§ 7. THE CONCEPTION OF THE SELF; OF CHARACTER AND RESPONSIBILITY =The Poets.=--Out of the fierce competition of individual desires, the clashing of individual ambitions, the conflict between the individual and the state, and the deepening of the conception of the individual's "nature," emerged also another conception of fundamental importance for the more highly developed reflective moral life, viz., that of the moral personality, its character and its responsibility. We may trace the development of this conception through the poets, as well as in the philosophers. Æschylus set man over against the gods, subject to their divine laws, but gave little play to human character or conscious self-direction. With Sophocles, the tragic situation was brought more directly into the field of human character, although the conception of destiny and the limitations marked thereby were still the dominant note. With Euripides, human emotions and character are brought into the foreground. Stout-heartedness, the high spirit that can endure in suffering or triumph in death, which shows not merely in his heroes but in the women, Polyxena and Medea, Phædra and Iphigenia, evinces the growing consciousness of the self--a consciousness which will find further development in the proud and self-sufficient endurance of the Stoic. In more directly ethical lines, we find increasing recognition of the self in the motives which are set up for human action, and in the view which is formed of human character. Conscience in the earlier poets and moralists, was largely a compound of Nemesis, the external messenger and symbol of divine penalty, on the one hand, and Aidos, the sense of respect or reverence for public opinion and for the higher authority of the gods, on the other. But already in the tragedians we find suggestions of a more intimate and personal conception. Pains sent by Zeus in dreams may lead the individual to meditate, and thus to better life. Neoptolemus, in Sophocles, says, "All things are noisome when a man deserts His own true self and does what is not meet." and Philoctetes replies, "Have mercy on me, boy, by all the gods, And do not shame thyself by tricking me." The whole _Antigone_ of Sophocles is the struggle between obedience to the political rulers and obedience to the higher laws which as "laws of reverence" become virtually inner laws of duty: "I know I please the souls I ought to please."