January 6, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



17 



A division of the volume into two books 

 corresponds to the above distinction of the 

 problems dealt with. Book I. is a study of 

 the person, public and private; Book II. is 

 a study of societj\ The four formal parts 

 of Book I. deal respectively with the imi- 

 tative person, the inventive person, the 

 person's equipment and the person's sanc- 

 tions. The three formal parts of Book 

 II. deal respectively with the person in 

 action, social organization and practical con- 

 clusions. 



I shall not attempt in the present article 

 to review Professor Baldwin's treatment of 

 all these subjects, or even to summarize his 

 conclusions. I shall examine only the two 

 conceptions that are of chief interest to the 

 sociologist. These, of course, are the con- 

 ception of the social nature of the self, or 

 individual personality, and the conception 

 of the psychic nature of society. 



Psychology, some time ago, got beyond 

 the conundrum 



" Should I be I or should I be 

 One-tenth another and nine- tenths me" 

 if my great-grandmother had married an- 

 other suitor V It seems to be agreed on all 

 hands that in any case the ego is nine-tenths 

 or more somebody else. That is to say, his 

 individual personality is for the most part 

 a product of his intercourse with other per- 

 sonalities. Professor Baldwin, as readers 

 of his earlier works are aware, goes even 

 beyond writers like Eibot and James in his 

 account of the composite origin of the self. 

 He holds that not only does the self incor- 

 porate elements from other personalities, so 

 that, at any given time, it includes thoughts 

 and feelings derived from others, and acts 

 in imitation of the conduct of others, but 

 also that its very thought of itself is merely 

 one pole of a consciousness ' of a sense of 

 personality generally,' the other pole of 

 which is the thought of some other pei'son 

 or alter. 



This comprehensive sense of personality 



at first is merely projective — to use Pro- 

 fessor Baldwin's term ; it is a mass of more 

 or less vague impressions received from 

 persons who are encountered and observed. 

 It is secondly subjective ; the ego, by its 

 imitations of observed persons, incorpo- 

 rates their peculiarities to some extent in 

 itself. It is thirdly ejective; the self in- 

 terprets observed persons in terms of its 

 own feelings, thoughts and habits. This 

 give and take between the individual and 

 his fellows Professor Baldwin calls ' the dia- 

 lectic of personal growth ;' and he says it 

 may be read thus : " My thought of self is 

 in the main, as to its character as a personal 

 self, filled up with my thought of others, 

 distributed variously as individuals ; and 

 my thought of others, as persons, is mainly 

 filled up with myself. In other words, but 

 for certain minor distinctions in the filling, 

 and for certain compelling distinctions be- 

 tween that which is immediate and that 

 which is objective, the ego and the alter are 

 to our thought one and the same thing." 

 Thus the individual is always a socius, and 

 not merely because, after reaching adult 

 life, the necessity of cooperating with his 

 fellow-men compels him to adapt himself to 

 them and to modify an original egoism by 

 the cultivation of social habits, but because, 

 from his earliest infancy, his own develop- 

 ment as a self-conscious person has been 

 incorporating social elements and creating 

 within himself a social no less than an in- 

 dividual point of view. 



When adult life is reached, however, the 

 process does not cease. The dialectic of 

 personal growth continues to determine all 

 our thinking, our social no less than our 

 individual judgments ; that is to say, in ar- 

 riving at any judgment, we incorporate in 

 our thought the judgments of other men; 

 and we interpret the judgments of other 

 men by our own. 



It follows that all of those social rela- 

 tions and policies which are products of 



