wrong," I mean to
affirm "I agree with you in objecting to it"; but that the necessity (a)
of acting as if I either do or do not approve it, and (b) of either
making my attitude agree with yours, or yours agree with mine, or of
fighting it out with you or with the whole force of organized society,
compels me to put my attitude into objective terms, to meet you and
society on a common platform. This is a _synthesis_, an achievement. To
attribute the synthesis to any faculty of "practical reason," adds
nothing to our information, but tends rather to obscure the facts.

(_d_) The process is thus a reciprocal process of valuing objects and of
constructing and reconstructing a self. The object as first imaged or
anticipated undergoes enlargement and change as it is put into relations
to other objects and as the consequences of adoption or rejection are
tried in anticipation. The self by reflecting and by enlarging its scope
is similarly enlarged. It is the _resulting_ self which is the final
valuer. The values of most objects are at first fixed for us by instinct
or they are suggested by the ethos and mores of our groups--family,
society, national religions, and "reign under the appearance of habitual
self-suggested tendencies." The self is constituted accordingly.
Collisions with other selves, conflicts between group valuations and
standards and individual impulses or desires, failure of old standards
as applied to new situations, bring about a more conscious definition of
purposes. The agent identifies himself with these purposes, and values
objects with reference to them. In this process of revaluing and
defining, of comparing and anticipation, freedom is found if anywhere.
For if the process is a real one the elements do not remain unaffected
by their relation to each other and to the whole. The act is not
determined by any single antecedent or by the sum of antecedents. It is
determined by the process. The self is not made wholly by heredity, or
environment. _It is itself creating for each of its elements a new
environment_, viz., the process of reflection and choice. And if man can
change the heredity of pigeons and race horses by suitable selection, if
every scientific experiment is a varying of conditions, it is at least
plausible that man can guide his own acts by intelligence, and revise
his values by criticism.

The self is itself creating for each of its elements a new
environment--this is a fact which if kept i