Without credulity there could be no organization of society, no rituals, no ceremonials, no religions and customs,--but without the questioning spirit there could be no progress. Most of the men and women of this world have much credulity and only a feeble questioning tendency, but there are a few who from the start subject the answers given them to a rigid scrutiny and who test belief by results. Let any one read the beliefs of savages, let him study the beliefs of the civilized in the spirit in which he would test the statement of the performance of an automobile, and he can but marvel at man's credulity. Belief and the acceptance of authority are the conservative forces of society, and they have their origin in the nursery when the child asks, "Why does the moon get smaller?" and the mother answers, "Because, dear, God cuts a piece off every day to make the stars with." The authorities, recognizing that their power lay in unquestioning belief, have always sanctified it and made the pious, non-skeptical type the ideal and punished the non-believer with death or ostracism. Fortunately for the race, the skeptic, if silenced, modifies the strength of the belief he attacks and in the course of time even they who have defended begin to shift from it and it becomes refuted. Beliefs, as Lecky[1] so well pointed out, are not so of ten destroyed as become obsolete.
[1] Lecky: "History of European Morals." As he points out, the belief in witchcraft never was disproved, it simply died because science made it impossible to believe that witches could disorganize natural laws.
It may seem as if imitation were a separate principle in mental growth, and there have been many to state this. As is well known Tarde made it a leading factor in human development. It seems to me that it is linked up with desire for experience, desire for fellowship, and also with a strongly competitive feeling, which is early manifest in children and which may be called "a want of what the other fellow has." Children at the age of a year and up may be perfectly pleased with what they have until they see another child playing with something,--something perhaps identical with their own. They then betray a decided, uncontrollable desire for the other child's toy; they are no longer content with their own, and by one means or another they seek to get it,--by forcible means, by wheedling or coaxing, or by tormenting their parents. The disappearance of contentment through the competitive feeling, the competitive nature of desire, the role that envy plays in the happiness and effort of man, is a thesis emphasized by every moralist and philosopher since the beginning of things. In the strivings of every man, though he admit it or not, one of the secret springs of his energy is this law of desire, that a large part of its power and persistence is in the competitive feeling, is in envy and the wish to taste what others are experiencing.
A basic law of desire lies in an observation of Lotze, elaborated by William James. We may talk of selfishness and altruism as if they were entirely separate qualities of human nature. But what seems to be true is that one is an extension of the other, that is, we are always concerned with the ego feeling, but in the one case the ego feeling is narrow and in the other case it includes others as part of the ego. Lotze's observations on clothes shows that we expend ego feeling in all directions, that we tend to be as tall as our top hats and as penetrating as our walking sticks, that the man who has a club in his hand has a tactile sense to the very end of the club. James in his marvelous chapter on the various selves points out that a man's interests and affections are his selves, and that they enclose one another like the petals of a rose. We may speak of unipetalar selves, who include only their own bodies in self-feeling; of bipetalar selves who include in it their families, and from there on we go to selves who include their work, their community, their nation, until we reach those very rare souls whose petals cover all living things. So men extend their self-feeling, if ambitious, to their work, to their achievements,--if paternal to their children; if domestic, to wife and home; if patriotic to the nation, etc. Development lies in the extension of the self-feeling and in the increase of its intensity. But the obstacle lies in the competitive feelings, in that dualism of man's nature that makes him yearn not only for fellowship, but also for superiority. These desires are in eternal opposition, but are not necessarily antagonistic, any more than are the thumb and the little finger as they meet in some task, any more than are excitation and inhibition. Every function in our lives has its check and balance, and fellowship, yearning and superiority urge one another.
From the cradle to the grave, we desire fellowship as an addition to our gregarious feeling. We ask for approval, for we expand under sympathy and contract under cold criticism. Nothing is so pleasant as "appreciation," which means taking us at our own valuation or adding to it,, and there is no complaint so common as, "They don't understand me," which merely means, "They blame me without understanding that I really seek the good, that I am really good, though perhaps I seem not to be." The child who hurts its thumb runs to its mother for sympathy, and the pain is compensated for, at least in part, by that sympathy. Throughout life we desire sympathy for our hurts, except where that sympathy brings with it a feeling of inferiority. To be helped by others in one way or another is the practical result of this aspect of fellowship.
