THE MORAL SENSE 149 



It is thought by some that this moral faculty 

 is an imitative function and has its origination 

 in obedience. The child first feels the compulsion 

 of command from his parents and from that gains 

 the idea of obedience. This becomes a well-fixed 

 attitude in his relation to them. But he will after 

 awhile observe that they too are obedient. They 

 sometimes say that they must do things or must 

 not do things which they do not want to do or do 

 want to do. In the parents the child notes rather 

 confusedly, of course, though more clearly when 

 oft repeated that the parents are obeying some 

 unseen source of obligation. They say: We must; 

 we must not. We ought ; we ought not. An un- 

 seen authority is felt by them whom they obey. 

 These instances of obligation come to be reduced 

 to rule or principle, and after years the child has 

 been impressed with a law of obligation that is 

 different from the authority of his parents. It is 

 very probable that this sense of moral obligation 

 would be very seriously impaired where the par- 

 ents act capriciously, always as they pleased, and 

 were not themselves obedient to a Power not them- 

 selves. 



Another root of this same origination is thus 

 stated by Baldwin : ' * Suppose a boy who has once 

 obeyed a command to let an apple alone, coming 

 to confront the apple again when there is no one 

 present to make him obey. There is his private, 

 greedy, habitual self, eying the apple; there is 

 also the spontaneously suggestible, accommodat- 



