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 because, 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 possible per- fect, 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 lack of such harmony—of the actual discrepancies in my various thoughts of self, as my actions and tendencies give rise to them.[1]
Perhaps no more direct way to bring home the bearing of our present line of distinctions can be found than to cite in illustration one of the familiar social situations which are ethically embarrassing in practical life. I refer to the method of charitable relief. The dilemma of the benevolent man when a needy tramp comes to his door in a region where there are
- ↑ The obligation side is genetically the motor side, as readers of my book 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 in the present paper.
