Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/252

236 who has once obeyed the command to let an apple alone, coming to confront the apple again, when there is no one present to make him obey. There is his private, greedy, habitual self, eyeing the apple; there is also the spontaneously suggestible, accommodating, imitative self over against it, mildly prompting him to do as his father said and let the apple alone; and there is—or would be, if the obedience had taught him no new thought of self—the quick victory of the former. But now a lesson has been learned. There arises a thought of one who obeys, who has no struggle in carrying out the behests of the father. This may be vague; his habit may be yet weak in the absence of persons and penalties, but it is there, however weak. And it is not merely the faint imitation of an obedient self which he does not understand. It carries within it, it is true, all the struggle of the first obedience, all the painful protests of the private greedy self, all the smoke of the earlier battle-field. But while he hesitates, it is not merely the balance of the old forces that makes him hesitate; it is the sense of the new, better, obedient self hovering before him. A few such fights and he begins to grow accustomed to the presence of something in him which represents his father, mother, or in general, the law-giving personality. So, as he understands the meaning of obedience better, through his own acting out of its behests in varied circumstances, the projective elements of the alter which thus sets law to him, become subjective. The socius becomes more and more intimate as a law-abiding self of his own.

Then, with this self in him, he proceeds to do with it what we always do with our selves; he 'ejects' it into all the other members of the family and of his social circle. He expects, and rightly too, that each brother and sister will have the same responsibility to the Zeitgeist that he has—will reverence the same Penates. He exacts the same obediences to father and mother that he himself renders. It is amusing to see the jealousy with which one child in a family will watch the others, and see that they do not transgress the law of the family. If the father makes an exception of one little being he is quickly