x THE WILL IN DEVELOPMENT 179 



rule that is to be operative in action and to be sustained 

 as a custom must awaken a response in feeling. Now 

 particular rules will awaken particular sentiments, and, con- 

 versely, may be engendered by such sentiments. Among 

 other things, it is easy to see that direct feeling for another 

 individual, and particularly feeling for him based not on his 

 personal relationship, but on his membership of the com- 

 munity, would be one very efficacious sentiment in the 

 formation of such rules. But it would not be the only 

 sentiment in operation. On a much larger scale, customs 

 arise as the result of countless individual interactions of 

 impulse and sentiment, interest and counter-interest, and 

 in each case the rule once formed is supported, without 

 regard to its particular character and effect, by a sentiment 

 attaching to custom as custom and condemning its breach. 

 This sentiment does not necessarily imply any clear appre- 

 ciation of the social order, but it arises in response to the 

 necessities of that order, just as other feelings arise in 

 response to the necessities of life. 



In trying to formulate the minimum psychological differ- 

 ence involved in the formation of general rules, we are thus 

 forced to allow one new element of feeling the sentiment 

 supporting the rule itself. If all the grounds of this 

 sentiment are set out, they involve the whole relation of 

 the individual to society, the recognition of self and others 

 as alike members of a body with rights and duties deter- 

 mined by that membership, and the admission that the 

 life of such a body rests on the observance of general rules 

 impartially applied. But here as elsewhere, feeling, senti- 

 ment, impulse arise first, the forces which engender them 

 work in the background and are not made explicit as 

 grounds of action till a later stage of developed reflection. 

 The sentiment of loyalty to the established rule, the feeling 

 that is shocked by a breach of custom, is the simplest form 

 of the response of the individual to the call of social life. 

 Now the individual can respond to the social order only by 

 introducing elements of order into his own life. And 

 while, once again, the nature of this order, the ideal of 

 character or of duty, and the grounds on which it is based 

 are late products of reflection, the direct feeling for the 



