ABSTRACT
Self-feeling and sympathetic feeling are the two fundamental forms of feeling that regularly function in this way as moral motives. The first of these is directly involved in self-consciousness and in the idea of one’s own personality that grows up along with self-consciousness. But in the course of moral development many different sets of ideas have become embodied in the notion of self. To be faithful to professional obligations, to keep one’s word, to speak the truth, —these are instincts that function as immediate reactions of self-feeling in everyone who is morally sound, though they may not always be able to withstand the opposition of other motives. The ordinary form of immorality, and that which is of most importance practically, is individual immorality, which springs from a revolt of the individual against the social will. Egoism, continually suppressed by the moral superiority of the social-regarding impulses, is always renewing the struggle.
