It might well seem indeed as though some degree of ill-feeling on these grounds would be inevitable in all parents in whom the self-regarding sentiments were strongly or even normally developed. Fortunately however it would appear that there exists a way by which the hatred and unhappiness arising from this source can to a very large extent be converted into feelings of an opposite and socially more satisfactory character. It is here that there comes into play the second of the two factors mentioned above. This factor consists of the process whereby the parent identifies himself with his child, as it were incorporates the child into his larger self and is thus able to take pleasure in the increasing powers of the child as if they were his own. We have already had occasion to study the corresponding process of identification in the mind of the child; the child tends naturally to identify himself with his parents or their substitutes, seeking thereby an increase of his own power and satisfaction. For precisely similar reasons the parent, as old age approaches (and even before then), will tend to identify himself with his child, endeavouring thus to find compensation for the diminution of his own personal capacity. Thus a father may regard the successes and failures of his son in his scholastic and professional career with the same personal interest, the same intimate emotional response as if they were his own, while the mother often follows her daughters' erotic ambitions and adventures, her matrimonial and parental life with a similar intensity of feeling. [Sidenote: This identification as a means of obtaining immortality] This identification plays moreover a further and perhaps still more important part inasmuch as it affords a means of overcoming the finality of individual death, and insures the parent, through his children and ultimately through their descendants, the nearest approach to material immortality that can be hoped for here on earth. The love of children and interest in their welfare which springs from the altruistic and object-loving tendencies involved in the parental instincts may thus become fused with the strongly egoistic tendencies grouped together under the self-preserving and self-regarding instincts and sentiments; that dearest and most powerful wish of the individual, _qua_ individual--the desire for immortality--thus obtaining satisfaction in the same way and at the same time as the strongest and most distinctive of all altruistic impulses--those which minister to the needs of the race through the love and care which is bestowed upon children by their parents. A reconciliation of the egoistic and the altruistic, of the personal and the racial trends, is thus brought about--a reconciliation which may be of the greatest value to the individual, to the family and to the larger social organism of which they both form a part. [Sidenote: Vicarious enjoyments of children's pleasures and successes]