that the one
performing them has no means of foreseeing their outcome. If a person
cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not capable of
understanding what he is told about its outcome by those with more
experience, it is impossible for him to guide his act intelligently. In
such a state, every act is alike to him. Whatever moves him does move
him, and that is all there is to it. In some cases, it is well to permit
him to experiment, and to discover the consequences for himself in order
that he may act intelligently next time under similar circumstances. But
some courses of action are too discommoding and obnoxious to others to
allow of this course being pursued. Direct disapproval is now resorted
to. Shaming, ridicule, disfavor, rebuke, and punishment are used. Or
contrary tendencies in the child are appealed to to divert him from his
troublesome line of behavior. His sensitiveness to approbation, his hope
of winning favor by an agreeable act, are made use of to induce action
in another direction.

2. These methods of control are so obvious (because so intentionally
employed) that it would hardly be worth while to mention them if it were
not that notice may now be taken, by way of contrast, of the other more
important and permanent mode of control. This other method resides in
the ways in which persons, with whom the immature being is associated,
use things; the instrumentalities with which they accomplish their own
ends. The very existence of the social medium in which an individual
lives, moves, and has his being is the standing effective agency of
directing his activity.

This fact makes it necessary for us to examine in greater detail what
is meant by the social environment. We are given to separating from
each other the physical and social environments in which we live. The
separation is responsible on one hand for an exaggeration of the moral
importance of the more direct or personal modes of control of which
we have been speaking; and on the other hand for an exaggeration, in
current psychology and philosophy, of the intellectual possibilities of
contact with a purely physical environment. There is not, in fact, any
such thing as the direct influence of one human being on another apart
from use of the physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a
frown, a rebuke, a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some
physical change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over to
alter t