CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO 431 



they came and where they are going and why. Should they 

 conceive an ultimate happiness as possible, they also seek out 

 the laws which govern its attainment. 



Moreover, since the generalities of natural law do not pre- 

 scribe specific remedies for every concrete situation, men 

 elaborate applications of the law, either as more or less reason- 

 ably evident deductions from the natural law, or as simple 

 arrangements of convenience. These are the various positive 

 human laws, more or less detailed, more or less conformed to 

 the natural law, which, with the natural law, comprise the 

 customs of the community. This structure of law, prescribed 

 by reason and more or less reasonably expanded, is, as far as 

 it is grasped by each man's native ingenuity, the norm of his 

 conscience. 



How does any individual actually come to a knowledge of 

 these laws? Obviously he begins by learning what his parents 

 teach him, and goes on learning the laws of his community, 

 especially from those members who are commissioned to up- 

 hold and instruct in the laws. Not only is his mind instructed; 

 the whole man is informed, molded not only by words but by 

 the pattern of approval and disapproval reigning in the com- 

 munity. Ideally, however, the role and function of reason or 

 intelligence should never be compromised in the educative 

 process; ideally the essence of the individual's growth to ma- 

 turity is a growth in the understanding of the truth underlying 

 the formulas of the law. Education should not be a merely 

 passive reception, nor a repressive operation; if it is well done, 

 the words and examples of the community and the patterns 

 of their aproval and disapproval underline and clarify the 

 truths basic to the law, quickening, broadening and substan- 

 tiating what the experience of the growing individual is con- 

 tinually teaching him. 



III. Comparison of Conscience and Superego. 



Is this not the superego, the acceptance first of parental 

 norms of conduct, and later of community norms, and is it not 



