768 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
feeds and fondles, and becomes the center of so many strong stimuli that the agitation of the babe finds relief through her more than through any other symbol. Thus develops the filial instinct-center. The instinct-process back of it is a physiological state and an agitative feeling-state which gives rise to instinctive acts which fix upon, as a symbol, the thing which kindles the widest range of expansive feeling. With the development of memory and imagination the filial relation becomes impulsive. The image of the parent seems to be continually present in the minds of some children and to suggest impulsive acts. Cooley says of his child that he "wishes me to share his every thought and sensation .... I must look at the butterfly, feel of the fuzz on the clover stems .... meanwhile he is reminded of what happened some other time and gives me various anecdotes."^
This filial impulse, with wider experience, develops into the impulses of gratitude and devotion which adapt the individual to the conditions of a larger world. Devotion is a response to generosity, gratitude to compassion. Thus we have two pairs of impulsive, expansive relations between unequals, generosity- devotion and compassion-gratitude. Gregariousness is an in- stinctive relation between equals and develops into the impulsive relation of friendliness which is a relation of mutual generosity and devotion.
The cohesion of instinct- and impulse-centers is brought about through their association on the basis of like feeling. Thus parents love offspring as their offspring, that is, as closely asso- ciated with experiences of sexual intimacy. This associative process runs the gauntlet of the symbols of expansive instinct, impulse, and sentiment. Thus children are named for friends or they are given names of sentimental significance; and through christening they are associated with religious symbols.
The more points of instinctive and impulsive contact feeling has with an object, the more suggestible the individual becomes with reference to that object. If the object is inanimate we term this suggestibility appreciation and the concomitant feeling aesthetic feeling. If the object is animate, we retain the word
^ Human Nature and the Socia! Order, p. 49.
