Not that it is an error to say “I.” This, properly, is our commonest word and commonest thought. Only with reference to it does anything else have value. However interlocked the total frame of things may be, at certain centres where relations converge there are unique spots of consciousness capable of estimating reality and of sending forth modifying influences. Such a centre of consciousness, unlike all else, we rightly call a person, a self or ego; and because of its importance we often fix attention on it, withdrawing notice for the moment from the relations which encompass it. Such an abstraction, if clearly understood, is entirely legitimate. I shall frequently make use of it under the title of the separate or abstract self. But it should be borne in mind that it is an abstraction and that the real person is what I shall call the conjunct or social self, made up of that centre of consciousness and the relations in which it stands. While these two are usefully distinguishable, they are not separable. When I try to detach myself from my surroundings I know I am attempting an impossibility. How much would there be left of me were there no one but this central ego, none with whom I might communicate, no language prepared for communication or thought, no common affections, interests, or undertakings? Evidently we are from the start social beings. If with the early moralists we make the opposite assumption, our subsequent interest in our fellow men will never quite clear itself of artificiality and mistake. Yet while the separate self and the conjunct self lodge in the same being, the degree and kind of attention accorded to the latter marks the stage of moral maturity at which man or nation has arrived. In certain undeveloped forms of social life the conjunctive elements are but slightly emphasized, while the separate self bulks large. With the advance of morality the opposite principle obtains. Wider and more subtle relationships are seen to make our lives our own. Many as are these social varieties, I have thought they might advantageously be examined under three headings, to which I give the rather unintelligible names of Manners, Gifts, and Mutuality. While recognizing that every phase of human life is altruistic in some degree, I hold that there are higher grades which give to the principle a prominence and scope which the lower lack. My general subject, then, might be entitled The Forms and Stages of the Conjunct Self. I begin where the conjunctive principle appears in its narrowest range and advance into the broader altruism only as I am logically compelled to do so. Endeavoring to see how small a section of human conduct need be affected by altruism, I am ultimately forced to make it as extensive as life itself.