This new something--we call it
_Conscience_--sides with his mother, and causes its presence and
judgment to be felt not only before but after the event, so that he soon
comes to know that it is well with him or ill with him as he obeys or
disobeys it. And now he not only knows, not only knows that he knows,
but knows he knows that he knows--knows that he is self-conscious--that
he has a conscience. With the first sense of resistance to it, the power
above him has drawn nearer, and the deepest within him has declared
itself on the side of the highest without him. At one and the same
moment, the heaven of his childhood has, as it were, receded and come
nigher. He has run from under it, but it claims him. It is farther, yet
closer--immeasurably closer: he feels on his being the grasp and hold of
his mother's. Through the higher individuality he becomes aware of his
own. Through the assertion of his mother's will, his own begins to
awake. He becomes conscious of himself as capable of action--of doing or
of not doing; his responsibility has begun.
He slips from her lap; he travels from chair to chair; he puts his
circle round the room; he dares to cross the threshold; he braves the
precipice of the stair; he takes the greatest step that, according to
George Herbert, is possible to man--that out of doors, changing the
house for the universe; he runs from flower to flower in the garden;
crosses the road; wanders, is lost, is found again.
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