146 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



to hide his action grows out of the knowledge that 

 it has been forbidden, and the doing of forbidden 

 things is associated with punishment. Professor 

 Major in his observation of his own child noted 

 that the little fellow had many devices for getting 

 away his little brother 's playthings from him. It 

 looked much like selfishness, but probably was 

 not; for he was quite willing to let his brother 

 have his own playthings. It was action which 

 his opening powers suggested, that was not yet 

 inhibited by the higher element, as yet undevel- 

 oped, of unselfish or altruistic action. His own 

 testimony concerning the child at this age is, "I 

 have never seen a single trait which even the ' un- 

 embarrassed scientist' would call vicious." Some 

 day there must come from within a feeling that 

 it is wrong to do wrong. At about the age of 

 six or seven years the child acquires the sense of 

 the conventional, which is the idea of the proper 

 or a social standard. This looks very much like 

 the beginnings of the sense of ought as controlled 

 by others, so far as we can trace it to outward 

 influence. The conventional may easily pass into 

 the obligatory. ''With the beginnings of this con- 

 sciousness the symbolic bent of the mind begins 

 to yield a place to the higher and more conscious 

 form of intellectual and moral activity." (W. T. 

 Harris.) As to the nature and origin of con- 

 science there is much difference of opinion among 

 thoughtful writers. When one accepts the point 

 of view of Divine Immanence, it is not so easy 

 to distinguish the innate from the extra-personal. 



