of self at any time is at one or the other pole, is a self of habit or a self of accommodation. 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 are going 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 accommodation adequately expresses him. The only adequate expression of the boy is that which acquaints us with the whole dialectic of his progress, which comprehends both these selves and the alter personalities which are progressive functions of his thoughts of himself—that is, with the self of all the rich social relationships, or the 'socius.'
It then seems a natural question to ask, whether the boy comes to have any sense of just this inadequacy of his thought of himself 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 get a sense of 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 close psychological terms; and its importance is so great, in the present state of ethical controversy, that it may be worth while to see to what conclusions the line of distinctions now made would lead. This conclusion has been anticipated in the following quotation from the work mentioned, and it is my present object to expand and illustrate it.[1]
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 midst of the capriciousness that before this stood out in contrast to the
- ↑ Mental Development, Methods and Processes, pp. 344 ff.
