Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/785

 A THEORY OF SOCIAL MOTIVES 771

submit and this becomes the belief that they ought to obey. That is, the impulse of each class in the family becomes a belief, and these beliefs unite in the judgment that it is right for parents to command and for children to obey. Class relations develop in the same way. Immigrants tell how, when children in their native land, they refused to bow to the upper classes, who never bowed in return and that they despised their parents for bowing, but that later they came to bow habitually and to believe they ought to do so. Over this nucleus of forceful relations play the expansive emotions and impulses, biit the nucleus often shows through. Fathers and mothers object to their children becoming too companionable. They give as a reason that it will spoil their discipline, but this is more a recognition and statement of the fundamental forceful relation than an explanation of the cause of their objection. Employers dislike to have their workmen too familiar with them. I have sometimes detected in distinguished and cultured men traces of resentment of naive friendliness on the part of young people with whom they were conversing, in a college-alumni gathering, where all were for a moment on equal footing.

Each instinctive or impulsive act in an instinct- or impulse- center is a reaction to one or more stimuli or symbols. That is, we have a "subjective-objective"*^^ phenomenon. The method of treating the objective side of such phenomena depends on whether we approach them from the point of view of the science of wealth or the science of motives. If from the latter, goods are treated as stimuli and symbols of instincts and impulses and as objects of rational desire. For instance, under the impulse of domination, men seek bodily strength, wealth, political office; women seek beauty, wealth, social position. The observation and classification of symbols constitutes one of the most intricate and fascinating chapters in the study of motives and proves that imi- tation cannot be understood apart from its springs in the feeling and cognitive processes.

Habitualized impulses are ideaized and these beliefs overhang

" Parris, Total Utility and the Economic Judgment, p. 74.