centuries, show that on the whole those with higher intelligence were
also of better character and personality. Criminals, taken as a whole,
average rather low in intelligence; and it may even be doubted whether
the clever, scheming rascal, who defrauds widows of their money, or
trains feeble-minded boys to pick pockets for him, has, after all, the
brains of the man who can easily see how such schemes could be worked
but decides against them himself because he sees something better
worth doing.

A sense of inferiority, either physical or mental, is apt to affect
the personality unfavorably. It does not necessarily produce humble
behavior; far from that, it often leads to a nervous assertiveness. An
apparently disdainful individual is often really shy and unsure of
himself. Put a man where he can see he is equal to his job and at the
same time is accomplishing something worth while, and you often see
considerable improvement in his personality.

The Self

In a broad, objective sense, the self is the individual, but in a more
subjective sense the self is what the individual knows about himself,
how he conceives himself, how he feels about himself, what he plans
and wishes for himself. It is reasonable to suppose that the newly
born infant does not {556} distinguish himself from other objects.
Perhaps his foot, as he sees it, seems simply an object among others,
like a toy; but he soon learns to connect the visual appearance with
the cutaneous and kinesthetic sensations from the foot, and these
sensations, along with the organic, always retain in large measure the
subjective quality of belonging to the self, whereas sights, sounds,
odors and tastes seem to belong to objects distinct from the self.

If we ask how the child comes to make the distinction between the self
and the not-self, we have to call to mind the assertiveness that
manifests itself very early in the child's behavior--how he resists
being pushed and pulled about, struggles against being held, and in
many ways, more and more complex as he develops, shows that he has a
"will of his own". It is in resisting and overcoming external things
that he comes to distinguish himself from them.

Not only external things, but other _persons_ particularly, have to be
encountered and resisted by the child; and often, too, he has to
submit to them, after a struggle. Probably he distinguishes between
himself and other people even more sharply than between himself and