A child's moral conduct, like primitive man's, is at first absolutely dependent upon his environment, but with the development of self-consciousness and with the growth of an ideal of self, his values and his conduct become progressively freer from his present environment, and in a greater degree determined by the direction of past habits and the force of early impressions.[84] "There is hardly anything," said Mill, "so absurd or so mischievous that it may not by the use of external sanctions and the force of early impressions be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience." The attainment of character through the development of an ideal of self and the systematization of habits and motives is a slow and gradual process, and only rarely is complete independence of judgment attained, which alone renders the highest form of moral conduct possible, when all conduct is determined by will with regard to the realization of ends. FOOTNOTES: [64] "Heredity and Memory," p. 15. [65] Processes known technically as palingenesis and cenogenesis, the former term denoting the more complete epitomized development. [66] Dean Rashdall, who thus summarizes his position, is candid enough to admit the strength of McDougall's psychological analysis, which, however, he fails to see undermines his own position. [67] "Principles of Psychology," vol. ii, p. 408. [68] Many authorities deny that women are more easily hypnotized than men. It should, however, be remembered that emotional suggestibility does not correspond with susceptibility to hypnotic influence. The neurotic, weak-brained and hysterical, who are usually most susceptible to emotional suggestions in normal life, are invariably the most difficult to hypnotize, and on the other hand, as Dr. Bramwell points out, "Subjects who readily respond to suggestions when hypnotized are frequently the very ones who have for years resisted suggestion in the waking condition, even when this has been associated with emotional states." It is not, therefore, in hypnotic phenomena that evidence of the greater suggestibility of women is found. [69] Cf. the following passage by Elliot Smith and Pear: "It must be understood that this suppression of the external manifestations of an emotion such as fear is but a partial dominance of the bodily concomitants of that emotion. The only changes which can usually be controlled by the will are those of the voluntary or skeletal muscular system, not those of the involuntary or visceral mechanism.... Men may feel intense emotions, obviously not of fear alone, for a long time without displaying any signs of them. But suppression of emotion is a very exhausting process. As Bacon says: 'We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body: and it is not otherwise in the mind.'" [70] Article on Psychology, _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 10th edition.