Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/106

 The facility and willingness with which the child imitates is one of the conditions of moral progress. But a slavish imitation is not desirable. It is well that the imitative attitude is usually tempered by the tendency to oppose and to originate. The child very soon learns that he ought to imitate only some qualities (those that are "good"); others it ought not to imitate (these are "bad"). Perhaps the earliest definition which the child gives to "good" is "that which ought to be imitated." It is the privilege of parents and teachers to point out what qualities ought to be imitated, and in what circumstances the child should "learn to say No."

It is important to note that from the moral standpoint these two tendencies do not need to conflict. Rather do they work together for good. The child learns that certain habits and actions should be imitated, and it follows that certain other actions and habits should be eschewed. Imitation of one set of habits leads to or implies opposition to another set.

Now, the child has not been blindly attending to, imitating, and opposing other persons. Everything it imitates or opposes has been contributing to the development of its own personality. The self assimilates the actions and customs which it began by imitating. They have become part of itself, close-woven into its structure. Actions which were at first performed purely imitatively, as by a parrot or monkey, and hence were not really the actions of the self, now result directly from the activity of the self. Only those actions have moral value which are the actions of a self. If a child gives a penny to a beggar, simply because it sees its mother do so, the