Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/580

 560 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

fensible antitheses; e. g., individualism and socialism, free-will and determinism, egoism and altruism. The second of these antitheses is discussed under the heading " Suggestion and Choice." It is asserted that richness and variety of social suggestions compel choice, which thus becomes a true social force, although it is far from being the independent, unconditioned thing of the extreme free-will school. The person is not controlled by an external social will, but through his own will, in working up or synthesizing social suggestions.

Coming to closer quarters with the person, the author traces the process by which intercourse builds up personal ideals. All persons are declared to be imaginary or constructed in the mind out of the materials received through intercourse and interpreted by experience. Society is defined as " a relation a m nn g .parson al_ideas. " The vague- ness and ambiguity of this phrase are guarded by the warning that the unquestioned independent reality of a person is not to be confused with the ideas entertained about him ; these ideas, however, constitute the immediate social reality.

Sympathy or communion is next discussed, not as a form of pity, but as an imaginative extension of one's life by the interpre- tation of other persons. A man's range of sympathy thus becomes a measure of his personality. Society, on the other hand, is the totality of the acts of communion by which the person is related to others.

Two chapters are devoted to an analysis of selfjfeeling or the meaning of " I." The sense of appropriation, the " my feeling," is accepted as an empirical fact and is conceived of as extending itself to things and persons in such a way as to break down the hard-and-fast distinctions between ego and alter. The u looking-glags." self, the image of the self conceived of as entertained by persons, is analyzed and its reaction upon conduct pointed out in detail. Self-assertion is declared to be respectable, unless it is inconsistent with personal or social moral standards, when it is stigmatized as egotistic. To be selfish, then, is to fail to appreciate the social situation as it is gener- ally conceived. The proper antithesis of selfishness is not altruism, but rather right, justice, or magnanimity. A person may act out a narrower or a wider self ; there lies the distinction, rather than in a setting off against each other the really ijitejp_eneh;ating ^dfand^oth&C* The various personal qualities, pride, vanity, honor, self-reverence, humility, freedom, are interpreted in terms of the " looking-glass " and other types of the self.

Hostility is described as a personally prolectiye^ctivity which at