. The human being, born into a world where there are
many things to be learned both of natural law and human relations,
is, as it were, fortunately born ignorant. He has instincts
which are pliable enough to be modified into habits,
and in consequence socially useful habits can be deliberately
inculcated in the immature members of a society by their
elders. The whole process of education is a utilization of
man's prolonged period of infancy, for the deliberate acquisition
of habits. This is all the more important since only by
such habit formation during the long period of human infancy
can the achievements of civilization be handed down from
generation to generation. Art, science, industrial methods,
social customs, these are not inherited by the individual as
are the instincts of sex, pugnacity, etc. They are preserved
only because they can be taught as habits to those beings who
come into the world with a plastic equipment of instincts
which lend themselves for a long time to modification.

CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF AND REACTION TO IDEAS. A significant
difference between the actions of human beings and those of
animals is that human beings are conscious of themselves as
agents. They may be said not only to be the only creatures
who know what they are doing, but the only ones who realize
their individuality in doing it. Dogs and cats are not, so far
as we can draw inferences from extended observation of even
their most complex actions, conscious of themselves. It is
not very long, however, before the human animal begins to
set itself off against the remainder of the universe, to discover
that it is something different from the chairs, tables, and
surrounding people and faces that at first constitute for it only a
"blooming, buzzing confusion." A human being performs
actions with a feeling of awareness; he is conscious of himself.
This consciousness of self (see chapters VII and VIII) becomes
more acute as the individual grows older. It has consequences
of the gravest character in social, political, and
economic life. It is a large factor at once in such different
qualities of character as ambition, friendship, humility, and
self-sacrifice, and is responsible in large measure for whatever
truth there is in the familiarly spoken-of conflict
between "the individual and society."

Human beings are, furthermore, susceptible to a unique
stimulation to action, namely, ideas. Animals respond to
things only, that is, to thin