There can be little doubt that much of the general resistance to, and intolerance of, authority, that may be exhibited by certain individuals, or at times by whole sections of a community (or even by whole peoples) derives its motive power from a persistence in the Unconscious of parent hatreds of this kind. A very considerable proportion of criminal actions in the individual are also due to the same unconscious source, the still existing desire to resist the authority of the parents finding outlet in a displaced form in infringements of the laws, conventions, or regulations imposed by the authority of society or of the State. Particularly is this true of crimes against persons who embody or exercise this authority--emperors, kings and other persons in high places, and it would seem probable indeed that many cases of regicide or of attempts on the lives of official personages have been committed by those suffering from insufficiently controlled parent hatreds of unusual strength. Bearing in mind the dangers that beset a community in which tendencies to anarchy, lawlessness or unreasonable opposition to governmental authority are widespread, it is obvious that the frequent occurrence of violent and persistent parent hatreds in children, leading, as they so often do, to displacements of this kind, is a matter of very serious sociological and political importance[141]. [Sidenote: Displacements of respect and esteem] These same persons in authority, who thus become the recipients displaced enmity towards the parents, may however also serve in later life as substitutes for those aspects of the parents in virtue of which these latter were in childhood reverenced as the possessors of unlimited power, wisdom, virtue or knowledge (_Cp._ above p. 54). Especially is this the case perhaps with regard to ecclesiastical authorities; the priest, as the interpreter of wisdom that transcends earthly knowledge and the transmitter of commands that transcend earthly authority, being peculiarly suitable as an object of this emotional attitude. The head of the Roman Catholic Church has indeed, through the doctrine of infallibility, been explicitly endowed (with reference to a certain sphere of thought) with the character of perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom, which the young child with the sense of its own immense inferiority in these respects, is liable to attribute to its parents. The teacher too, in his position of moral and intellectual authority, frequently becomes the recipient of similar feelings; the additional influence which he possesses over his pupils through the latter's childish over-estimation of his knowledge and capacity often receiving frank acknowledgment in the fact of his unwillingness ever to appear to have been mistaken or to have been ignorant with regard to any matter, lest the realisation of his fallibility should detract from the suggestive power that he has hitherto enjoyed. [Sidenote: Medical practitioners as parent-substitutes]