IDEALIZATION AND RELIGION 305 



adaptation to the ends of utility." " It is by adapted action," 

 he continues, " that our mental life is held together in great con-' 

 sistent thought-systems; and it is by new refinements upon these 

 adapted and correlated actions that new variations are intro- 

 duced into the systems of our coherent thought." ^ Thus the 

 truth is that thought is a function of doing as well as the reverse, 

 that "what we do is always a function of what we think," 2 

 and the thought that is eventually incorporated into our thought- 

 system is the result of activity that has proven of adaptive 

 value. 



The idealizing as well as constructive function of the imagina- 

 tion is prominent in the dialectic of growth in the developing 

 child, and in this process several " selves " emerge in conscious- 

 ness: (i) the habitual self consisting of a " solidified mass of per- 

 sonal material which he has worked into a systematic whole by a 

 series of acts "; ^ (2) the accommodating self, still in the " projec- 

 tive," unfinished stage " that is constantly being modified by the 

 influences outside, and in turn, passing the new things learned 

 over to the self of habit, — the self that learns, that imitates, that 

 accommodates to new suggestions "; (3) an ethical self gradually 

 emerging partly by obedience and partly by suggestion, built up 

 as a result of contact with father, mother, nurse, and others, 

 whose actions he cannot interpret but whom he must obey, and 

 who, he comes to learn, in turn obey a common law; (4) an ideal 

 self " which represents his best accommodation to self in general," 

 and (5) a public self the basis of the ideal self.'* 



Having described the process by which the ideal self arises in 

 consciousness,^ Baldwin says, " The regular, law-abiding, sanc- 

 tion-bringing, duty-observing self hovers over his thought, 

 inspires it and regulates its tendencies to action." " This general 

 notion of self," he continues, " is, like all general notions con- 

 sidered as general, not a presentation, not a mental content, but 

 an attitude, a way of acting; and the child has to bring all 

 the partial personal tendencies to action which spring up on the 



^ Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 94. 



2 Ibid., pp. 92, 97. ■* Ibid., pp. 283, 284, 315. 



' Ibid., p. 34. 5 Ibid., pp. 36 f. 



