Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/674

 654 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

active processes, which accompany it. We have found, on the one hand, that the active processes are always functions of the content; and, on the other hand, that the content is always largely determined by earlier active processes. This is a genetic circle on which we have already remarked. It fellows that the same content may be present in connection with different atti- tudes. When, for example, a self-content, at whatever stage of its development, is presented, having the additional marks which determine it to be another person, an alter, then the self-attitude aroused may be either what has been called "aggressive" or what has been called "accommodating," according as it, the attitude, is determining the content, or as the content is, in some degree, also determining the attitude. In the former case the alter is "ejective;" in the latter case it has elements which are "projective." What we mean, therefore, by the "self of habit or aggression," and the "self or accommodation or imitation," are not different self-contents. They have differences, to be sure, from thepresence of an alter requiring one attitude or the other ; but these are not elements of self, not self-marks, so to speak, until they have been taken over, by accommodation, from the pro- jective and incorporated in the content of self. The differences of attitude are the differences of real genetic importance.

Second, the distinction between projective and ejective con- tent turns upon the same requirement that we distinguish between content and attitude. When the self-content is accom- panied by the aggressive attitude, the alter is never projective, never considered unfinished ; it is then always ejective, thoroughly understood. The projective is always the aspect of persons which excites the accommodating imitative attitude. Once accommodated to, however, it becomes self-content, arouses habitual attitudes, and so goes on to be ejected.

Third, granted, then, that we have a developing self-content which at any time may be associated either with an aggressive or with an accommodating attitude, what shall we say of the " general " and of the " ideal " self ? The general self, like the general everywhere in mental things, is, I believe, an attitude ; an attitude which is a more or less complex integration of the