306 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



thought of the partial more isolated selves of his habit, into the 

 way of action which we call ethical conduct." l 



The concrete body of this ideal, that is, the child's actual 

 mental picture of what is good in a person, is made up from his 

 own acts and the acts which he conceives as possibly his own. 

 " And then, so far as he feels it to be inadequate, he seeks to find, 

 in the persons projective to him some one or more whose actions 

 are better than his." 



Ethical conduct has one aspect which our author calls sentiment 

 and defines as " the emotional or active tendency of consciousness 

 away beyond the confines of its actual interpretations." l This 

 general sentiment has three phases the ethical, social, and re- 

 ligious, which are of special importance in our present discussion. 



" The most general and important phase of ethical sentiment," 

 he says, " is that known in theoretical ethics as the sense of 

 obligation." This arises, he shows, from a sense of incomplete- 

 ness, of mal-adaptation, of social restraint compelling obedience to 

 a law higher than any worked out by himself. 2 When the child 

 has attained an appreciation of right conduct he " ejects " this 

 into his associates, 3 and by the dialectics of personal and social 

 growth there is worked out a general public opinion. 



By social or public sentiment is meant that pressure of social 

 suggestion and constraint on the individual of which the child, 

 and all persons, are more or less conscious much of the time, 

 this sentiment growing out of the conflicts between the habitual 

 self and the public self. 4 This public sentiment as felt and given 

 intellectual form, becomes ethical judgment. The child judges 

 and realizes that he is judged, another dialectic process. 5 



The religious sentiment of the growing child is merely an ex- 

 tension of the ethical and social, 6 and has two elements, a. feeling 

 of dependence with three phases, spontaneous, intellectual and 

 ethical, and a. feeling of mystery engendered as a result of his ever 

 increasing experience of the unexpected and inexplicable in his 

 relations with persons. 7 



1 Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 295. 2 Ibid., pp. 36, 297. 



3 Ibid., pp. 299, 331; cf. The Individual and Society, p. 72. 



4 Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 315. 



6 Ibid., p. 326. 8 Ibid., p. 441. 7 Ibid., pp. 347 f . 



