into contact with several
distinct groups, with varying codes of conduct, he will really
have a number of distinct personalities. The professor is a
different man in his class and at his club; the judge displays a
different character in the court and in the bosom of his family.

The self that comes to be most characteristic and distinctive
of a man, however, is determined by the group with
which he comes most habitually in contact, or to whose approvals
he has become most sensitive. Thus there develop
certain typical personalities or characters, such as those of
the typical lawyer or soldier or judge. Their bearing, action,
and consciousness of self are determined by the approvals
and disapprovals of the group to which they are most
completely and intimately exposed.

Both the consciousness of self which most men experience
and the overt expression of that selfhood in act are thus seen
to be a more or less direct reflex of the praise and blame of the
groups with which they are in contact. Men learn from
experience with the praise and blame of others to "place"
themselves socially, to discover in the mirror of other men's
opinions the status and locus of their own lives. As we shall
see in a succeeding section, the degree of satisfaction which
men experience in their consciousness of themselves is dependent
intimately on the praise and blame by which their
selfhood is, in the first place, largely determined. In the
chapter on the "Social Nature of Man," we examined in some
detail the way in which praise and blame modified a man's
habits. The total result of this process is to give a man a
certain fixed set of overt habits that constitute his character and
a more or less fixed consciousness of that character.

On the other hand, a man's character and self-consciousness
may develop more or less independently of the immediate
forces of the public opinion to which he is exposed. One
comes in contact in the course of his experience not merely
with his immediate contemporaries, but with a wide variety
of moral traditions. Except in the rigidly custom-bound life
of primitive societies, a man is, even in practical life, exposed
to a diversity of codes, standards, and expectations of behavior.
His family, his professional, his political, and his social
groups expose him to various kinds of emphases and accent
in behavior. And a man of some intelligence, education, and
culture may be determined in his action by standards w