ing of
feelings in the infant to the highest self-sacrifice from altruistic
impulse, we have the common element of submission. The individual is
feeling, and accordingly acting, not in the realization of his
individual impulses, but under the influence of other personalities.

This subordination to the feelings of others through sympathy and pity
and common joy takes a new psychological form in the affection of
tenderness and especially parental love. The relation of parents to
children involves certainly an element of superordination, but the
mentally strongest factor remains the subordination, the complete
submission to the feelings of those who are dependent upon the parents'
care. In its higher development the parental love will not yield to
every momentary like or dislike of the child, but will adjust the
educative influence to the lasting satisfactions and to the later
sources of unhappiness. But the submission of the parents to the feeling
tones in the child's life remains the fundamental principle of the
family instinct. While the parents' love and tenderness mean that the
stronger submits to the weaker, even up to the highest points of
self-sacrifice, the loving child submits to his parents from feelings
which are held together by a sense of dependence. This feeling of
dependence as a motive of subordination enters into numberless human
relations. Everywhere the weak lean on the strong, and choose their
actions under the influence of those in whom they have confidence. The
corresponding feelings show the manifold shades of modesty, admiration,
gratitude, and hopefulness. Yet it is only another aspect of the social
relation if the consciousness of dependence upon the more powerful is
felt with fear and revolt, or with the nearly related emotion of envy.

The desire to assert oneself is no less powerful, in the social
interplay, than the impulse to submission. Society needs the leaders as
well as the followers. Self-assertion presupposes contact with other
individuals. Man protects himself against the dangers of nature, and
man masters nature; but he asserts himself against men who interfere
with him or whom he wants to force to obedience. The most immediate
reaction in the compass of self-assertion is indeed the _rejection of
interference_. It is a form in which even the infant shows the opposite
of submission. He repels any effort to disturb him in the realization of
the instinctive impulses. From the simplest