THE SOCIAL AND THE EXTRA-SOCIAL 655
partial attitudes aroused in definite concrete cases. The self- content remains one, growing with experience, it is true, but never more than one self-content. The partial attitudes which habitually determine and express it tend to realize themselves severally ; but it is the mark of the general that they are in some degree held in the larger issue which constitutes the limit of personal growth up to date. The general self is, therefore, the sense of a system of attitudes which avail, by reason of the relative adequacy of their ejective content, to cope with the varied personal experiences of life.
Fourth, this "general," like all mental attitudes considered with reference to their contents, is itself inadequate to personal situations not yet covered by experience. The attitude called the general is therefore itself different according as the content is determined " ejectively " or " projectively," i. e., according as it determines the content, or the content in part determines it ; according, that is, as the person met with, or the personal situa- tion experienced, has new, interesting, instructive features, or, on the other hand, is thoroughly understood, and already suc- cessfully acted upon. The former is the "general" as above defined, and as properly designated — the attitude which is not violated in the round of concrete personal experiences ; the latter is the " ideal " self. The ideal self, then, is the attitude which looks forward toward a statement of the self-content which is not yet secured, and which no concrete self-experience suffices to fulfill, but which would respond adequately, if we had it, lo all possible personal demands. In its actual mechanism this means, I think — what it means also on the lower plane — the readiness or habit of our motor nature to accommodate itself ever more adequately, while at the same time it is becoming general and spontaneous in its expression. We may, indeed, recall here the outcome of the earlier chapter on the ethical self (Sec. 29) to the effect that in the ethical " ought " we have a " habit of vio- lating habits ; " a call to accommodate to what is as yet unreal- ized in actual self-content, and to modify the attitudes which
accompany the actual content.
J. Mark Baldwin. Princeton University.
