussion of the rela- tion of social progress to biological progress, or the pos- sible identity of the two. Yet I do not see how, as long as The Particularizing Social Force 455 we have bodies, the laws of biology and of heredity should cease to be operative. But it is equally plain. that in human society certain other influences, springing from intelligent and social life, come to modify the outcome. We may simply say, therefore, that biological laws do hold all through human life, but that we sometimes find reason for saying that they are interfered with by other devices or laws. Taking the biological analogy, therefore, in this case under these limitations, we may apply it to the social factors as such ; finding later on in the sequel that we can formulate a more exact estimation of it. 2. The Particularizing Social Force 302. In the first place, the individual produces the neru variations, the new things in social matter. As a thinker, he gives birth to the new thoughts by which the conven- tions, beliefs, opinions, institutions, of society are modified, if perchance they come to be modified at all. The indi- vidual makes the inventions which overthrow the older devices of labour, establish communication, commerce, and intercourse, and introduce new eras in all the spheres of human attainment. The individual feels and protests against the inadequate and the socially worn-out, and teaches other individuals so to do, thus producing the wide- spread revolutions of sentiment by which the slave is freed, woman given her social place, and all men made free and equal before civil law. The individual makes the moulds of legislation into which the soft materials of popular re- form are finally cast. The individual rises to the emergency when the social tide of suggestion and the waves of passion are about to break in popular frenzy, and leads society 456 The Social Forces into a place of broader outlook and quiet content in its social heritage. All this the individual does, and by so doing he fills a place in social progress which is vital to its life and indispensable to its growth. By calling the individual considered as performing this function the ' particularizing ' force, however, certain more exact things are meant ; for there is a difference between pointing out that he does these things, and giving valid reasons for his doing them. 303. First, the individual particularizes on the basis of the generalizations which society has already effected. The individual is a variation just because there is a mean from which to vary. If he varies too far from this mean, he must perish ; so sometimes the genius, and so oftener the badly defective. So with his thoughts ; his attainments, as well as his endowment, cannot be out of connection with those of other men. We have already seen that he must learn the lessons of society first, and produce his inventions afterwards. Further, he must judge his own thoughts, feelings, reforms, first by the judgment which is itself amenable to the law of the mean, before he can bring them out for the instruc- tion or for the revolution of society. His very good sense of the value of his thought-variations is itself a variation, and must not be too great a one, from a mean of social judgment. In short, he must use old materials ; he must appeal to current judgments ; he must particu- larize a new form or degree of the old. He does not create ; he particularizes, with reference to the social material which is already present to his hand. Every individual who is not in all respects the veriest reproduction of the mean does this in some degree. He The Particularizing Social Force 457 must perforce think his thoughts in his own way, no matter how commonplace a way it may be. His special particularization may, from its very dulness and sodden- ness, represent a backward tendency. He may be a victim to prejudice, to a 'narrow set of social influences, to a bad education, and so do his particularizing from the platform of a false social generalization ; just as, on the other hand, he may be caught for the time in an eddy or cross-current of sentiment and suggestion, and so particularize at a tangent to his own normal social curve. In short, all sorts of variations may occur, as we have abundantly seen in considering the sanctions under which the individual's current actions are performed. But with it all, there he stands, the one particularizing agency ; the hope of social progress ; the only avenue through which the social temper may flow and still emerge in forms new and particular, for the weal or woe of the community in which he lives, and possibly of the world. 304. Second, the individual particularizes with refer- ence to his own mental store. This also we have seen in considering the genius ; but it is true of all men. Each individual must take out certain of his thoughts as particular secrets, special treasures, gems of his col- lection ; cling to them and forget the rest. And inas- much as each individual is also social, this choice of his must, to a degree, come to affect the particularizing which he does of the current social material, and also that done by others, just as we have seen that the social judgment, by a reverse relation, affects his private selection. His private preferences make him more open to this social suggestion than to that, since it assimi- 45 8 The Social Forces lates one and fails to assimilate the other. This appears again most conspicuously in the genius. His own true thoughts become a sort of social measuring-rod, a net of a given size and shape, in which the details of the social life in general take on special form. He effects a constant give-and-take between his own and society's thoughts, and so gets a richer particularization on the basis of them all. Then, as the individual particularizes, so he acts; thus getting the various forms of personal sanction which arouse him. Thus his actions become at once of social value. They contribute to the mass of social 'copy,' on which the run of men react ; and his example domi- nates the Gesammtproduct of the circle in wJiich he moves. Taken alone, he may be of course of little mo- ment ; and in speaking of the individual who is com- monplace enough not to have much individual value, we are speaking just of the great mass of persons in society ; but when we consider all of them together, here is just the most important progressive factor in every- day social life. It is the commonplace men who lead to the good or to the bad ahead or astray the com- monplace men. Indeed, the man of greatest personal influence has very often to make himself commonplace in order to wield the influence actually due to his thought or character. This is, therefore, the most general and, on the whole, apart from the world-moving crises when the great men play their part, the most important sort of particularizing done by the individual : the settling with himself of the value of his own thoughts, and with them of the actions proper to embrace and impose upon his fellows. The Particularizing Social Force 459 305. Third, and more objectively, he particularizes for the future and for society. It is here that the biological analogy becomes most helpful. We saw that the simple presence of variations does not suffice for progress ; for variations are in all directions. So the individual par- ticularizes thoughts good and bad. In the high ethical sphere his conduct sometimes gets particularized in ways which his own ethical sanction which is nearest to the voice of society does not ratify. So, if there are varia- tions both in the products of the individual's mind and also in the sorts of minds possessed by different indi- viduals, then biology shows the result. We should expect an evening-up in endowment from generation to generation, and a regression to a set and average social life. Not only should the physical and intellectual capaci- ties of mankind remain about stationary, but a certain con- servative conventionalism should characterize the social life. In biology we find, however, that only the fittest variations come to fruition in posterity by the law of sur- vival with the ruthless 'struggle for existence.' So the mean is raised and the species makes progress, except in the case of man, where the effect of indiscriminate inter- marriage and the prevalence of ' artificial selection ' do seem to realize the stationary result which we should expect. 1 Indeed, as regards physical and mental capacities, we find that the law of ' survival of the fittest ' does not apply as among the animals, because in many spheres the com- 1 This is a much-debated point whether the level of intellectual capacity has grown higher with higher culture. It is not our problem now, real social progress being in question, so we need not reach an argued conclu- sion; but there seems to be little or no evidence that it has. 460 The Social Forces petition of organisms is greatly reduced through certain methods of intelligent and social preservation of the infe- rior members. In human life we keep the inferior bodies alive and also let them marry ; and we also keep the lower intelligences alive and active. The only people against whom society wages war, and against whom she must wage war in order to her own life, are the anti-social, represented most prominently in the criminal class. We should expect, therefore, since the safeguard of progress in the biological world the law of survival of the fittest, with its negative application to the unfit is removed, to find the sort of regression that comes on in the biological world when this principle ceases its operation. Yet this is not the case in the social life. As a fact, society is making what we call progress the sort of prog- ress represented by civilization, material comfort, ethical sensitiveness, culture, etc. all the while. 1 We are forced to conclude, therefore, that this sort of progress is not dependent on any law which can get statement in anal- ogy with the law of survival of the fittest. And, as the facts show, the reason is to be found just in this process of the particularizing of material by the individual of which we are now speaking; taken in connection with the corresponding fact of social propagation or ' generali- zation,' yet to be spoken of. The particularizing by the individual supplies the es- sential material of all human and social progress. This takes the place of the survival of the fittest in the organic sphere. It means that individuals may, from the nature of the special particularizations which they make in 1 The questions as to its continuity and direction are discussed in Chap. XIII. The Particularizing Social Force 461 thought, feeling, or action, Jiave influence out of all pro- portion to their number and social status. It is of the essence of a true thought to live, although, at first, its point of origin be a single human head. It gets itself spread by social suggestion, education, imitation, etc., and then gets itself handed down by social heredity to sub- sequent generations. The individual may thus become, perhaps in his life, perhaps even before he himself real- izes it, the centre of a great social movement. His inven- tion may revolutionize industry; his discovery may add to the resources of commerce ; his verse or scientific writing may set the aspiration of a nation, or mark an era in the knowledge of mankind. 306. Not only is this the great difference between social and biological progress ; the reason of it is also not far to seek. The limitation set in biology to the influence which an individual may work on his species is the necessary limitation set by physical heredity. This we saw to be a necessary assumption to the law of regres- sion. The individual cannot make the next generation ; he can only make one-half of a single family in the next generation. And even that family is subject to the law of variations. If the genius has only one son, that son may be an idiot, and is likely to be little better than the average man. Further, the mate which the genius chooses is equally responsible with himself for the next genera- tion, and he does not always exercise the highest judg- ment of genius in choosing his mate ! All these things, which might be carried out in many points of interesting . detail, show the reason of the necessary limitation of the individual's influence in biology. The 'sport,' however valuable he may be, even to the point of supreme adapta- 462 The Social Forces tion, is always in biology a caprice, never a permanent possession. He is of no more value, from the purely biological point of view, than any other individual what- ever ; for he is averaged up with all the others in the long run, and the special strain which his gifts represent is finally measured by that and not by him. But it is of the essence of the sort of organization which intelligent and reflective social co-operation have ushered in, that it banishes once for all this paralyzing limitation, due to physical heredity. The genius as a biological specimen has, of course, to submit to it, and to impose it upon those who follow him ; but the thought of the genius does not have to, nor do the institutions and enactments in which his thought and sentiment take social form. The genius himself has to be made over each time we want him, and the making of him a second time is the problem which no man can solve. But his thought and sentiment are made once for all. His thought rings down the ages in human ears when his natural sons have gone back to their dust, and when a hundred generations have exercised themselves to develop the lines of his mag- nificent achievement. Who can trace the line of physical heredity from Aristotle to us ? And what its value if we could? But who cannot trace the strain in our social heredity which comes from him ? And so I say that this is the great essential thing about social truth, as opposed to biological fact : /'/ leaps the bounds of physical heredity. We saw that 'social heredity' is substituted for it. First, man had to become intelligent in the widest sense of that term in order to think and to subdue . nature ; and ethical, in order not to kill off, but to utilize, the thinker. With these two requisites, together with The Particularizing Social Force 463 the forms of sanction to which they give rise, and with the institutions in which all these things have been embodied, he becomes the lord of nature that he is and of himself. But the first conquest of nature that man had to make, in order to start his history in the line which we call social, was the conquest over the limitations of physi- cal heredity. His first revolt and the one in which all his subsequent protests were included was his revolt against this biological law. 1 307. It is hardly necessary to say again that this is true not only of the man of great power, but also of all men, and of many animals which have considerable social tradition as well as social instincts. This form of revolt has become instinctive, itself fixed by the law of varia- tions first, and by the law of social heredity afterwards. The social man is the most natural man ; the social insti- tutions are the avenues of his most normal life. So every man of us is thinking, feeling, acting, particularizing, for all time. We are acting up to our capacity to make the social heritage of our descendants ; and the great man, the statesman, the poet, the scientific genius, does no more. His influence, indeed, is what it is only as we 1 The question often asked whether the other assumption which biological evolution makes the assumption of a struggle for existence with the survival of the fittest does not hold of ideas as such; i.e., of the particularizations made by individuals, has already been answered (Chap. V., 4). We saw that the use of such an analogy for the construction of a social theory analogous to the biological theory, is not legitimate, seeing that the correlative principle, that of physical heredity, which is necessary in biology to the operation of the struggle with survival, does not hold. Ideas are propagated socially by the imitative 'generalization ' described next below ( 3). The failure to recog- nize that the two principles must go together in biology, and that at least one of them fails in social evolution, is responsible for much of the loose em- ployment of the biological analogy in the literature of sociology. On various sorts of selection, see Sects. 40, note, 120 f., and Appendix B. 464 The Social Forces common men maintain the level from which he acts. He must have us, as we hope to have him. And besides this reciprocal influence between him and us, we are, besides, ourselves acting the genius, the hero, the great lawgiver, to our children, our pupils, our comrades, who are less privileged or less gifted than we are. 308. Fourth, this particularizing tendency explains the oppositions between the personal and the social sanctions. The general fact of social organization involves two great tendencies, represented in the individual by the sanctions called intelligent and ethical. The intelligent sanction very quickly runs, as we have seen in the child, and in very glaring social examples, such as the professional criminal, to an extreme, giving results which are unsocial or anti-social. But we saw that the very growth of the intelligence in the way of general knowledge, with its sentiments of social, ethical, and religious value, gives rise to a new set of sanctions. And it is with these latter, especially, that the social sanctions as such (as voiced by the community and its institutions) are identified. So there arises the conflict among the man's own sanctions, which shows itself as an intellectual revolt of the indi- vidual against society. It simply means that his particu- larizations cannot be assimilated to the generalizations which society has made ; and either he must be sup- pressed, or society must be in so far reformed in those respects which his thought represents. The cases cited of the development of extravagant intelligent claims, as against the prevalent judgment of the community, the case of the criminal, and often of the child, illustrate particularizations in respect of a certain sort of thinking more or less free from ethical restraint. The Generalizing Force 465 Moreover, there is the variation on the other side individuals who, from conscientious scruples, will not obey law ; or who rebel against the ethical standards of the community in favour possibly of a higher and purer morality than that which society has yet attained. These conflicts, so far from being a sign of disorder and a retreat of dualism in social theory, are really incidents in that larger interplay of forces which constitutes social progress. No psychologist needs to be told that the particular is a par- ticular only by reason of its partial conflict with the gen- eral ; and the more the conflict, while yet it is a particular and not a disparate case, the greater its value from the point of view no less of the possibilities of the general, than from that of the realities of single fact. This fact of conflict will be considered, however, a little more in detail when we have looked closely at the second of our social forces, the generalization made by society itself. 3. The Generalizing Force 309. Coming to the exposition of the so-called force which society represents as over against the individual, the caution against falling into a dualism of view is per- haps unnecessary ; the development in the preceding chap- ter is against it. The only dualism which is in any way justified is the dualism of fact seen in the opposition of sanctions now indicated ; and that, we are going on to see, is only an incident of a more profound unity pervad- ing the entire social movement. The tendencies seen in the outcome of social evolution, as embodied in institu- tions, are, however, in such contrast with the achieve- ments of the particular individuals, that further remarks 2H 466 The Social Forces may first be made upon the contrast. Bearing in mind the characteristics of what has been called the ' particu- larizing' function of the individual, certain truths come into view on the side of society. These are covered by the phrase ' generalization.' 310. First, society generalizes ivhat tlie individual has already particularised. This is simply to say that society is not an original thinker, feeler, or doer. It would be going too far, as is so often done, to say that society is only an aggregate of individuals, and so can originate nothing ; for, as we have seen, the bloodiest scenes of history, to say nothing of less exceptional things, have been the immediate work of certain social wholes ; work for which no individual in the group would have found sanction, if he had acted alone. The works of the writers on collective psychology in recent years have made this plain. The social agent is not the aggregate of the individuals in the group. But it is true, nevertheless, that the thought on which the whole group acts is present in the minds of the indi- viduals, as far as it is thought at all ; and it is generally true, also, that the crowd does not think thoughts nor do deeds which the individuals might not have done when acting under the influence of strong suggestion, had the suggestion been otherwise administered. There are really several cases of this relation between the individual's thoughts and society's ; but I can only dwell upon the one general case which is normal and of special interest to us now seeing that it includes all the rest. The things which are taken up by society and incorpo- rated in permanent form, as its acquisitions, are usually the outcome of the severest thinking of the ablest indi- The Generalizing Force 467 viduals. In all the spheres of human activity and know- ledge, new ideas come from those most capable, from endowment and education in the normal resources which society already offers, of making real advances in the understanding of nature, in the application of their know- ledge in useful ways, and in the achievement of the highest and most ideal forms of poetic, artistic, and sentimental insight. These are society's normal teachers. What society then does is to generalize the particular thought or value. A new scheme of legislation let us say of taxation is thought out by one man. It must be made a general thought in the group of fellow-citizens or fellow-legislators. This is one form of generalization of the thought. It does not retain just the form in each mind that it originally had. The essence of the thought is its general, workable part. Then, in order that it may be made effective for the good of society, only what is thus found general is actually carried out. So the form in which such a thought is realized in law or, in other cases, in institution, ceremony, or custom is seldom just that which the originator conceived. The idea or essen- tial contrivance remains the same ; but it is given a form which fits it to the thought of many thinkers and to the practical needs which they bring to it. Then, after such a first generalization, new particulari- zations follow in the minds of other able men ; as note the ' improvements ' through which each practical inven- tion goes, after its first clumsy embodiment in a machine. Of course, different inventions, and different thoughts of all kinds, differ greatly, both in their nature and in their social fate; and I do not mean to say that the thought of each thinker necessarily undergoes improve- 468 The Social Forces ment before it will work socially. But what seems to be true is that, when looked at from the side of the final institution which is established in consequence of the thought of a great thinker, the thought is such that the average man can take it in, cling to it, and act on it. In political life principles have to be put concretely and with many illustrations, in order to get convincing force with the voters. Social measures which present least complication and the widest generality of application have most chance of adoption. The art work which strikes some general sentiment, or has so general a mean- ing that the average man may understand and feel its beauty, has most popular appreciation. All this seems to show that the pinnacle of singularity on which the original thinker stands cannot be scaled by the members of the community to which his thought appeals. But, on the contrary, his thought has to be assimilated to the great stock of established truths which society already understands and values. The result is that the new thought is 'pared' down, so to speak; its boldest and most novel outlines are obscured ; and its form of final embodiment is that general form in which it can be most widely appreciated and applied. 311. Second, it is also to be noted that it is only as this generalizing process is adequately done that the permanence of the new elements in the social life is secured ; for the matters of new sanction secured by the thought and struggle of one generation have to be assimilated by the next ; have to come under the peda- gogical sanction enforced upon the sons and daughters. And only the general conceptions which underlie institu- tions can thus be made matter of pedagogical sanction. The Generalizing Force 469 The singularities of thought, the particularities as such, which belong to a single thinker, and even those which such a thinker may succeed in imposing on his own gen- eration, cannot live on in succeeding generations if these succeeding generations are to exercise the same preroga- tives of thought. The later generations can only build on those general principles or ideas which the earlier thought out and wrought into the structure of the social fabric. Illustrations of this are plentiful. For example, the growth of the democratic idea in modern times shows all the vicissitudes to be expected from the varying degrees of thoroughness with which this people or that have done their generalizing. In France the attempt was made to apply at once, in all its naked particularity, the demo- cratic philosophy of one man and one school of academic thinkers. The result showed the absolute impossibility of building all at once a new social fabric whose foundation should be the thought of ' freedom, equality, and fraternity ' ; a thought having little connection with the earlier devel- opment of French national life. Both the difficulties which are pointed out above appeared, and each was insurmount- able. First, there was no adequate framework, in law or social convention, for the new idea ; no precedents, no safe- guards, no standards to which to appeal. In this state of things, the particularity of the thought saves it only so long as it is not in the ascendant, or so long as no new particularity of a new thinker comes to make a stronger social appeal to the suggestiveness of the people. And, second, the other defect appeared most glaringly, the lack of adequate pedagogical sanctions for the new gen- erations of democratic France. One-man institutions can- not live, simply because one man cannot secure the sue- 470 Tlie Social Forces cession of his thought, as he can that of his family. In all the vicissitudes of republican life in France, we see a nation seeking here and there for something to teach its sons. To this, the growth of the democratic idea in England presents the most instructive contrast. Successive ad- vances in the idea of popular constitutional government have been successfully realized, just by the process of social generalization of which we are speaking. Piece by piece, the stones from the quarry of republican govern- ment and manhood suffrage have been set into the fabric of monarchy; but in so apt and gradual a way that the whole stands a monument at once to the great thoughts of great men as great as Rousseau and Voltaire and to genuine social progress. France has reached stable democratic government at the cost of dear-bought experience of revolution, anarchy, and misrule ; England has attained the same, but by growth. In art also, and even in mechanical invention, the same is seen. A school of painting is dominated by the style of a great man ; his is the original thought, or manner, or style. But imitators of him do not constitute his school. Each artist who learns from him must generalize the thought or manner of the master, by assimilation to the whole tradition of art and to what is original and great in himself. So in the school there still arise new masters. The rest are copyists. And in the perpetuity of the original artist's contribution to the art movement of the world, there must be that general core of method or idea which may be made the matter of pedagogical discipline from generation to generation. Here, as elsewhere, the purely particular is the eccentric and the temporary ; and although advance is at first through some one thinker's The Generalizing Force 471 particularization, still only that part of his particulariza- tion which may be generalized becomes the real gain of society and of the world. 312. Third, tlie real progress of society is measured, not by the individual's particularizations directly, but by society's generalizations. Here, again, the analogy drawn from biology may help us. The real measure of a species' attainment is the position of the species as such in the scale of life, in respect to this character or that. The individual is judged with reference to his degree of con- formity to the average attainment of the species. If he be too great a departure from the type, he is a ' sport ' ; and this, because he is less likely to perpetuate his en- dowment, by reason of the general tendency of physical heredity to regress to the mean. Now we have seen, it is true, that social progress is not under the limitation of physical heredity in this respect; but yet it is true also that the form of heredity under which it does proceed social heredity, the handing down through pedagogical agencies, etc. has a limitation analogous to this in its own sphere. 1 For just as a physical variation which is too far from the mean tends to be swamped in the retrograde outcome of heredity, so the thought which is too wide a departure from tradition, custom, convention, fails of assimilation in the popular mind, and so gets swamped despite its value. The great thinkers are themselves a better measure of the possibilities of a given social group than are the particular thoughts which this or that one of them may think. For given the thinkers, there is always the chance of thoughts : they cannot help thinking. But 1 Yet it is only analogous. The real process is akin to mental ' generali- zation.' 472 The Social Forces given a thought, its final failure is its death. Interesting questions, in this connection, to be answered possibly by statistics, are : How many really great men does this or that nation or community produce in each generation ? and is there any connection between the number of the great men and the advance in the general level of culture which we call social progress ? Both are very complicated questions, and capable only of relative solution, from the ambiguity of the phrase 'really great.' The point of interest now is this : that an idea or thought a particularization of one mind may fail of the neces- sary generalization on the social side. It frequently so happens. This means that there is a limit in the matter of the perpetuation of a social influence through social heredity, as there is also the limit mentioned in natural heredity. Too original a thought is a social 'sport.' It is often still-born. So the test of the real elements of national or social life is to be found on the side of its gen- eralizations, its established institutions, its customs, its creeds, its conventions, and not on the side of the special monuments to the geniuses which it has produced. It is quite a mistake, for example, to reconstruct Greek national life from Greek heroic poetry ; or to take the ' Thoughts ' of Epictetus or Pascal as a measure of the moral intui- tions of the Romans or French. As was said above, the Liberte, Egalit6, Fraternit, was ideal enough as a motto for democracy for all time ; but the events imme- diately succeeding the triumph of its enthusiasts did not reflect the ideality of life which one should expect from its realization. And does the world generalize this motto yet anywhere? as much as our individual pulses are stirred when we hear it pronounced ! The Generalizing Force 473 313. Fourth, the advance on the social side, thus tested and measured, must result in a constant suppression of the individual's sanctions, as far as they remain in conflict with those of society. If the individual's thoughts, sentiments, protests, recommendations, having his own personal sanction, fail of the sort of social generalization which we see to be necessary to their perpetuity, then, ipso facto, they are not fruitful, and they go on to be eliminated. They are not factors of worth in the body social, however they may recur in individuals and seek a social outlet. This suppression of thought arises even when the indi- viduals themselves are not suppressed. We boycott books, refute ' silver fallacies,' suppress popular illusions by ' cam- paigns of education.' The general drift of social evolution is from the past, and has been set by the prevailing contributions of innumerable thinkers, all assimilated or generalized in a great body of accepted truth and tradi- tion. A new idea may modify it very essentially, as we saw ; and this is the measure of the greatness of an idea, the extent to which it does modify tradition. But by so doing, by being thus generalized and made of social value, such an idea secures the social sanction and so ceases to derive its influence over the individuals of the social group solely through the personal presence or authority of the single thinker. He may die, but his thought lives in the institutions which all men possess. So the sanction passes from the personal to the social sphere ; and then, by the education of the children, it passes again from the social to the personal sphere. All other thoughts or courses of action which the indi- vidual originates lapse and are lost. It is true, of course, that the soqial rise of an idea may 474 The Social Forces be very gradual ; it may have its ebb and flow ; its sup- porters may increase and decrease ; and yet it may finally prevail, and secure social confirmation. Indeed, this is the history of most social reforms and of many institutions. Yet this does not affect the general truth that the indi- vidual is the waning factor, and the social the waxing factor, all the way through. The idea rises and gets a social chance, just in proportion as it takes on the gener- alized form which makes it socially available. All manner of vicissitudes may mark its passage from the purely per- sonal to the accomplished social form. But when it does get social embodiment, then it is permanent and effective in human life, not because this or that individual gives it his private sanction, but because it is the property of the community as such. The thought of this section gets its main interest from the fact that from it inferences may be drawn regarding the direction of social progress. These inferences are brought forward in the discussions of the concluding chapters. CHAPTER XII SOCIAL MATTER AND PROCESS 1 THE object of this chapter is to present in outline a way of conceiving of the general fact of human social organiza- tion, based upon the foregoing, and in line with the ten- dency which has proved itself fruitful in the last few years, mainly in France ; 2 the tendency to recognize the psychological character of the motifs at work in society. It seems to me to be a permanent advance that the bio- logical analogy is giving place to a psychological analogy, and that this is leading the writers in so-called ' sociology ' to examine the psychological processes which lie wrapped up in the activities and responsibilities called social. i. Distinction of Problems 314. The questions which should concern the scientific student of society seem to me to be two, each of which 1 Much of this chapter and of the next has been printed in the Psychological Review (Sept., 1897), and, in translation, in the Rivista Italiana di Sociologia (vol. I.). 2 The reader may turn to the very able resumes by M. Lapie, published in the Revue de Metaph. et de Morale (May, 1895, and May, 1896) under the title 4 L'Annee Sociologique,' 1894, 1895, which are continued for 1896 in the same journal (July, 1897) by M. F. Simiand. See also M. Lacombe's interesting work De VHistoire considere comme science, for a justification of the psycho- logical point of view. 475 476 Social Matter and Process gets again a twofold statement. The first question con- cerns the matter or content of social organization ; what is it that is organized ? what is it that is passed about, dupli- cated, made use of, in society ? When we speak of social action in its lowest terms, ' what ' leads to the action, what is the sort of material which must be there if social action is there ? This question has had very acute dis- cussion lately under the somewhat different statement : what is the criterion or test of a social phenomenon ? But the question which I ask under this head is more narrow, since, in all sorts of organization, a further ques- tion comes up in addition to that of the matter ; the further question as to the functional method or process of organization of the social material, the type of psycho- logical function which explains the forms it takes on. It has been the weakness of many good discussions of late, I think, just that they have not set these questions sepa- rately, i.e. (i) the matter, and (2) the functional method of organization of the given matter. Let us take an illustration. Some of the animals show a certain organization which appears to be social. But on examination, in certain instances, we find that the actions involved are hereditary, congenital, each animal doing his part, in the main or altogether, simply because he is born to do it whenever the organism becomes ripe for these actions under the stimulation of his environment. Now let us contrast with this the intelligent co-operative per- formance of the same actions by a group of men or children who deliberately join to do them in common. In the two cases it is clear that the psychological content is different; one being a biological and instinctive, the other a psychological and acquired, action The results to the Distinction of Problems 477 observer may be the same, and the question may still remain as to whether the method or type of function be the same or no ; but there is no doubt that the psychological content is different. These two questions may therefore be distinguished at the outset with so much justification. 315. But each of these two questions sets a twofold re- quirement. If we assume that the distinction between Habit (with its relative fixity of function) and Accommo- dation (with its relative plasticity of function, as seen in all progress in learning or acquisition) holds of society, then both the matter and the method or process of social organization must allow of these two modes, and working together must also produce them. If, for example, we take an individual and find that he has a habit of acting in a certain way, and that at the same time he also improves upon his action from day to day, we yet say that the action remains in a sense the same in its content or mean- ing throughout the entire series, from the fixed habit to the skilled variation. Our determination of the content of the action must have reference to just the possibility of the entire series of actions, from fixed repetitions by habit to the extreme variations of accommodation, through all the intermediate stages. In other words, the fact of growth by a series of accommodations must be reckoned with in all the determinations of social content. And state- ments of progress must go with the definition of the actual content at any given stage of social organization. In other terms, the matter of social life is changing growing matter; and the determination of it must always take account of this character. So also must the theory of the method of social function- ing. The process of social organization results in a grow- 478 Social Matter and Process ing, developing system. Progress is real, no matter what its direction, provided it result from the constant action of a uniform process of change in a uniform sort of material. This we find in social life, and this is the prime require- ment of social theory both in dealing with matter and in dealing with function. 2. Historical Theories 316. It may suffice to bring these distinctions, and the problems which emerge, more clearly to the light if we note briefly some of the later attempts to deal with the social organization from a psychological point of view. 1 I shall cite types of theory only, referring to particular writers merely as illustrating these types and without going into the details of their positions. (l) The Imitation Theory \ illustrated by M. Tarde. This view of social organization has very much to commend it from the point of view of functional method ; indeed, as appears in the earlier chapters, 2 I think imitation is the true type of social function, and the theory which ade- 1 As distinguished from mechanical and biological theories. The current metaphysical theory is spoken of later on (Sect. 331). The biological ' theory ' so called, is, in my view, merely a collection of more or less apt analogies, to which M. Novikow has now added the new one which finds with ' intellectual elite ' in society the ' sensorium social^ and M. Lilienfeld that which likens mob frenzy to the hysterical fit of a female. As to M. Simiand's suggestion that the rich are society's adipose tissue, that priests also represent fat, and that the police force are the social phagocytes which eat up wandering criminal cells admitting all of them, still in the words of the last named writer, " yw'r avons-notu appris? Analogie? elle ne prouve rittt." The biological analogy is treated seriously, however, later on (Chap. XIII.). Pos- sibly the best detailed treatment of all the facts of the organic analogy is in Re"ne Worms' Organisme et Societe (Paris, 1897). * And more explicitly in 4 of this chapter (Sect. 334). M. Tarde's expo* sition is in his Lti I.ois aJii, Part III., Sects. 431-3 (Wallace's translation, ffegefs rhilosopky of Mind, p. 55 f.) This allies Hegel to the 'constraint' theorists already criticised (Sect. 317). 2 Professor Royce, who agrees with this main point of criticism, saying in a private communication : " An express recognition of the imitative factor as such is what I miss in him" (Hegel). I take pleasure in print- ing, in Appendix H, a passage from Professor Royce's letter which indi- cates a difference of emphasis in the interpretation of Hegel's ' master and slave ' teaching. The Matter of Social Organization 505 of function by which the social matter the ' self-thought- situation '-becomes public, and is so made available for society and for the individual both at once?- 332. In the way of more positive evidence that social material always implicates the ' self-thought-situation,' we may note that much of the matter accumulated by the great succession of English moralists to prove that sympathy in all its manifestations is a ' putting of oneself in another's shoes ' is directly available. For we have only to substi- tute imitative identity of the ego and the alter for the artificial ' putting of one into the shoes of the other ' ; and the results follow. This is to say that the old doc- trine of sympathy is essentially correct as far as it goes in the recognition of the implication of the self ; it only needs supplementing from investigations into the genesis and nature of the class of phenomena covered by the term ' sympathy.' This the view does which makes the self-thought a progressive imitative outcome; with that active play between the poles of its realization which is just the method of its growth. Thus a certain unity and lack of assumption is secured to the whole scheme. For example, one might take the fine catalogue of argu- ments given by Adam Smith at the beginning of his Moral Sentiments and review them 2 one by one, finding that on this view they all fall together and support a derivation of publicity, where he could only assume it. For he assumes, first, that we sympathize with each other; this he makes his platform. Then he assumes that it is pleasant to both the parties when they are in a state of 1 Cf., for example, Mackensie, Introduction to Social Philosophy, 2d ed., pp. 199 ff. and 258 f. 2 I omjt this review of Adam Smith's arguments for lack of space. 506 Social Matter and Process sympathy. Both positions are true as facts, and equally true of animals. But the reason of the facts, lying (i) in the identity of a progressive thought, which (2) just by its growth in each, integrates all in social relation- s/tips, this is wanting. Both of these facts are ac- counted for, in man, by the view that from the first the gathering self-thought grows up by imitative suggestion. For on this view sympathy is a necessary emotional attitude flowing from the identical thought of self ; and the pleasure of mutual sympathy and co-operation is the pleasure of personal activity which is normally inter- woven in a situation understood and appealed to by all the individuals. 333. Further evidence comes from some of the posi- tions already taken in earlier pages, to which we may simply refer for the sake of completeness. (1) We may cite the evidence which goes to show that each person does depend upon social stimulation in his personal growth, and does arrive at standards of social judgment and feeling which reflect in the main the stand- ards current in his environment (Parts I.-II. especially). Here the writings of Leslie Stephen, Hoffding, S. Alexan- der, Josiah Royce, etc., may be utilized. (2) A further argument may be drawn from the state- ment of the same question in reference to ethical pub- licity, i.e., the evidence which goes to show that genetically social suggestion and social beliefs are intrinsic to moral- ity (Chap. I., 3, and Chap. VIII., 2-4). This point is mentioned again below, where the connection between ethical and social progress is indicated. (3) Finally, there is the evidence from the history of the social life of man, which shows the constant 'give-and- The Process of Social Organization 507 take ' between the individual and society which the position now taken would require (Parts III.-IV.). 1 4. The Process of Social Organization 334. Upon the question of the process or method of social organization, with the type of function which it re- quires in the individuals, we need not stop long, seeing that all our developments have proceeded upon a cer- tain construction of this method and function, and have in turn also confirmed that construction. (i) We have pointed out that the growth of the indi- vidual's self-thought, upon which his social development depends, is secured ' all the way through ' by a twofold exercise of the imitative function. He reaches his sub- jective understanding of the social copy by imitation, and then he confirms his interpretations by another imita- tive act by which he ejectively reads his self-thought into the persons of others. Each of these stages is essential to his growth as a person, and so also is it essential to the growth of society. For society grows by imitative gen- eralization of the thoughts of individuals. So we may give this as the main point of proof that imitation is the method of social organization. And in this statement again two positions are involved : first, that it is through imita- tion that the self-thought-situation in all its stages of growth and in all the individuals actually has its rise ; and second, that it is by imitative selection and generalization that the individuals are integrated in the public self- thought-situation. 1 These discussions deal only with what might be called the internal evi- dence of the course of man's social history. The external or anthropological evidence would still remain to be cited. 508 Social Matter and Process (2) Again, we have seen that it is just this point of view which is lacking in so many theories of social organ- ization. We have criticised both the ' sympathy ' and the ' ideal ' theories on this score. Only when identity of self- thought is secured all through personal growth, can unity of trend of the social forces be secured ; and this comes only through the imitative function. (3) The works of recent writers have shown imitation actually operative in society, and have conclusively estab- lished its universality from an objective point of view : notably Tarde, Sighele, Le Bon. (4) In a recent volume J the present writer has been led to the conclusion that the reaction of the imitative type is the original form of organic and mental accommodation to environment. However that may be in cases not now in discussion, the evidence given in our earlier chapters to show that the child actually comes into his social inheri- tance by imitative appropriation of the lessons of the social environment, makes it evident that here is an unmistaka- ble example of the ' circular ' process which is explained in that work. The child imitates another, and so learns what is later to be a habit of action to himself. This is a step in each case toward his more complete accommodation to the social world. And his later actions, confirming, ex- tending, and modifying these acquired habits, only further illustrate the same process in the higher reaches of de- liberation, desire, volition, etc. (5) The assumption that imitation is the method of so- cial organization may, however, be brought to a further test in connection with the problem of social matter, since, after having determined the sort of matter with which we have 1 Mental Development. The Process of Social Organization 509 to deal, we must then ask whether the imitative method of organization adequately explains the actual forms which this material takes on. To my mind a strong proof of the claim for imitation as type of social function is derived from the effective application of which we have seen it to be capable after the nature of the material is determined, as earlier in this chapter ( 3). It thus loses the casual em- pirical character which social observation so often shows, and becomes wrought into what may then be called, in a figure, social morphology. The last two considerations suggested lead us, however, to our next topic, i.e., the consideration of the sort of view of Social Progress we should have to hold if the two main results of our discussions proved to be true: (i) that the matter of social organization is thought, which has the at- tribute of publicity springing from its attribution in the mind of the social thinker to a public self, and (2) that the method or type of function in social organization is imitation. CHAPTER XIII SOCIAL PROGRESS 335. IT has been shown already that there are two contrasted functions involved in the progress of the thoughts which are socially available, seen respectively in the ' particularizing ' done by the individual, and the ' generalizing ' done by society. Both of these go on together, and give rise to the conditions which social life in all its complexity presents. We have called the individual the particularizing social force ; he invents, con- structs, interprets, on the basis of the matter already current in society -and administered to him through ' social heredity.' And society, as already organized, has been called the generalizing social force ; it reduces or gen- eralizes the inventions of the individual by integrating them in the public ' self-thought-situation ' now described. The further question then arises : how and in what direc- tion is social progress determined under the interplay of these two types of social force ? i. The Determination of Social Progress 336. The word 'determination' is used here after anal- ogy with the use of the same word in recent biological dis- cussions, in which the phrases ' determinate variations,' ' determinate evolution," etc., are of frequent occurrence. The analogy with the biological conception of 'deter- 510 The Determination of Social Progress 5 1 1 initiation,' in respect to the movement of development, is very close ; indeed, when due regard is had to the dif- ference of province in which the development occurs, we may say that the question set under this head in the two departments is the same. It is briefly this : do certain lines of growth, remaining consistently the same as respects characters, functions, or attributes, appear in the develop- ing content ? Is there consistency of direction from stage to stage in the whole movement ? And then, after such determinateness is once discovered, the further question at once arises : what determines the movement in this direction or that ? 337. As soon as we look into the implications of the positions already taken, we find ourselves shut up, I think, to a very definite view of the determination of social prog- ress. The positions which immediately concern us now are three: (i) Individuals can particularize only on the basis of earlier generalizations of society. This gives an initial trend to the thought-variations which are available for social use. 1 (2) Society is absolutely dependent, as to its new acquisitions, upon the new thoughts, particulari- zations, of individuals ; and it again generalizes them. It can get material from no other source. (3) Only when both these conditions are fulfilled when old social matter is particularized by an individual and then again generalized by society can new accretions be normally made to the social content and progress be secured to the organization as a whole. Looking at these requirements together, and attempting to discover what sort of a general movement will result, we find what may be called the ' Dialectic of 1 Cf. the section on ' Selective Thinking,' Chap. III., Sect. 3, for the justifi- cation of this. 512 Social Progress Social Growth,' an expression which is intended to sug- gest an analogy with the ' Dialectic of Personal Growth,' already described. 2. Dialectic of Social Growth 338. In the ' dialectic of personal growth ' we saw the development of self-consciousness proceeding by a two- fold relation of ' give-and-take ' between the individual and his social fellows. Personal material, coming in the shape of suggestions from the environment, is first ' projective,' as we called it ; then it is taken over into the private circle of the inner life by imitation, and so becomes personal or 1 subjective,' as belonging to the ego ; and then again by a return movement between the same two poles, also imitative in its nature, the characters of the subject are read into the alter personalities, so becoming 'ejective.' The various stages into which consciousness grows becoming social, ethical, etc., by this one method of social give-and-take have already been treated in detail ; but it is interesting to see that this way of growing on the part of the individual consciousness may be stated in terms which reproduce in a very precise analogy the three re- quirements which we just found it necessary to lay down 1 as characteristic of the growth of society. We may say (i) that the individual reaches new inventions, interpretations, . particularizations, in his own personal growth, only on the basis of what he already understands of personality ; that is, of what he has learned. Each step of his progress in understanding personality is a particularization in his own thought of old material, a personal interpretation, subjec- tive in its character. And (2) only those particularizations, 1 Sect. 337. Dialectic of Social Growth 513 interpretations, inventions, thoughts of personality, are permanently available for his growth which he again ejects outward and finds to hold generally of others also ; these are generalized as habits and stand as accretions to his growth. This last is also imitative, since only the imitable elements of his subjective thought are thus true and available in his treatment of others. (3) His 'self- thought-situation ' grows only when both these phases are accomplished together. Here, then, is personal growth quite accurately stated in the same terms as those which give the outcome of our detailed examination of social organisation. I am not willing to leap to metaphysical or even logical conclusions on the basis of this analogy, striking as it seems to be, especially from the point of view of the requirements of idealistic philosophy. But we may at least use it as an analogy, and see its further bearings in the matter of the determination of social progress. 339. Coming to make out the analogy in more detail, we see that society stands as a quasi-personality under a twofold relation of give-and-take to the individuals who make up the social group. It is related to these individ- uals in two ways : first, as having itself become what it is by the absorption of the thoughts, struggles, sentiments, co-operations, etc., of individuals ; and second, as itself finding its new lessons in personal {now social) growth in the new achievements of individuals. If we take any lesson which society learns, any one thought which it adopts and makes a part of its organized content, we can trace the passage of this thought or element through the two poles of the ' dialectic of social growth,' just as we can also trace the elements of personal suggestion, in the case 514 Social Progress of the analogous dialectic of the individual's growth. The new thought is ' projective ' to society as long as it exists in the individual's mind only ; it becomes ' subjective ' to society when society has generalized it and embodied it in some one of the institutions which are a part of her inti- mate organization; and then finally society makes it 'ejec- tive' by requiring, by all her pedagogical, civil, and other sanctions, that each individual, class, or subordinate group which claims a share in her corporate life, shall recognize it and live up to it. Society, in other words, makes her particularizations, in- ventions, interpretations, through the individual man, just as the individual makes his through the alter individual who gives him his suggestions ; and then society makes her generalizations by setting the results thus reached to work again for herself in the form of institutions, etc., just as the individual sets out for social confirmation and for conduct the interpretations which he has reached. The growth of society is therefore a growth in a sort of self -consciousness J an awareness of itself expressed in 1 Whether we hold that there is a ' real ' general or social self seems to me to depend very much upon our metaphysical presuppositions. If we mean by a ' real ' self a something back of the processes of growth and not expressed in the content of thought, then there is no reason for saying that there is a ' real ' social self. If, however, our meaning in speaking of a self he exhausted by just the thought-content with its organization and growth, then society may have a ' real' self just as the individual has. Indeed, if a metaphysician should find it well to say on the strength of the analogous ' dialectic ' that there must be hovering over society an ' I ' consciousness which integrates all the 'me' consciousnesses of the individuals, I think the contrast between the ideal ' I ' and the habitual ' me,' in the individual, would be in so far an available anal- ogy. M. Novikow {Conscience et Volonte sociales) thinks collective conscious- ness and will are realized in the socially elite, who are the learned and (as a class) wealthy individuals; in them social experience is organized, just as physiological processes have their organic centre in the brain. The Direction of Social Progress 515 the general ways of thought, action, etc., embodied in its institutions ; and the individual gets his growth in self- consciousness in a way which shows by a sort of re- capitulation this twofold movement of society. So the method of growth in the two cases what has been called the ' dialectic ' is the same. 3. The Direction of Social Progress 340. From these indications which must in all cases be controlled by an appeal to fact we see the direction in which social progress must move. The individual moves directly toward an ethical goal. His intellectual sanctions, it is true, tend toward a personal and egoistic use of his own forces and those of society ; but that cannot go far, since, in its extreme, it runs counter to the co-operations on the basis of which the dialectic of his personal growth as such must proceed. The very growth of intelligence in the individual is itself a gen- eralizing process, and by this generalization, a measure of higher restraint is set on the elements which enter into the generalization. The growth of intelligence must itself issue in those ideal states of mind which are called social and ethical and which -set the direction of growth as a whole. The ethical sanction comes to replace and limit the sphere of application of the sanctions of desire and impulse ; and so the individual gets, in his private life, a bent toward social co-operation and ethical conduct. So with social progress. The use of intelligence for the private manipulation of social agencies does actually represent a level of social institutional life, and in certain great departments of human intercourse as especially 516 Social Progress the commercial relatively selfish ends, as seen in per- sonal competition of wits, seems to be as high as society has yet gone. But as with individual growth so here. As soon as the personal use of the individual's wit brings him into conflict with either of the two necessary move- ments by which society gradually grows, or with the institutions which represent them, so soon must the in- dividual be restrained. And, further, the restraint is no more an artificial thing, an external thing, in society than it is in the individual. The social or communal growth shows the same ethical tendency for the reason, altogether apart from analogy, that the actual conditions in society are the same as in the individual. Society is, as we have seen, the generaliz- ing force. It reduces the thoughts which rise and claim recognition in its midst to forms of general acceptance and to working shape. The very institution therefore, which embodies the new idea and enforces it upon the individuals, is itself the work of the best individuals, and represents the restraint of the egoistic and personal sanc- tions in favour of social and ethical co-operation. Further, all the pedagogical sanctions of society, in the family, the school, etc., are brought directly and positively to bear for the production of those social forms of habit which confirm and encourage the development of tolera- tion, forbearance, and all the virtues which are of social value. 341. There is, however, another and more profound reason that the direction of social progress must be determined by ethical and religious sanctions, and toward the goal represented by a state of ethical co-operation. It is to be found in the fact of what was called above the The Direction of Social Progress 517 ' publicity ' of all ideal thought of personality. We saw that the individual cannot be a wicked or a good individ- ual in his own opinion that is, cannot get a full ethical judgment on his own acts without, at the same time, making his thought include the similar judgment passed by his fellow-men. His private self-judgment is a judg- ment based on the sense of a prevalent public judgment. The sense of the opinion of the public is an ingredient or element in the very synthesis by which the ethical judg- ment is constituted. Therefore, so far as the growth of his personality involves a general or ideal thought of self, so far is this self a public self whose thought is ipso facto the birth of a sanction of a public kind. The man says to himself : " I think thus of myself ; other men think thus of me ; I think thus of them when they are in my place ; and all for the reason that what we each and all judge with reference to, is that ideal self which each of us only partially realizes. I partially realize it in my own way, and each of the others does in his own way ; and it is by these partial realizations in concrete instances alone that this ideal gets its reality." Now, we have seen that social growth proceeds by just this same development. Objectively, and in fact, it is seen in the actual publicity of social institutions and inter- ests. But the same result comes out if we take the point of view which we may call subjective to society itself. If we went so far with the analogy from the individual's growth as to speak of society as a quasi-personality, and asked what thought such a quasi-personality would have to think in order to grow and to go on developing by the method of personal dialectic seen in the individual, we should say that society should have to think in a manner 518 Social Progress which involves the publicity attaching to ideal and ethical personality. It would have to ask what institutions were good for its citizens as such, not what was good for this particular individual or that. Its thought of personality, all the way through, would be the form of general person- ality which is realized in the individuals at that stage ; but which is not identical with any one of them. With this thought of general personality, there would go the thought, also, that the thought that it did thus think was the outcome of all the partial personality thoughts which the individuals thought, of all the judgments which they passed on one another ; otherwise the social quasi-person- ality would have no content out of which to constitute its general thought of self. All this is simply a realization in the community, in public opinion, of the ethical standards of judgment which the individual must have if he is to develop beyond the stage of concrete egoistic or altruistic intelligence or of impulsive action. That the individual does go further is a fact; and it is just the fact which we call ethical develop- ment. He has attained the form of general thinking about himself and others which carries with it sentiments of a social and ethical kind. This enables him to consti- tute society in a way which would be impossible if he had only reached the lower development of the animals, say, with the sanctions for action which go with this lower development. 342. So when we come to ask what the direction of social progress may be, we find that it cannot be a direc- tion which violates the method and denies the meaning of those very states of mind the ideal, social, and ethical states which have enabled the individual to come into The Direction of Social Progress 5 1 9 his social relationships. The ethical sanction in the indi- vidual comes to control the other sanctions, since it gener- alizes and so transcends them. Society represents the embodiment of these generalizations. Its institutions both represent and further the individual's growth. Its trend forward, then, must be in the line in which the individual's higher growth also proceeds. This is the trend toward the complete regulation and use of the forces of the individual in the interests of social and ethical unity and co-operation. 1 Two things are accordingly true of the determination of social progress. These two things are these : first, social progress is determined by the social generalization already remarked upon working upon the thoughts of individuals ; and second, this form of determination is necessarily in the direction of the realization of ethical standards and rules of conduct. 343. The example given above, 2 of Mr. A, who allowed barriers to be put up in his hay-field, also illustrates, when we come to consider Mr. A's psychological movements, the fact that social progress is essentially an ethical move- ment. The taking of the general point of view involved the direct suppression of Mr. A's personal sanctions, the securing of publicity of judgment, and the establishing of reciprocity of duties and rights between him and others, with respect to an ideal thought of personality all of which characterizes the ethical sentiment. To take away his re- sponsiveness to ethical considerations is just to remove a man's ability to act the good citizen in the responsible matter which the illustration supposes. 1 This is the socialistic ideal; but it can be attained only by the actual rise of individuals who erect such an ideal first in its personal form. 2 Chap. XII., 3 (Sect. 326). 520 Social Progress It may be said that the insurance companies take the same point of view for the purpose of making money. And so they do. But that is only to say that social forces and situations may be used intelligently for other than directly ethical purposes, a proposition fully maintained in the foregoing pages. The question as between the ethi- cal value of a proceeding and its intellectual value arises only when there is a conflict between the sanctions on which they respectively proceed. For example, if it could be shown that the insurance companies were impair- ing the ethical or even the financial interests of the com- munity or of its citizens, by making money in this way, then the question of the social suppression of the com- panies would at once arise naturally among us. Or if the man A put up barriers in the United States, where the duty of doing so has not yet been enforced upon the re- sponsible parties, and exacted, let us say, such a toll from pedestrians as to yield him an income, then Mr. A's action would have the intellectual sanction of being a money- making scheme, and possibly also in case he really took the social point of view, and did it primarily to save human life the ethical and social sanction as well. In short, society 's sanction is always ethical to the indi- vidual, while it remains social ; but individuals may take society's point of view from private and personal motives. 4. Conclusion on the Biological Analogy 344. On the whole, then, we reach a theory of social determination which makes it only to a slight degree analogous to the determination reached in biology. Bio- logical variations are determinate in the sense that their Conclusion on the Biological Analogy 521 mean is shifted in this direction or that in each gener- ation from the fact that certain types of individuals are kept alive in the earlier generation, i.e., those which could adjust themselves to the requirements of the envi- ronment in useful ways. 1 This gives determination to bio- logical evolution. In the social life we find practically no determination in the social direction extending to the indi- viduals considered as variations ; and only the ' suppression of the unfit ' after they are born. Yet in the primitive social conditions there mus,t have been a positive progress of the mean in social variation analogous to that just de- scribed as operative in biology. But though there is this degree of analogy between the two determinations, there is the difference arising from the different sorts of heredity appearing in the two in- stances. In social organization the fruitful variation is not the individual as such, but his thoughts. This lifts the problem into the sphere of social heredity. Physical heredity generalizes or regresses toward a mean of all the individuals ; while in the sphere of social heredity, the generalization made by society is of each new thought, invention, or sentiment considered for itself; and a single such social variation may revolutionize society and give a new bent to the social movement. 345. On the whole, then, it follows from our study that the progress of society is, in its method, in its direction, and in its impelling motives, analogous to the groivth of con- sciousness rather than to that of the biological organism, The current phrase ' social organism ' is a defective one, 1 Illustrating ' Organic Selection ' ; see Appendix A. Whether there be actual determination of variations as such in definite directions is a disputed point; the evidence at hand is against the view that there is. 522 Social Progress If we mean 'organization ' when we use the term 'organ- ism,' leaving to further consideration the sort of organi- zation, well and good. But to speak of the social ' organism,' as the biologist speaks of the organisms with which he deals, is misleading in the extreme. The organi- zation which is effected in social life is, in all its forms, a psycltological organization. Its materials are psychologi- cal materials : thoughts, with all their issue in desires, im- pulses, sanctions, consciences, sentiments. These things are incapable of any organization but that which finds its analogy in the actual growth of living minds. To speak with Mr. Spencer of social atoms and organs, of organic processes and centres, of nerves of primary and second- ary order, etc., after analogy with the physiological organ- ism, is nothing short of violence to the nature of the material of social science. What can be done with such critical phenomena in social theory as imitation, generali- zation, invention, tradition, social and pedagogical sanc- tion, on such a crude analogy as that ? To force them into biological moulds is simply to deform them. 1 And where in the analogy from an organism will we place the influence of ethical and religious sentiment, which is really, in a detailed analysis, the determining factor in social progress ? There are, on the contrary, two great compelling reasons for saying that the sort of organization which is effected in social progress is psychological. First, all organization is a function of the material organized. The biologist is the first man to admit this, now that he has given up the forms of vitalism which saw in vitality a force from 1 Cf. the excellent remarks in M. Simiand's article, pp. 497-498. Conclusion on the Biological Analogy 523 outside, coming in to bend the life-processes this way or that. And a school of psychologists claim, as one of their greatest modern generalizations, the idea that mental activ- ity is just the movement of mental elements toward organi- zation ; not a force from outside working these elements up. To treat social organization after analogy with the growth of the physical organism, is to set to psychological materials a certain force of impulsion, over and above the movement which they show in their own natural theatre and in their own natural forms of growth. Second, the actual growth of social organization shows principles and methods which have a meaning to us only because we have minds. Such are those just mentioned suggestion, imitation, sentiment, etc. We get at the meaning of these things in our own personal growth. We build up our understanding of character, both our own and that which we think our neighbour to have, just by these principles. So when we see social organization going on, we say : " This is a phenomenon of imitation, that of suggestion, this again of invention, and the other of sentiment." Indeed, the outcome of all our study has led us to the view that social progress is essentially, in its method, a reproduction of the growth of the individual ; and the individual grows up in the social circle just be- cause it is so akin to him that he is able to reproduce it in himself. PART VII PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS CHAPTER XIV RULES OF CONDUCT THE practical questions which come up in connection with the relation of the individual to his social environ- ment are of the greatest importance. We should expect the discussions which attempt to throw light on the social organization, by means of an examination of the equip- ment and development of the individual, to throw light also on these practical matters ; for all of an individual's actions are sanctioned either by the conditions of his private growth and equipment or by the regulations of a social kind to which he submits. So if we use the ex- pression ' rules of conduct ' as covering all practical for- mulations of whatever kind, then we may make some deductions respecting them from the principles already set forth. 346. At the outset, a general truth seems to be estab- lished by the discussions through which we have come ; the principle, namely, that all rules of action for the guid- ance of life must be of possible social application, even though in their origin they are announced and urged by individ- uals. This would seem to follow from the fact that society is the generalizing agency. The rule, considered as a rule, is 524 Rules in the Sphere of Impulse 525 of general application. Its generality may be considered with reference to the particular individual's own conduct ; that is, as coming to him with his personal sanctions only. Or it may be considered as general in the sense that it is enforced on all individuals alike ; that is, as having social sanction. Or, finally, a rule of conduct may have the quality of publicity already discussed, which makes it at once a thing of universal sanction, as typified in the ideal rules of ethics and religion. It may be well to take up these three cases, and look at each of them with a view to seeing its relation to the sort of generalizing which seems to be the source of all rules of conduct considered as social. In other words, we may show in some detail that the state- ment made above, to the effect that all rules as such are capable of becoming social in their nature, applies to each of these three cases. i. Rules in the Sphere of Impulse 347. First, considering the rules for action and conduct which embody the individual's personal sanctions, we find the sorts of action already pointed out in detail : the impulsive, the intelligent, and the reflective or ethical. Of these the impulsive type of action may be disposed of without much trouble. Impulsive action can have no self-regulation simply because its sanction is necessity. Necessity knows no law, no rule, because it is itself an- other name for inviolable law. There can be, therefore, no question of a law of action to the individual who acts purely from impulse. Capriciousness is his rule and that is not a rule. So the only regulative or legislative restraint to which such action may be brought is that 526 Rules of Conduct which comes either from the actor's higher sanctions, those of intelligence or conscience, or from the sanctions of a social kind which are enforced upon the actor. This takes us, therefore, up into the higher realms of conduct. 348. The same may also be said concerning possible rules of conduct on the part of society at the impulsive or so-called suggestive stage. The mob exhibits social im- pulse, but it has no rule of action save that of suggestion ; and suggestion has no law. Its sanction, again, is not a rule, but only the necessity which hurls the mob over a moral or legal precipice. The only possible law or sanction which can be brought to bear on the mob is that qompulsion which is enforced at the point of the bayonet or the muzzle of the gun. So we may not stop further on this sort of action in our search for rules. So much, I think, we may confidently say, despite the attempt of certain recent writers to deduce from the action of crowds a ' social ethic ' ; a set of formulations or rules which shall express the laws of collective human action. We have seen above that the only principles involved in mob-action, and collective action as such, are those of the lower impulsive order, carried to the extremes which throw into temporary abeyance the higher intelligent and ethical sanctions of the individuals involved. This reversion from social continence to social passion brings about so great a simplicity in the operation of suggestion that no further 'ethic ' of it is possible. What these writers seem to reach is a statement of the causes or favouring conditions under which this sort of ' social hypnotism ' of the individual comes about. So we may not delay upon these cases ; but pass on higher up in the sphere of action in order Intelligent Rules 527 to ask there our question as to whether all rules of conduct are of social availability. 2. Intelligent Rules 349. The sanction of intelligent actions that is, of those which involve desire we saw to be mainly success. And it would seem that there might be rules of action addressed to this motive alone, embodying the highest wisdom, which would yet be unsocial. Such rules would be those dictated and sanctioned entirely by prudence, discretion, convenience, expediency, or the attainment of happiness. Such actions do, as we have seen, represent a period in the life of the child, and also,a type of adult de- velopment as concerns individual actions and certain forms of social competition. And we may at once say that such rules do exist in the maxims of practical wisdom current in all societies and embodied in the proverbs of all nations. Making this admission, it still remains to ask, however, as to the possible social element in such formulations. The foregoing discussion brought out the real conflict which occurs between the individual and society at this point. It is unnecessary to bring that up again. But it is a character of the conflict that it concerns the excep- tional individuals, or the exceptional acts of normal indi- viduals, as we were led to conclude in the earlier place. As to the latter, the exceptional acts or judgments of the man of normal social training and sobriety, it is enough, from the point of view of the question of rules, just to say that they are exceptional. The individual himself con- siders his conformity to social sanctions the rule, and the violation of them the exceptions. 528 Rules of Conduct So soon as he makes the violation of the sanctions of society the rule, adopts rules of his own which lead to their systematic violation, he then falls in the other class, the exceptional individuals. Now in this class of exceptional individuals we may make distinctions. The men who are exceptional from a strictly social point of view, illustrated under the head of ' social variations,' are those who violate social rules habitu- ally and as such ; these are suppressed, made away with, out of the consideration of society and out of our theme. Even the exceptional individual must be, in the main, if he will inherit a social part and play it as a man, not excep- tional. And if we rule out the people whom society rules out, and these only, we have left the people whose endow- ments or training make them, in certain respects, lawgivers to themselves and to society. What shall we say to these ? Has their rule of action any social ingredient? As far as such a man's actions thus sanctioned by pri- vate intelligence do not conflict with social institutions, requirements, etc., so far they may be socially general- ized and made socially available. In so far the sanction of intelligence then gets support from the social sanction also. This we saw in the case of commercial competition. And this must be essentially the character of the individ- ual's intelligent rules. For so soon as he attempts to make use of his intelligence in a way which is strictly private, aiming at an end quite his own, and not sub- serving social utilities, then he inevitably comes into conflict with society in the carrying out of his rule. In real life, a man's actual rules of private intelligent self- interest are usually qualified by a social clause ; they read : " Act to your own advantage so long as society does not Intelligent Rules 529 find you out, and with as much temerity as you have." His rules have direct social and ethical limitations. So for the first sort of generality which we supposed a man's action possibly to have universality in his own private life this is largely fictitious, even in its stronghold, the sphere of the intelligent sanction. He admits the social limitations under which he may observe it, in case it be a socially damaging line of conduct which it prescribes ; and he admits its liability to be generalized for social utili- ties, in case it is not a damaging line of conduct. In this latter case, it comes under our formulation as being socially available ; and in the former case it is not a rule in any universal sense. The one case is illustrated by the maxims of social prudence, the ' saws ' of society, as well as by the larger things of intelligent co-operation and utility which have arisen at first in the single inventive thought of one man, and have then been generalized by the process already described. The other case is best illustrated by the rule of action of the acute thief who escapes the law. He acts with a rule of intelligent self- interest, but under certain very evident social restrictions ; and with those ethical limitations, also, which are indi- cated in the motto, 'there is honour among thieves.' If he observe both these restrictions, again, however, strictly from self-interest, making success in stealing his sole reason both for observing the law and for honouring the rights of his fellow-thieves, then he is that sort of a crimi- nal exception to social law which society shuts up for life when he is caught ; and his rule of action, though con- fessedly a rule, is as unavailable for general theory as is the impulsive action which has its law in natural neces- sity. 2M 530 Rules of Conduct 350. As to the social formulation of the sanction of desire, little need be said. From the very fact that it is social, it comes under our formula. The only cases which might give room for discussion would be those in which social intelligence makes devices for other than social utility and advantage ; as, for example, the life-insurance companies, commercial trusts, 'combines/ etc. But we have already seen that as soon as these devices become sufficiently damaging to society, they are no longer toler- ated publicly ; that is, the social element of sanction comes to suppress the private. As to the question of possible rules of action, therefore, the only universal rule in these cases is the generalized rule which in the earlier con- nection was shown to be the point of view of society. The intelligence cannot lay down its rule of success as a general rule, since the constant call to conformity to social and ethical requirements it is which gives to such organizations their sole right to the sort of public exploitation on which their patronage and success de- pend. Any real conflict in this realm between rival rules would arise from a conflict of two sanctions both equally social : the one mainly intellectual, and the other mainly ethical. And there are many interesting cases of such conflict. Indeed, there are writers on Political Economy who claim that that science is unethical in practice ; that a state can have no conscience nor obligation arising from sympathy or humanity, and that legislation properly takes account of the fortunes of ' our ' citizens, no matter at what damage or cost to 'yours.' This is a practical formulation of the intellectual sanction in its social form ; and repre- sents that stage of culture in national life which the intel- Intelligent Rules 531 ligent highwayman represents in private life. 1 Political economy may be developed, like private economy, on the basis of rules which are only intelligent, success being the only sanction for conduct, but for a nation to apply such a political economy is simply to admit that the in- dividual citizens who represent the moral sense of the nation have not yet reduced their choicest sanction to social form ; and that in the highest sphere of social organization, the ethical, their intuitions have not yet been generalized. This case deserves attention, moreover, from the fact that all of the defensive and aggressive, most of the productive and distributive, and much of the directly educative organization 2 in the world is actually at this stage. Intelligent action, with its sanction, has been re- markably generalized in political and industrial life. On the other hand, the development of our judicial systems is in the direction of the same adequate embodiment of the ethical sense in national life. 3 Yet the absence of inter- national law while there are yet the remarkable trade relations and refined rules of diplomacy which tax the intelligence of the acutest minds on this side and on that shows the very backward development of the ethical sanction in institutions. 1 The American tariff for protection and alien labour laws are cases in point. 2 My colleague and friend, Professor H. C. Warren, held, in a paper read in the Psychological Seminary, that the forms of social organization were based on three ultimate motives to action, defence, nutrition, education, and I use this division in my text. I am not prepared, however, at present, to accept the classification as exhaustive. Reproduction, for example, might be consid- ered as a candidate for a distinct place. * Even the relapse into barbarism seen in lynch law in the South has its darker counterpart in indifference to crime, or in its intellectual justification, as seen in the literary defences of anarchism. 532 Rules of Conduct 3. Ethical Rules 351. Coming, then, to the ethical or, more widely, the sentimental forms of conduct, we have a more complex question of rules. And looking at the problem from the point of view of the three sorts of generality which a rule may have, we may waive certain of them at once. The ethical sense taken as typical and inclusive of the reli- gious, aesthetic, etc. cannot sanction a rule of private generality only ; since all ethical conduct, as such, has the public reference. A man cannot have a line of conduct which is right for him alone ; the very bounds of the right are coincident with the bounds of the general self-relation- ships which include all concrete selves. All those who are excluded are exceptions, no matter how great their number. When he pronounces judgment upon himself, he judges with all men. This has been dwelt upon suffi- ciently already. As to the second form of universality, giving a rule on which all may act, this also does not alone exhaust the sort of sanction which ethical rules have. We can imagine a form of society built on the basis simply of a system of conventional social rules which each citizen is always to observe. 1 This would be strictly a social sanction ; the rules would be civil ; they might be compulsory, but they need not be ethical. Such a society would lack just the one thing which we have found essential to human society considered as a progressive organization ; the thing omitted by the traditional theories of human society which liken law to convention, and conformity to convenience and 1 Plato's conception may be recalled here ; and the criticism of it by Aristotle in the Politic*. Ethical Rules 533 utility. This lack is just the principle of growth : the give-and-take of personal influence between the man and the group. Society has grown by this process of give-and- take. So also has the individual grown by it. But in the individual it is what we mean by his ethical growth. The give-and-take is now in the sphere of the ideal thought of personality, and its exhibitions are motived by this ideal thought. So the society which results is also an ethical society. Its institutions are generalizations of ethical rela- tionships. And as in the individual the ethical sanction has come to replace and control those of intelligence and impulse, so in society also ethical sanctions supersede those of intelligence, convention, and mob-suggestion. So, apart from its actual realization in society, of which more is to be said below, the ethical rule is not only a rule which all men are to follow, being social in so far ; it is also the rule which embodies the ethical sanction which has been so far developed. The individual's ethical deliver- ances are from the platform of social sentiment. The average individual's ethical judgments include the social requirements of his group. He says, ' I ought,' meaning, also, not only ' he and she ought,' but ' what we ought is the lawful.' The ideal lawgiver, the self of general value, is the communal legal self. Such an individual, whose ' ought ' is exhausted by the legal, is possibly below the average, numerically speaking ; for the moral education 1 of most men gives them other and higher embodiments of the ' ought ' of personal duty than law or public opinion represents ; but that does not impair the general truth that the legal, conventional, 1 And in many communities notably the religious education. 534 Rules of Conduct standard seen in public opinion and law is also somebody's etJiical ideal, or has been ; it could never have come to be the legally or conventionally right, if it had not first been somebody's ethically right. The growth of society is but the generalization of the individual's ethical ought into society's conventional ought. And then it proceeds by generalizing the further acquirements of the ethical ought in the individual; acquirements made only by conformity to the legal ought, and the transcending of it. For society to make a rule is to generalize the ethical opinion of indi- viduals ; for the individual to get an ethical rule is for him to particularize on the basis of society's conventional rules. The conclusion, therefore, is this : tliat ( i ) ethical rules are either already embodied in the sanctions of society, or (2) they are capable of being so. In the former case (i) the individual's rule is his version of the social voice. To him it is ethical ; not only must all men observe it as law, they must observe it also as right. They do observe it for these two reasons both of them. And the socially legal is society's version of the individual's right. In the latter case (2) the individual legislates his rule equally both into other individuals and into society ; but, as a matter of fact, his legislation of it into society is not yet realized ; society has not yet generalized his sense of right. 352. It may help us to get clearness of view in this matter by appealing to the analogy of the individual's growth, to which we have found that of society to bear so close a resemblance. The individual's, i.e., the child's, sense of law is reached through a twofold relation to the personalities about him. His sense of the personality in which law is embodied represents a sort of generalization of his particular thoughts, and also a sort of midway stage Ethical Rules 535 between those personal actions which he understands and those which he is still to imitate and grow up to. His ' projective ' ethical personality includes all his generali- zations, but it is not exhausted by them. And his further generalizations of the elements of this personality are conditioned upon his assimilations of them to what he already has. So with society over against the individual. Society represents what is already generalized of the individual's intuitions of ethical right. But the further ethical intui- tions of right, on the part of the individuals, are not exhausted in these social generalizations. On the con- trary, it is only as the individuals attain new intuitions and announce them that society can generalize them in turn in new institutions and in laws. 1 So, finally, we may say that the ethical rules of the individual involve all three kinds of generality. They are to apply (i) to all the acts of the individuals, (2) to the acts of all individuals, and (3) they are to have the pub- licity which attaches to the ethical sanction as such. But they are sanctioned in the individual's case by only one sanction : his own ethical sense. He is to act impulsively, but not because it is impulsive; reasonably, but not because it is reasonable ; socially, but not because it is prescribed. He must act ahvays and only because it is right. The right comes to the individual to sum up the three, and to give all his conduct its final sanction. He can recognize no other. But then the formulation of 1 Our progress in administrative matters illustrates this : ' civil service reform' gradually coming to be general; the rule of the 'boss' gradually disappearing; municipal reform movements gradually purifying city govern- ment, etc. 536 Rules of Conduct this sense of right, its generalization, is directly in the line of the social prescriptions. So, in the outcome, the social and the private duty of the man arc in essential harmony. 353. It remains to ask whether society's ethical is ever at variance with its own socially prescribed. This would seem from what has been said to be a superfluous ques- tion ; for if the social sanctions arise from generalizations of the individual's ethical intuitions, then there could be no socially ethical apart from what is actually pre- scribed. But this, although on the surface logical, does not do justice to the complex way in which society grows. We saw that society's attainments are not made by jumps. Its generalizations involve long processes of social education on the part of the individuals. Often a generalization is reached only to be again called in ques- tion. The law of majorities is peculiarly liable to mis- carry. A single individual may often wield authority enough to carry or to obstruct a social movement. There are ebbs and flows, actions and reactions. So there grows up in every society a certain discrepancy between what the people feel ought to be, and what really is. New things are agitated ; their consequences are not fully seen ; the conservative spirit says ' Let well enough alone.' And the very generalizing process by which society reaches her enactments suggests a certain discounting of the new. Further, there is a great derangement of interests in- volved in every important social change, 1 and a great series of divisions in the occupations, conditions of educa- tion, etc., of this man and that ; so that all are not equally competent nor willing to indorse a particular course of public action. 1 Cf. above, Chap. V., 3. Ethical Rules 537 Again, there often grows up, through the discussion of remote topics, a sort of ethical sense that an old institution is out of date ; while yet no man arises to think the case through, and take the lead in urging reform. These in- fluences crystallize to make the reformer very often a man of one idea and an offence to the socially satisfied in the community, who for no other reason refuse to follow him.' In fact, changes of an important social kind often burst with sudden and overwhelming force. Their preparatory stages are obscure, and their influence dumb. They are a part of the ethical intuition of individuals ; and the com- munity of them is not fully suspected until the prophet of the new thought comes to give it public voice. Then the ' ought ' of society shows itself to have already surpassed the ' is,' and the reformer becomes at a step the historian of a social revolution. The question is simply as to the exact moment when the new thought is sufficiently spread to realize itself in a social generalization. When it does, then it is no longer merely the individual's ethical ; it is then also the community's ethical ; but until it is actually made a part of what is socially recognized and sanctioned, there will remain in reference to it a certain discrepancy between what society ought to do and what it does. 354. Another very interesting case of discrepancy be- tween the social ' ought ' and the social ' is ' is found in the phenomenon of contagion of crime already referred to in an earlier place. The fact that the report of a peculiar form of suicide, for example, spread abroad by the newspapers, stimulates other persons not only to the act of suicide but even to the adoption of the same peculiar form of self- destruction, shows the phenomenon clearly. There are epidemics of crime of this sort or that. A suggestion of 538 Rules of Conduct a criminal sort will spread through a community ; and a sensational story will excite the readers, both young and old, to perform the crimes with which the narrative con- cerns itself. In such a case as lynching, for example, society really condemns, by its better public utterances, the crimes which society commits and propagates ; just as in the case of collective action, more properly so called, society after- wards recovers her judgment and passes a more normal and withal a more righteous judgment. In these cases we have the social ought-judgment temporarily suspended. A series of social facts or events occur which in no wise represent the real ethical voice of the community. This is a phenomenon of regression, 1 just as the other case of antithesis (spoken of in Sect. 353) is a phenomenon of forward movement or real growth. It is not surprising, from what we now know of the organization of the social body, that these phenomena should occur. The ordinary meaning, however, of the saying that social institutions ought to be different, is something quite other than this; it is the expression of the individual's ethical judgment. That introduces another and the last consider- ation to be brought forward in this matter of rules of con- duct. 4. The Final Conflict 355. In an earlier connection we noted that all possible conflicts, of a general kind, which might arise between the individual and society, are conflicts either of his intelli- gence, or of his ethical sense, with the social order. We 1 That is, of ethical regression, not as we saw above of reversion to an earlier type at one time normal; such action could never have been normal. The Final Conflict 539 saw also that conflicts arising from his intelligence were largely reducible to conflicts between the intelligence of him and the conscience of the rest of the community ; inasmuch as the social order represents the generalized ethical sense. The only way for a man to carry out his protest, in such a case, is to persuade other men, until he gets his opinion adopted. Then the conflict ceases, since then the reform which he proposes receives ethical and social sanction. But in the case of the ethical protests of single men against the social order, we have a different phenomenon. This sort of conflict is more serious and more profound, because the sanctions involved are more comprehensive. The ethical in the man represents the essential and highest outcome of his individual nature ; this on one hand. The socially established represents the highest outcome of the collective activities of man; that on the other hand. What then can be done, in the case of conflict between these two ? Nothing ! Nothing can be done. It is the case of the fountain running higher than its source. The man cannot argue ; morality is not a thing of logical sanction. And, moreover, to argue a violation of law in serious cases is to commit it, in the eyes of society. Yet society, on the other hand, cannot suppress such a man, although too often that is what results. For it is just through the ethical reformers that society learns her own mind and heart. It is the picture, which history shows, of the seer on his mountain. He speaks in riddles. He stands and waits. He weeps. To be sure, he may be no genuine great-man ; he may be a fanatic, a lunatic, a fraud, but, then, he may be a prophet, a seer, a teacher of nations ! 540 Rules of Conduct This is the final and irreducible antinomy of society. It shows at once the law of social growth, its direction, and its goal. It shows the dialectic of growth in its concrete social form, as in the child's obedience we see it in its concrete private form. Society must simply listen to such a man, for her weal or woe, as the child listens to his father. The insight is on the seer's side. But in listening to him, and doing with him, she is reaching for her own by right. He is of her, she has made him, he clothes her thought in a diviner form. So the child takes from his father. He takes the social heritage which is his by right of birth. He takes from his father, and so lifts himself to his father's stature, just as society takes from the great man and so makes his insights her own. If we bring this finally under the question of rules, we reach a final possibility : that in the ethical realm the individual may rule himself by rules which are in advance of those which society prescribes, and also exact them. This is common, not only with the moral seer, but in the life of us all. All of us have our moral discontentments. We all think that society should be reformed in certain essential respects. Just to this degree each of us is moved to prescribe a rule of conduct in this case or that ; since the publicity of the ethical judgment carries just this sort of prescription. The reason we have also sufficiently seen. It arises from the particularizing of the individual, work- ing as an active force in the social complex, and from the uneven way in which society realizes her progress, in this respect or that. Even different requirements of the same general principle or rule remain at different stages of realization in social institutions, and in the formulas of The Final Conflict 541 public opinion ; so that the individual, in making his rule, finds that society violates it here and there. The incon- sistency of the social order, from a moral point of view, is very apparent, and many pages might be devoted to giving illustrations of it. Just as the individual is often condemned for law's sake, so society is often ' damned for conscience' sake.' Yet we are able to see that both cases are incidents of the larger movement which our discussions have led us to appreciate ; a movement which includes the individual with his oppositions as well as his agreements, and society with her achievements as well as her omissions. CHAPTER XV RETROSPECT : SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL IT only remains to state, in certain formal sentences, some of the more general conclusions to which we have come; those having especial reference to the relation of the individual to society. 356. I. The examination of society reveals a body of rttles of conduct with sanctions which are in the main adequate for the private life of the individual. This fol- lows from the fact that the institutions and sanctions of society are in their origin actually generalizations of the intellectual and ethical knowledges, sentiments, and sanc- tions of individuals, handed down by social heredity. 357. II. The examination of the individual gives rules and sanctions which are in the main adequate for the social life. This follows from the fact that the knowledges and sanctions of the individual are received from society by social heredity. 358. III. Neither of the above principles is absolute. (a) It cannot be absolutely true that the examination of society gives rules and sanctions adequate for private life ; since only the generalized part of human life is em- bodied in institutions. The individual must have his private rules of conduct for the situations of life which are particular to his knowledge and action. This brings his private rules into possible conflict with society to the 542 Retrospect: Society and the Individual 543 extent to which he is original in his thinking and in his sentiments ideal, or the reverse. (#) It cannot be absolutely true that the examination of the individual gives rules and sanctions adequate to the social life ; since the strictly average individual, who would correspond to the generalizations which society embodies, is mythical. Every individual is, in some de- gree and in some respects, socially untypical. 1 An illustration of III. (^) is seen in the development of high intelligence in criminal persons ; and an illustration of III. (a) is seen in the intelligent development of society in industrial and political life, while its ethical institutions lag behind the moral sense and moral rules of individuals. 359. IV. The principles just formulated find their ground in the method of progress of society. (a) The method of progress of society is a dialectic, analo- gous to the ' dialectic of personal groivth ' in the child and man. This ' dialectic of social growth ' is a circular movement of give-and-take between society and the indi- vidual. The form of collective organization cannot be social (general) without having first been individual (particular) ; and the matter of social organization cannot be individual (particular) without having first been social (general). There must always be, therefore, at every stage of social progress, a balance of ungeneralized form in the indi- vidual, and a balance of unparticularized material in society. And the rules of the one cannot express the balance found on the side of the other. 1 Readers of Mr. Leslie Stephen's Science of Ethics will remember his position that the ' properties ' of society cannot be inferred from those of the individuals, since either may vary independently of the other (loc, '/., pp. 93 ff.)- 544 Retrospect: Society and the Individual (6) The determination of social progress is ethical in its direction and in its goal. It involves a publicity of values which only the ethical category shows. The generaliza- tions which society effects can proceed only as individuals act ethically. And individuals can realize new intuitions of an ethical kind only because the material already social is again capable of taking on ethical form. (c) A final conflict of an ethical kind between the indi- vidual and society is ahvays possible. It is soluble only by the actual growth of society itself in the particular case, or by the suppression of the individual who revolts. And society solves it only to renew it, always. 360. V. Finally, our outcome may be gathered up in a sentence of characterization of society as a whole. Society, we may say, is the form of natural organization which ethical personalities come into in their growth. So also, on the side of the individual, we may define ethical personality as the form of natural development whicli indi- viduals grow into who live in social relationships. The true analogy, then, is not that which likens society to a physiological organism, but rather that which likens it to a psychological organization. And the sort of psycho- logical organization to which it is analogous is that which is found in the individual in ideal thinking. APPENDIX A SOCIAL HEREDITY AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION THE conclusions reached in the course of this essay are consist- ent with a point of view from which a series of considerations on organic evolution in general come to present themselves. The prob- lems involved in the theory of organic development fall under three heads : those in Ontogeny (or individual development), Phytogeny (or race development), and Heredity. The general method of personal adaptation which, in the social sphere, we have called -social heredity 1 extends to the lower forms of life also ; giving a view of determinate progress in evolution due to social modes of life. I shall accordingly speak first of its influence in Ontogeny, second in Phylogeny, and third in Heredity. I. Ontogeny or Individual Development As long as we are speaking of creatures with consciousness enough to learn by imitation, and so to come under the principle of 'social heredity,' it is plain that certain results will follow as regards these creatures themselves in consequence of their adaptations. 1 . By securing adaptations or accommodations, in special circum- stances such as those of a social kind, the creature may be kept alive in the struggle for existence. This influence has been pointed out in a great variety of animal species by various writers (Wallace. Weis- mann, Lloyd Morgan, Hudson). 2. By this means those congenital variations which lend themselves to intelligent, imitative, and social accommodation during the lifetime of the creatures, are screened from the action of natural selection and are so kept in existence. Other congenital variations are not kept thus in existence. So there arises, partly through the elimination of those individuals which cannot make the accommodations, a widespread series of apparently determinate variations (i.e., having a definite direction) in each generation. 3. The same principle secures these two results, also, wherever the creature secures adaptations during his private Y\i& for whatever reason. Conscious and social accommodation is not, of course, the only sort. There are three different sources of modifications in biological organ- 2N 545 546 Appendix A isms. There are : first, the physical agencies in the environment, which produce modifications of the creature's form and functions. They include chemical agents, strains, contacts, hindrances to growth, temperature changes, etc. Second, modifications of function and structure arise from the activities of the organism itself under the law of use and disuse. This class of modifications is seen in a remarkable way in plants (Henslow, Sachs, Pfeffer), and in micro- organisms (Bunge, Loeb), which show the sort of adaptation called the selective property ' by such writers as Romanes. And, third, there are the intelligent, imitative, and social adaptations which are spoken of above, and which show the clear operation of the principle of ' social heredity. 1 All these influences serve to effect modifications of an adaptive kind in the creature, during its lifetime ; so make it more available for con- tinued life under the operation of the principle of natural selection ; and thus secure the great end of setting a determinate direction in the gen- eration which these creatures represent. So much for our conclusion in the matter of ontogeny. II. Phytogeny or Race Evolution Certain results, in the province of phylogeny, flow directly from the preservation of creatures which accommodate themselves socially or otherwise. First. The congenital variations of subsequent generations are dis- tributed about the mean represented by the creatures preserved through accommodation in the earlier generations. Of course this must follow from the doctrine that the characters of the offspring vary about a mean between the characters of the parents. If the parents have been kept alive just because they secured a certain form of adaptation, then their children will be so endowed as to secure the same adaptation. So a determinate direction the same as that of ontogenesis is given to phylogenetic evolution. In the case of social accommodation the later generations will tend to greater sociality. Second. The mean of congenital variation being thus made more determinate, further congenital variations follow about this mean, and these variations are again utilized for further ontogenetic adaptation. So there is continual progress in the directions set by ontogenetic adaptations ; and, in the case of social adaptations, in social lines. Third. This will be the case purely through physical heredity, which will thus be brought more and more into accord with the direction of social heredity. Appendix B 547 III. Heredity This influence I have called organic selection.' It has certain bear- ings upon the theories of hereditary transmission. The constant determination of the mean of variations, and through it also that of the direction of phylogenetic evolution, gives two great converging channels of hereditary influence without appeal to the Lamarckian principle of the 'inheritance of acquired characters.' First. It gives determinate direction to organic evolution without the direct inheritance of acquired characters, since it shifts the mean of vari- ations in the young in the direction of the characters acquired by the parents, and so produces the same results as if these characters had been actually inherited. Second. The operation of < social heredity ' secures the transmission of the acquisitions of an intelligent and social kind, without the inter- vention of physical heredity at all. So it keeps alive a series of func- tions as, for example, speech which never do become congenital ; or it keeps them alive until by the operation of organic selection they do become congenital. The general co-operations called social are of this kind ; and the method of their transmission ' as detailed actions ' is exclusively that of ' social heredity. 1 Third. These two influences, ' organic selection ' and ' social heredity,' operate in a parallel way in all creatures of much biological organization . Fourth. This general influence of individual accommodation, whether social or otherwise, in setting the direction of subsequent evolution under natural selection, has been fully described under the phrase ' organic selection,' in earlier publications. 1 APPENDIX B ON 'SELECTION' THE various sorts of ' Selection ' which it seems well to distinguish in different connections may be thrown together in the following table, the corresponding sections of the book (as far as there are such sec- tions) being in each case given in brackets in the table beside the description : 1 See American Naturalist, June, July, 1896. It is also advocated by H. F. Osborn and by C. Lloyd Morgan. References to the literature of the subject are to be found in my article ' Determinate Evolution,' in The Psychological Keview, July, 1897. 548 Appendix B o a 4 _>. -a o '> S j r; "rt e ^ v ~ ~ 'o 'S >s ^ u B c en c E -9 W E M V G V I ts :s "i " _O B .i 4* "O . 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