I imagine, then, that as a rule the child associates “I” and “me” at first only with those ideas regarding which his appropriative feeling is aroused and defined by opposition. He appropriates his nose, eye, or foot in very much the same way as a plaything—by antithesis to other noses, eyes, and feet, which he cannot control. It is not uncommon to tease little children by proposing to take away one of these organs, and they behave precisely as if the “mine” threatened were a separable object—which it might be for all they know. And, as I have suggested, even in adult life, “I,” “me,” and “mine” are applied with a strong sense of their meaning only to things distinguished as peculiar to us by some sort of opposition or contrast. They always imply social life and relation to other persons. That which is most distinctively mine is very private, it is true, but it is that part of the private which I am cherishing in antithesis to the rest of the world, not the separate but the special. The aggressive self is essentially a militant phase of the mind, having for its apparent function the energizing of peculiar activities, and although the militancy may not go on in an obvious, external manner, it always exists as a mental attitude. In some of the best-known discussions of the development of the sense of self in children the chief emphasis has been placed upon the speculative or quasi-metaphysical ideas concerning “I” which children sometimes formulate as a result either of questions from their elders, or of the independent development of a speculative instinct. The most obvious result of these inquiries is to show that a child, when he reflects upon the self in this manner, usually locates “I” in the body. Interesting and important as this juvenile metaphysics is, as one phase of mental development, it should certainly not be taken as an adequate expression of the childish sense of self, and probably President G. Stanley Hall, who has collected valuable material of this kind, does not so take it.[43] This analysis of the “I,” asking one’s self just where it is located, whether particular limbs are embraced in it, and the like, is somewhat remote from the ordinary, naïve use of the word, with children as with grown people. In my own children I only once observed anything of this sort, and that was in the case of R., when he was struggling to achieve the correct use of his pronouns; and a futile, and as I now think mistaken, attempt was made to help him by pointing out the association of the word with his body. On the other hand, every child who has learned to talk uses “I,” “me,” “mine,” and the like hundreds of times a day, with great emphasis, in the simple, naïve way that the race has used them for thousands of years. In this usage they refer to claims upon playthings, to assertions of one’s peculiar will or purpose, as “_I_ don’t want to do it that way,” “_I_ am going to draw a kitty,” and so on, rarely to any part of the body.