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." x 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: (1) 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 " ; 3 (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. 4 



Having described the process by which the ideal self arises in 

 consciousness, 6 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 



1 Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 94. 



2 Ibid., pp. 92, 97. 4 Ibid., pp. 283, 284, 315. 



3 Ibid., p. 34. 6 Ibid., pp. 36 f. 



