Defiance of authority is defiance of the introjected conscience, and involves a measure of self-punishment. We have seen how a powerful need for self-punishment is the stuff out of which martyrs and sensational failures are made; but of more general importance is the rôle of the sense of guilt in supporting the _status quo_. Deviation from accepted patterns becomes equivalent to sin, and the conscience visits discomforts upon those who dare to innovate. Radical ideas become “sacrilegious” and “disloyal” in the view of the primitive conscience, for they tend to represent more than a limited defiance of authority. They put the whole structure of the personality under strain. The childish conscience is easily intimidated into preserving order on slight provocation; it knows little of the capacity to consider the piecemeal reconstruction of values. “Radicalism” is felt as a challenge to the whole system of resistances which are binding down the illicit impulses of the personality, rather than as an opportunity for detached consideration of the relation of the self to the rest of reality. There is little boldness in political thinking which is not accompanied by an overdose of defiance, for even those who succeed in breaking through the intimidations of their infantile consciences must often succumb in some measure and “pay out.” Much of the struggle, the fearful _Sturm und Drang_ of the emancipated thinker, is his unconscious tribute to the exactions of the tribunal which he erected within himself at an early age, and which continues to treat innovation as _ipso facto_ dangerous. The non-obsessive thinker is one who can coolly contemplate revisions in the relations of man to reality unperturbed by his antiquated conscience. Often readjustments of human affairs which are proposed are driven to absurdity because the original mind is compelled to transform his mere departure from the conventional into a defiance of conventionality. When one perceives the operation of this powerful self-punishment drive, and the secondary efforts to free one’s self from feelings of guilt for defying the authorized order, it is possible to remain understandingly tolerant of the eccentricities of creative minds. To put the point a bit sharply, it is safe to say that the adult mind is only partly adult; the conscience may be four years old. The conscience, the introjected nursemaid, reacts undiscriminatingly to change, and construes it as rebellion. The organization of motives which occurs in adolescence possesses direct significance for the interpretation of political interests.