jected' and 'ejected' at the same time under stress of the same situation; but this is my own statement purely, Mr. Baldwin does not make it). Thus, on p. 80, we are told there is "only one body of personal data" which shifts its locus upon occasion; on pp. 14-16, that there is one self-thought (see also pp. 29, 49); on p. 491 that there are not " two different thoughts for himself and the other—the ego and the alter—but one thought common in the main for both." From this point of view ego and alter are repeatedly declared to be simply emphasized poles of the common underlying thought of personality. The aggressive, habitual self, already spoken of, from this point of view is nothing but the tipping up the social or general personality at one end. The worth of this contention is not the point at issue. It not only stands in flat contradiction to the other official doctrine of Professor Baldwin, that all progress is first by particularizing the thoughts of others into one self, and then generalizing them back again, but is in equally flagrant opposition to Mr. Baldwin's other express theory of the general self, which emerges when he comes to discuss the ethical self. According to the group of statements just referred to, the general sense of personality underlies the distinction of ego and alter selves; but when Mr. Baldwin wants to get an ethical self, in order to ground obligation, this general self tends to become a later growth, the unification of just the two disparate selves, which a few short pages before were not disparate, but simply poles of a relationship (pp. 43-55). The contradiction appears most clearly when Mr. Baldwin says (p. 51) that this ethical self "is a slow social attainment on the part of the child. He gets it only by getting certain other thoughts of self first." But from the other point of view, be it remembered, the general self (and the ethical is simply the general) preceded differentiation into ego and alter. [1]
- ↑ Limits of space prevent further detailed examination. But I will suggest that a careful reading of the discussions, pp. 34-55, will reveal no less than three differing concepts of the general self. According to one, it is distinctly a psychical process ; it represents motor synthesis, or integration, of a variety of partial tendencies. This is in harmony with Mr. Bald win' s professed psychology of the 'general' as equivalent to motor attitude. It seems to be highly suggestive and valuable. It is admirably stated on p. 266. It locates generality of personality in process of a certain sort, not in content. But it finds no application. Another point of view comes out in the insistence on obedience—the consciousness of law is the general, and this consciousness is reached through having to obey other personalities. Here the general is quantitative. But Mr. Baldwin evidently feels the arbitrary and external character of such a general, and so, in turn, the father who imposes law does it because this is the law of the whole social situation its generality lies in its being an interpretation of the family group as such. (On p. 54 there is the confusion between 'general' because
