Chapter II: Human Nature (1)

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Human Interest in Human Nature

The human interest in human nature is proverbial. It is an original tendency of man to be attentive to the behavior of other human beings. Experience heightens this interest because of the dependence of the individual upon other persons, not only for physical existence, but for social life.

The literature of every people is to a large extent but the crystallization of this persistent interest. Old saws and proverbs of every people transmit from generation to generation shrewd generalizations upon human behavior. In joke and in epigram, in caricature and in burlesque, in farce and in comedy, men of all races and times have enjoyed with keen relish the humor of the contrast between the conventional and the natural motives in behavior. In Greek mythology, individual traits of human nature are abstracted, idealized, and personified into gods. The heroes of Norse sagas and Teutonic legends are the gigantic symbols of primary emotions and sentiments. Historical characters live in the social memory not alone because they are identified with political, religious, or national movements but also because they have come to typify human relationships. The loyalty of Damon and Pythias, the grief of Rachel weeping for her children, the cynical cruelty of the egocentric Nero, the perfidy of Benedict Arnold, the comprehending sympathy of Abraham Lincoln, are proverbial, and as such have become part of the common language of all the peoples who participate in our occidental culture.

Poetry, drama, and the plastic arts are interesting and significant only so far as they reveal in new and ever changing circumstances the unchanging characteristics of a fundamental human nature. Illustrations of this naïve and unreflecting interest in the study of mankind are familiar enough in the experience and observation of any of us. Intellectual interest in, and the scientific observation of, human traits and human behavior have their origin in this natural interest and unreflective observation by man of his fellows. History, ethnology, folklore, all the comparative studies of single cultural traits, i.e., of language, of religion, and of law, are but the more systematic pursuit of this universal interest of mankind in man.

2. Definition of Human Nature

The natural history of the expression "human nature" is interesting. Usage has given it various shades of meaning. In defining the term more precisely there is a tendency either unwarrantedly to narrow or unduly to extend and overemphasize some one or another of the different senses of the term. A survey of these varied uses reveals the common and fundamental meaning of the phrase.

The use which common sense makes of the term human nature is significant. It is used in varied contexts with the most divergent implications but always by way of explanation of behavior that is characteristically human. The phrase is sometimes employed with cynical deprecation as, "Oh, that's human nature." Or as often, perhaps, as an expression of approbation, "He's so human."

The weight of evidence as expressed in popular sayings is distinctly in depreciation of man's nature.

It's human natur', p'raps,--if so,
Oh, isn't human natur' low,

are two lines from Gilbert's musical comedy "Babette's Love." "To err is human, to forgive divine" reminds us of a familiar contrast. "Human nature is like a bad clock; it might go right now and then, or be made to strike the hour, but its inward frame is to go wrong," is a simile that emphasizes the popular notion that man's behavior tends to the perverse. An English divine settles the question with the statement, "Human nature is a rogue and a scoundrel, or why would it perpetually stand in need of laws and religion?"

Even those who see good in the natural man admit his native tendency to err. Sir Thomas Browne asserts that "human nature knows naturally what is good but naturally pursues what is evil." The Earl of Clarendon gives the equivocal explanation that "if we did not take great pains to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us." Addison, from the detached position of an observer and critic of manners and men, concludes that "as man is a creature made up of different extremes, he has something in him very great and very mean."

The most commonly recognized distinction between man and the lower animals lies in his possession of reason. Yet familiar sayings tend to exclude the intellectual from the human attributes. Lord Bacon shrewdly remarks that "there is in human nature, generally, more of the fool than of the wise." The phrase "he is a child of nature" means that behavior in social relations is impulsive, simple, and direct rather than reflective, sophisticated, or consistent. Wordsworth depicts this human type in his poem "She Was a Phantom of Delight":

A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

The inconsistency between the rational professions and the impulsive behavior of men is a matter of common observation. "That's not the logic, reason, or philosophy of it, but it's the human nature of it." It is now generally recognized that the older English conception of the "economic man" and the "rational man," motivated by enlightened self-interest, was far removed from the "natural man" impelled by impulse, prejudice, and sentiment, in short, by human nature. Popular criticism has been frequently directed against the reformer in politics, the efficiency expert in industry, the formalist in religion and morals on the ground that they overlook or neglect the so-called "human factor" in the situation. Sir Arthur Helps says:

No doubt hard work is a great police-agent; if everybody were
worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up,
the register of crimes might be greatly diminished. But what
would become of human nature? Where would be the room for
growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and
mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances,
and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's
natures are developed.

Certain sayings already quoted imply that the nature of man is a fact to be reckoned with in controlling his behavior. "There are limits to human nature" which cannot lightly be overstepped. "Human nature," according to Periander, "is hard to overcome." Yet we also recognize with Swift that "it is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another." Finally, nothing is more trite and familiar than the statement that "human nature is the same all over the world." This fundamental likeness of human nature, despite artificial and superficial cultural differences, has found a classic expression in Kipling's line: "The Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins!"

Human nature, then, as distinct from the formal wishes of the individual and the conventional order of society, is an aspect of human life that must be reckoned with. Common sense has long recognized this, but until recently no systematic attempt has been made to _isolate_, describe, and explain the distinctively human factors in the life either of the individual or of society.

Of all that has been written on this subject the most adequate statement is that of Cooley. He has worked out with unusual penetration and peculiar insight an interpretation of human nature as a product of group life.

By human nature we may understand those sentiments and impulses
that are human in being superior to those of lower animals, and
also in the sense that they belong to mankind at large, and not
to any particular race or time. It means, particularly,
sympathy and the innumerable sentiments into which sympathy
enters, such as love, resentment, ambition, vanity,
hero-worship, and the feeling of social right and wrong.

Human nature in this sense is justly regarded as a
comparatively permanent element in society. Always and
everywhere men seek honor and dread ridicule, defer to public
opinion, cherish their goods and their children, and admire
courage, generosity, and success. It is always safe to assume
that people are and have been human.

Human nature is not something existing separately in the
individual, but a _group nature or primary phase of society_, a
relatively simple and general condition of the social mind. It
is something more, on the one hand, than the mere instinct that
is born in us--though that enters into it--and something less,
on the other, than the more elaborate development of ideas and
sentiments that makes up institutions. It is the nature which
is developed and expressed in those simple, face-to-face groups
that are somewhat alike in all societies; groups of the family,
the playground, and the neighborhood. In the essential
similarity of these is to be found the basis, in experience,
for similar ideas and sentiments in the human mind. In these,
everywhere, human nature comes into existence. Man does not
have it at birth; he cannot acquire it except through
fellowship, and it decays in isolation.[55]

3. Classification of the Materials

With the tacit acceptance by biologists, psychologists, and sociologists of human behavior as a natural phenomenon, materials upon human nature have rapidly accumulated. The wealth and variety of these materials are all the greater because of the diversity of the points of view from which workers in this field have attacked the problem. The value of the results of these investigations is enhanced when they are brought together, classified, and compared.

The materials fall naturally into two divisions: (a) "The Original Nature of Man" and (b) "Human Nature and Social Life." This division is based upon a distinction between traits that are inborn and characters socially acquired; a distinction found necessary by students in this field. Selections under the third heading, "Personality and the Social Self" indicate the manner in which the individual develops under the social influences, from the raw material of "instinct" into the social product "the person." Materials in the fourth division, "Biological and Social Inheritance," contrast the method of the transmission of original tendencies through the germ plasm with the communication of the social heritage through education.

a) _The original nature of man._--No one has stated more clearly than Thorndike that human nature is a product of two factors, (a) tendencies to response rooted in original nature and (b) the accumulated effects of the stimuli of the external and social environment. At birth man is a bundle of random tendencies to respond. Through experience, and by means of the mechanisms of habit and character, control is secured over instinctive reactions. In other words, the original nature of man is, as Comte said, an abstraction. It exists only in the psychic vacuum of antenatal life, or perhaps only in the potentiality of the germ plasm. The fact of observation is that the structure of the response is irrevocably changed in the process of reaction to the stimulus. The _Biography of a Baby_ gives a concrete picture of the development of the plastic infant in the environment of the social group.

The three papers on differences between sexes, races, and individuals serve as an introduction into the problem of differentiating the aspects of behavior which are in _original nature_ from those that are _acquired_ through social experience. Are the apparent differences between men and women, white and colored, John and James, those which arise from differences in the germ plasm or from differences in education and in cultural contacts? The selections must not be taken as giving the final word upon the subject. At best they represent merely the conclusions reached by three investigators. Attempts to arrive at positive differences in favor either of original nature or of education are frequently made in the interest of preconceived opinion. The problem, as far as science is concerned, is to discover what limitations original nature places upon response to social copies, and the ways in which the inborn potentialities find expression or repression in differing types of social environment.

b) _Human nature and social life._--Original nature is represented in human responses in so far as they are determined by the _innate structure of the individual organism_. The materials assembled under this head treat of inborn reactions as influenced, modified, and reconstructed by the _structure of the social organization_.

The actual reorganization of human nature takes place in response to the folkways and mores, the traditions and conventions, of the group. So potentially fitted for social life is the natural man, however, so manifold are the expressions that the plastic original tendencies may take, that instinct is replaced by habit, precedent, personal taboo, and good form. This remade structure of human nature, this objective mind, as Hegel called it, is fixed and transmitted in the folkways and mores, social ritual, i.e., _Sittlichkeit_, to use the German word, and convention.

c) _Personality and the social self._--The selections upon "Personality and the Social Self" bring together and compare the different definitions of the term. These definitions fall under three heads:

(1) _The organism as personality:_ This is a biological statement, satisfactory as a definition only as preparatory to further analysis.

(2) _Personality as a complex:_ Personality defined in terms of the unity of mental life is a conception that has grown up in the recent "individual psychology," so called. Personality includes, in this case, not only the memories of the individual and his stream of consciousness, but also the characteristic organization of mental complexes and trends which may be thought of as a supercomplex. The phenomena of double and multiple personalities occur when this unity becomes disorganized. Disorganization in releasing groups of complexes from control may even permit the formation of independent organizations. Morton Prince's book _The Dissociation of a Personality_ is a classic case study of multiple personality. The selections upon "The Natural Person versus the Social and Conventional Person" and "The Divided Self and the Moral Consciousness" indicate the more usual and less extreme conflicts of opposing sentiments and interests within the organization of personality.

(3) _Personality as the rôle of the individual in the group:_ The word personality is derived from the Latin _persona_, a mask used by actors. The etymology of the term suggests that its meaning is to be found in the rôle of the individual in the social group. By usage, personality carries the implication of the social expression of behavior. Personality may then be defined as the sum and organization of those traits which determine the rôle of the individual in the group. The following is a classification of the characteristics of the person which affect his social status and efficiency:

(a) physical traits, as physique, physiognomy, etc.;
(b) temperament;
(c) character;
(d) social expression, as by facial expression, gesture, manner,
speech, writing, etc.;
(e) prestige, as by birth, past success, status, etc.;
(f) the individual's conception of his rôle.

The significance of these traits consists in the way in which they enter into the rôle of the individual in his social milieu. Chief among these may be considered the individual's conception of the part which he plays among his fellows. Cooley's discriminating description of "the looking-glass self" offers a picture of the process by which the person conceives himself in terms of the attitudes of others toward him.

The reflected or looking-glass self seems to have three
principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the
other person; the imagination of his judgment of that
appearance; and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or
mortification. The comparison with a looking-glass self hardly
suggests the second element, the imagined judgment, which is
quite essential. The thing that moves us to pride or shame is
not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed
sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon
another's mind. This is evident from the fact that the
character and weight of that other, in whose mind we see
ourselves, makes all the difference with our feeling.[56]

Veblen has made a subtle analysis of the way in which conduct is controlled by the individual's conception of his social rôle in his analysis of "invidious comparison" and "conspicuous expenditure."[57]

d) _Biological and social inheritance._--The distinction between biological and social inheritance is sharply made by the noted biologist, J. Arthur Thomson, in the selection entitled "Nature and Nurture." The so-called "acquired characters" or modifications of original nature through experience, he points out, are transmitted not through the germ plasm but through communication.

Thorndike's "Inventory of Original Tendencies" offers a detailed classification of the traits transmitted biologically. Since there exists no corresponding specific analysis of acquired traits, the following brief inventory of types of social heritages is offered.

TYPES OF SOCIAL HERITAGES

(a) means of communication, as language, gesture, etc.;
(b) social attitudes, habits, wishes, etc.;
(c) character;
(d) social patterns, as folkways, mores, conventions, ideals,
etc.;
(e) technique;
(f) culture (as distinguished from technique, formal organization,
and machinery);
(g) social organization (primary group life, institutions, sects,
secondary groups, etc.).

On the basis of the work of Mendel, biologists have made marked progress in determining the inheritance of specific traits of original nature. The selection from a foremost American student of heredity and eugenics, C. B. Davenport, entitled "Inheritance of Original Nature" indicates the precision and accuracy with which the prediction of the inheritance of individual innate traits is made.

The mechanism of the transmission of social heritages, while more open to observation than biological inheritance, has not been subjected to as intensive study. The transmission of the social heritage takes place by communication, as Keller points out, through the medium of the various senses. The various types of the social heritages are transmitted in two ways: (a) by tradition, as from generation to generation, and (b) by acculturation, as from group to group.

In the communication of the social heritages, either by tradition or by acculturation, two aspects of the process may be distinguished: (a) Because of temperament, interest, and run of attention of the members of the group, the heritage, whether a word, an act of skill, or a social attitude, may be selected, appropriated, and incorporated into its culture. This is communication by _imitation_. (b) On the other hand, the heritage may be imposed upon the members of the group through authority and routine, by tabu and repression. This is communication by _inculcation_. In any concrete situation the transmission of a social heritage may combine varying elements of both processes. Education, as the etymology of the term suggests, denotes culture of original tendencies; yet the routine of a school system is frequently organized about formal discipline rather than around interest, aptitude, and attention.

Historically, the scientific interest in the question of biological and social inheritance has concerned itself with the rather sterile problem of the weight to be attached on the one hand to physical heredity and on the other to social heritage. The selection, "Temperament, Tradition, and Nationality" suggests that a more important inquiry is to determine how the behavior patterns and the culture of a racial group or a social class are determined by the interaction of original nature and the social tradition. According to this conception, racial temperament is an active selective agency, determining interest and the direction of attention. The group heritages on the other hand represent a detached external social environment, a complex of stimuli, effective only in so far as they call forth responses. The culture of a group is the sum total and organization of the social heritages which have acquired a social meaning because of racial temperament and of the historical life of the group.

II. MATERIALS

A. THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN

1. Original Nature Defined[58]

A man's nature and the changes that take place in it may be described in terms of the responses--of thought, feeling, action, and attitude--which he makes, and of the bonds by which these are connected with the situations which life offers. Any fact of intellect, character, or skill means a tendency to respond in a certain way to a certain situation--involves a _situation_ or state of affairs influencing the man, a _response_ or state of affairs in the man, and a _connection_ or bond whereby the latter is the result of the former.

Any man possesses at the very start of his life--that is, at the moment when the ovum and spermatozoön which are to produce him have united--numerous well-defined tendencies to future behavior. Between the situations which he will meet and the responses which he will make to them, pre-formed bonds exist. It is already determined by the constitution of these two germs that under certain circumstances he will see and hear and feel and act in certain ways. His intellect and morals, as well as his bodily organs and movements, are in part the consequence of the nature of the embryo in the first moment of its life. What a man is and does throughout life is a result of whatever constitution he has at the start and of the forces that act upon it before and after birth. I shall use the term "original nature" for the former and "environment" for the latter. His original nature is thus a name for the nature of the combined germ-cells from which he springs, and his environment is a name for the rest of the universe, so far as it may, directly or indirectly, influence him.

Three terms, reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities, divide the work of naming these unlearned tendencies. When the tendency concerns a very definite and uniform response to a very simple sensory situation, and when the connection between the situation and the response is very hard to modify and is also very strong so that it is almost inevitable, the connection or response to which it leads is called a reflex. Thus the knee-jerk is a very definite and uniform response to the simple sense-stimulus of sudden hard pressure against a certain spot.

When the response is more indefinite, the situation more complex, and the connection more modifiable, instinct becomes the customary term. Thus one's misery at being scorned is too indefinite a response to too complex a situation and is too easily modifiable to be called a reflex. When the tendency is to an extremely indefinite response or set of responses to a very complex situation, as when the connection's final degree of strength is commonly due to very large contributions from training, it has seemed more appropriate to replace reflex and instinct by some term like capacity, or tendency, or potentiality. Thus an original tendency to respond to the circumstances of school education by achievement in learning the arts and sciences is called the capacity for scholarship.

There is, of course, no gap between reflexes and instincts, or between instincts and the still less easily describable original tendencies. The fact is that original tendencies range with respect to the nature of the responses from such as are single, simple, definite, uniform within the individual and only slightly variable amongst individuals, to responses that are highly compound, complex, vague, and variable within one individual's life and amongst individuals.

A typical reflex, or instinct, or capacity, as a whole, includes the ability to be sensitive to a certain situation, the ability to make a certain response, and the existence of a bond or connection whereby that response is made to that situation. For instance, the young chick is sensitive to the absence of other members of his species, is able to peep, and is so organized that the absence of other members of the species makes him peep. But the tendency to be sensitive to a certain situation may exist without the existence of a connection therewith of any further exclusive response, and the tendency to make a certain response may exist without the existence of a connection limiting that response exclusively to any single situation. The three-year-old child is by inborn nature markedly sensitive to the presence and acts of other human beings, but the exact nature of his response varies. The original tendency to cry is very strong, but there is no one situation to which it is exclusively bound. Original nature seems to decide that the individual will respond somehow to certain situations more often than it decides just what he will do, and to decide that he will make certain responses more often than it decides just when he will make them. So, for convenience in thinking about man's unlearned equipment, this appearance of _multiple response_ to one same situation and _multiple causation_ of one same response may be taken roughly as the fact.

2. Inventory of Original Tendencies[59]

I. _Sensory capacities_

II. _Original attentiveness_

III. _Gross bodily control_

IV. _Food getting and habitation_
A. Food getting
1. Eating. 2. Reaching, grasping, putting into the mouth.
3. Acquisition and possession. 4. Hunting (a) a small
escaping object, (b) a small or moderate-sized object not of
offensive mien, moving away from or past him. 5. Possible
specialized tendencies. 6. Collecting and hoarding.
7. Avoidance and repulsion. 8. Rivalry and co-operation
B. Habitation
1. Responses to confinement. 2. Migration and domesticity

V. _Fear, fighting, and anger_
A. Fear
1. Unpleasant expectation and dread. 2. Anxiety and
worry. 3. Dislike and avoidance. 4. Shock. 5. Flight,
paralysis, etc.
B. Fighting
1. Escape from restraint. 2. Overcoming a moving obstacle.
3. Counter-attack. 4. Irrational response to pain.
5. Combat in rivalry. 6. Resentment of presence of other
males in courtship. 7. Angry behavior at persistent
thwarting.
C. Anger

VI. _Responses to the behavior of other human beings_
A. Motherly behavior
B. Filial behavior
C. Responses to presence, approval, and scorn of men
1. Gregariousness. 2. Attention to human beings. 3. Attention-getting.
4. Responses to approval and scorn.
5. Responses by approval and scorn
D. Mastering and submissive behavior
1. Display. 2. Shyness. 3. Self-conscious behavior
E. Other social instincts
1. Sex behavior. 2. Secretiveness. 3. Rivalry. 4. Co-operation.
5. Suggestibility and opposition. 6. Envious
and jealous behavior. 7. Greed. 8. Ownership. 9. Kindliness.
10. Teasing, tormenting, and bullying
F. Imitation
1. General imitativeness. 2. Imitation of particular forms
of behavior

VII. _Original satisfiers and annoyers_

VIII. _Minor bodily movements and cerebral connections_
A. Vocalization
B. Visual exploration
C. Manipulation
D. Other possible specializations
1. Constructiveness. 2. Cleanliness. 3. Adornment and art
E. Curiosity and mental control
1. Curiosity. 2. The instinct of multiform mental activity.
3. The instinct of multiform physical activity.
4. The instinct of workmanship and the desire for excellence
F. Play

IX. _The emotions and their expression_

X. _Consciousness, learning, and remembering_

3. Man Not Born Human[60]

Man is not born human. It is only slowly and laboriously, in fruitful contact, co-operation, and conflict with his fellows, that he attains the distinctive qualities of human nature. In the course of his prenatal life he has already passed roughly through, or, as the biologists say, "recapitulated," the whole history of his animal ancestors. He brings with him at birth a multitude of instincts and tendencies, many of which persist during life and many of which are only what G. Stanley Hall calls "vestigial traces" of his brute ancestry, as is shown by the fact that they are no longer useful and soon disappear.

These non-volitional movements of earliest infancy and of later
childhood (such as licking things, clicking with the tongue,
grinding the teeth, biting the nails, shrugging corrugations,
pulling buttons, or twisting garments, strings, etc., twirling
pencils, etc.) are relics of past forms of utilities now
essentially obsolete. Ancient modes of locomotion, prehension,
balancing, defense, attack, sensuality, etc., are all
rehearsed, some quite fully and some only by the faintest
mimetic suggestion, flitting spasmodic tensions, gestures, or
facial expressions.

Human nature may therefore be regarded on the whole as a superstructure founded on instincts, dispositions, and tendencies, inherited from a long line of human and animal ancestors. It consists mainly in a higher organization of forces, a more subtle distillation of potencies latent in what Thorndike calls "the original nature of man."

The original nature of man is roughly what is common to all men
minus all adaptations to tools, houses, clothes, furniture,
words, beliefs, religions, laws, science, the arts, and to
whatever in other men's behavior is due to adaptations to them.
From human nature as we find it, take away, first, all that is
in the European but not in the Chinaman, all that is in the
Fiji Islander but not in the Esquimaux, all that is local or
temporary. Then take away also the effects of all products of
human art. What is left of human intellect and character is
largely original--not wholly, for all those elements of
knowledge which we call ideas and judgments must be subtracted
from his responses. Man originally possesses only capacities
which, after a given amount of education, will produce ideas
and judgments.

Such, in general, is the nature of human beings before that nature has been modified by experience and formed by the education and the discipline of contact and intercourse with their fellows.

Several writers, among them William James, have attempted to make a rough inventory of the special instinctive tendencies with which human beings are equipped at birth. First of all there are the simpler reflexes such as "crying, sneezing, snoring, coughing, sighing, sobbing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuping, starting, moving the limb in response to its being tickled, touched or blown upon, spreading the toes in response to its being touched, tickled, or stroked on the sole of the foot, extending and raising the arms at any sudden sensory stimulus, or the quick pulsation of the eyelid."

Then there are the more complex original tendencies such as sucking, chewing, sitting up, and gurgling. Among the more general unlearned responses of children are fear, anger, pugnacity, envy, jealousy, curiosity, constructiveness, love of festivities, ceremonies and ordeals, sociability and shyness, secretiveness, etc. Thorndike, who quotes this list at length, has sought to give definiteness to its descriptions by clearly defining and distinguishing the character of the situation to which the behavior cited is a response. For example, to the situation, "strange man or animal, to solitude, black things, dark places, holes and corners, a human corpse," the native and unlearned response is fear. The original response of man to being alone is an experience of discomfort, to perceiving a crowd, "a tendency to join them and do what they are doing and an unwillingness to leave off and go home." It is part of man's original nature when he is in love to conceal his love affairs, and so forth.

It is evident from this list that what is meant by original nature is not confined to the behavior which manifests itself at birth, but includes man's spontaneous and unlearned responses to situations as they arise in the experience of the individual.

The widespread interest in the study of children has inspired in recent years a considerable literature bearing upon the original and inherited tendencies of human nature. The difficulty of distinguishing between what is original and what is acquired among the forms of behavior reported upon, and the further difficulty of obtaining accurate descriptions of the situations to which the behavior described was a response, has made much of this literature of doubtful value for scientific purposes. These studies have, nevertheless, contributed to a radical change in our conceptions of human nature. They have shown that the distinction between the mind of man and that of the lower animals is not so wide nor so profound as was once supposed. They have emphasized the fact that human nature rests on animal nature, and the transition from one to the other, in spite of the contrast in their separate achievements, has been made by imperceptible gradations. In the same way they have revealed, beneath differences in culture and individual achievement, the outlines of a pervasive and relatively unchanging human nature in which all races and individuals have a common share.

The study of human nature begins with description, but it goes on from that point to explanation. If the descriptions which we have thus far had of human nature are imperfect and lacking in precision, it is equally true that the explanations thus far invented have, on the whole, been inadequate. One reason for this has been the difficulty of the task. The mechanisms which control human behavior are, as might be expected, tremendously complicated, and the problem of analyzing them into their elementary forms and reducing their varied manifestations to precise and lucid formulas is both intricate and perplexing.

The foundation for the explanation of human nature has been laid, however, by the studies of behavior in animals and the comparative study of the physiology of the nervous system. Progress has been made, on the one hand, by seeking for the precise psycho-chemical process involved in the nervous reactions, and on the other, by reducing all higher mental processes to elementary forms represented by the tropisms and reflex actions.

In this, science has made a considerable advance upon common sense in its interpretations of human behavior, but has introduced no new principle; it has simply made its statements more detailed and exact. For example, common sense has observed that "the burnt child shuns the fire," that "the moth seeks the flame." These are both statements of truths of undoubted generality. In order to give them the validity of scientific truth, however, we need to know what there is in the nature of the processes involved that makes it inevitable that the child should shun the fire and the moth should seek the flame. It is not sufficient to say that the action in one case is instinctive and in the other intelligent, unless we are able to give precise and definite meanings to those terms; unless, in short, we are able to point out the precise mechanisms through which these reactions are carried out. The following illustration from Loeb's volume on the comparative physiology of the brain will illustrate the distinction between the common sense and the more precise scientific explanation of the behavior in man and the lower animals.

It is a well-known fact that if an ant be removed from a nest
and afterward put back it will not be attacked, while almost
invariably an ant belonging to another nest will be attacked.
It has been customary to use the words memory, enmity,
friendship, in describing this fact. Now Bethe made the
following experiment: an ant was placed in the liquids (blood
and lymph) squeezed out from the bodies of nest companions and
was then put back into its nest; it was not attacked. It was
then put in the juice taken from the inmates of a "hostile"
nest and was at once attacked and killed. Bethe was able to
prove by special experiments that these reactions of ants are
not learned by experience, but are inherited. The "knowing" of
"friend and foe" among ants is thus reduced to different
reactions, depending upon the nature of the chemical stimulus
and in no way depending upon memory.

Here, again, there is no essential difference between the common sense and the scientific explanation of the behavior of the ant except so far as the scientific explanation is more accurate, defining the precise mechanisms by which the recognition of "friend and foe" is effected, and the limitations to which it is subject.

Another result of the study of the comparative behavior of man and the lower animals has been to convince students that there is no fundamental difference between what was formerly called intelligent and instinctive behavior; that they may rather be reduced, as has been said, to the elementary form of reaction represented by the simple reflex in animals and the tropism in plants. Thus Loeb says:

A prominent psychologist has maintained that reflexes are to be
considered as the mechanical effects of acts of volition of
past generations. The ganglion-cell seems the only place where
such mechanical effects could be stored up. It has therefore
been considered the most essential element of the reflex
mechanism, the nerve-fibers being regarded, and probably
correctly, merely as conductors.

Both the authors who emphasize the purposefulness of the reflex
act, and those who see in it only a physical process, have
invariably looked upon the ganglion-cell as the principal
bearer of the structures for the complex co-ordinated movements
in reflex action.

I should have been as little inclined as any other physiologist
to doubt the correctness of this conception had not the
establishment of the identity of the reactions of animals and
plants to light proved the untenability of this view and at the
same time offered a different conception of reflexes. The
flight of the moth into the flame is a typical reflex process.
The light stimulates the peripheral sense organs, the stimulus
passes to the central nervous system, and from there to the
muscles of the wings, and the moth is caused to fly into the
flame. This reflex process agrees in every point with the
heliotropic effects of light on plant organs. Since plants
possess no nerves, this identity of animal with plant
heliotropism can offer but one inference--these heliotropic
effects must depend upon conditions which are common to both
animals and plants.

On the other hand, Watson, in his _Introduction to Comparative Psychology_, defines the reflex as "a unit of analysis of instinct," and this means that instinctive actions in man and in animals may be regarded as combinations of simple reflex actions, that is to say of "fairly definite and generally predictable but unlearned responses of lower and higher organisms to stimuli." Many of these reflex responses are not fixed, as they were formerly supposed to be, but "highly unstable and indefinite." This fact makes possible the formation of habits, by combination and fixation of these inherited responses.

These views in the radical form in which they are expressed by Loeb and Watson have naturally enough been the subject of considerable controversy, both on scientific and sentimental grounds. They seem to reduce human behavior to a system of chemical and physical reactions, and rob life of all its spiritual values. On the other hand, it must be remembered that human beings, like other forms of nature, have this mechanical aspect and it is precisely the business of natural science to discover and lay them bare. It is only thus that we are able to gain control over ourselves and of others. It is a matter of common experience that we do form habits and that education and social control are largely dependent upon our ability to establish habits in ourselves and in others. Habit is, in fact, a characteristic example of just what is meant by "mechanism," in the sense in which it is here used. It is through the fixation of habit that we gain that control over our "original nature," which lifts us above the brutes and gives human nature its distinctive character as human. Character is nothing more than the sum and co-ordination of those mechanisms which we call habit and which are formed on the basis of the inherited and instinctive tendencies and dispositions which we share in so large a measure with the lower animals.

4. The Natural Man[61]

"Its first act is a cry, not of wrath, as Kant said, nor a shout of joy, as Schwartz thought, but a snuffling, and then a long, thin, tearless á-á, with the timbre of a Scotch bagpipe, purely automatic, but of discomfort. With this monotonous and dismal cry, with its red, shriveled, parboiled skin (for the child commonly loses weight the first few days), squinting, cross-eyed, pot-bellied, and bow-legged, it is not strange that, if the mother has not followed Froebel's exhortations and come to love her child before birth, there is a brief interval occasionally dangerous to the child before the maternal instinct is fully aroused."

The most curious of all the monkey traits shown by the new-born baby is the one investigated by Dr. Louis Robinson. It was suggested by _The Luck of Roaring Camp_. The question was raised in conversation whether a limp and molluscous baby, unable so much as to hold up its head on its helpless little neck, could do anything so positive as to "rastle with" Kentuck's finger; and the more knowing persons present insisted that a young baby does, as a matter of fact, have a good firm hand-clasp. It occurred to Dr. Robinson that if this was true it was a beautiful Darwinian point, for clinging and swinging by the arms would naturally have been a specialty with our ancestors if they ever lived a monkey-like life in the trees. The baby that could cling best to its mother as she used hands, feet, and tail to flee in the best time over the trees, or to get at the more inaccessible fruits and eggs in time of scarcity, would be the baby that lived to bequeath his traits to his descendants; so that to this day our housed and cradled human babies would keep in their clinging powers a reminiscence of our wild treetop days.

There is another class of movements, often confused with the reflex--that is, instinctive movements. Real grasping (as distinguished from reflex grasping), biting, standing, walking, are examples of this class. They are race movements, the habits of the species to which the animal belongs, and every normal member of the species is bound to come to them; yet they are not so fixed in the bodily mechanism as the reflex movements.

The one instinct the human baby always brings into the world already developed is half a mere reflex act--that of sucking. It is started as a reflex would be, by the touch of some object--pencil, finger, or nipple, it may be--between the lips; but it does not act like a reflex after that. It continues and ceases without reference to this external stimulus, and a little later often begins without it, or fails to begin when the stimulus is given. If it has originally a reflex character, that character fades out and leaves it a pure instinct.

My little niece evidently felt a difference between light and darkness from the first hour, for she stopped crying when her face was exposed to gentle light. Two or three report also a turning of the head toward the light within the first week. The nurse, who was intelligent and exact, thought she saw this in the case of my niece. I did not, but I saw instead a constant turning of the eyes toward a person coming near her--that is, toward a large dark mass that interrupted the light. No other sign of vision appeared in the little one during the first fortnight. The eyes were directed to nothing, fixed on nothing. They did not wink if one made a pass at them. There was no change of focus for near or distant seeing.

The baby showed no sign of hearing anything until the third day, when she started violently at the sound of tearing paper, some eight feet from her. After that, occasional harsh or sudden sounds--oftener the rustling of paper than anything else--could make her start or cry. It is well established by the careful tests of several physiologists that babies are deaf for a period lasting from several hours to several days after birth.

Taste and smell were senses that the baby gave no sign of owning till much later. The satisfaction of hunger was quite enough to account for the contentment she showed in nursing; and when she was not hungry she would suck the most tasteless object as cheerfully as any other.

Our baby showed from the first that she was aware when she was touched. She stopped crying when she was cuddled or patted. She showed comfort in the bath, which may have been in part due to freedom from the contact of clothes, and to liking for the soft touches of the water. She responded with sucking motions to the first touch of the nipple on her lips.

Our baby showed temperament--luckily of the easy-going and cheerful kind--from her first day, though we could hardly see this except by looking backward. On the twenty-fifth day, toward evening, when the baby was lying on her grandmother's knee by the fire, in a condition of high well-being and content, gazing at her grandmother's face with an expression of attention, I came and sat down close by, leaning over the baby, so that my face must have come within the indirect range of her vision. At that she turned her eyes to my face and gazed at it with the same appearance of attention, and even of some effort, shown by the slight tension of brows and lips, then turned her eyes back to her grandmother's face, and again to mine, and so several times. The last time she seemed to catch sight of my shoulder, on which a high light struck from the lamp, and not only moved her eyes but threw her head far back to see it better, and gazed for some time with a new expression on her face--"a sort of dim and rudimentary eagerness," says my note. She no longer stared, but really looked.

The baby's increased interest in seeing centered especially on the faces about her, at which she gazed with rapt interest. Even during the period of mere staring, faces had oftenest held her eyes, probably because they were oftener brought within the range of her clearest seeing than other light surfaces. The large, light, moving patch of the human face (as Preyer has pointed out) coming and going in the field of vision, and oftener chancing to hover at the point of clearest seeing than any other object, embellished with a play of high lights on cheeks, teeth, and eyes, is calculated to excite the highest degree of attention a baby is capable of at a month old. So from the very first--before the baby has yet really seen his mother--her face and that of his other nearest friends become the most active agents in his development and the most interesting things in his experience.

Our baby was at this time in a way aware of the difference between companionship and solitude. In the latter days of the first month she would lie contentedly in the room with people near by, but would fret if left alone. But by the end of the month she was apt to fret when she was laid down on a chair or lounge, and to become content only when taken into the lap. This was not yet distinct memory and desire, but it showed that associations of pleasure had been formed with the lap, and that she felt a vague discomfort in the absence of these.

Nature has provided an educational appliance almost ideally adapted to the child's sense condition, in the mother's face, hovering close above him, smiling, laughing, nodding, with all manner of delightful changes in the high lights; in the thousand little meaningless caressing sounds, the singing, talking, calling, that proceed from it; the patting, cuddling, lifting, and all the ministrations that the baby feels while gazing at it, and associates with it, till finally they group together and round out into the idea of his mother as a whole.

Our baby's mother rather resented the idea of being to her baby only a collection of detached phenomena, instead of a mamma; but the more you think of it, the more flattering it is to be thus, as it were, dissolved into your elements and incorporated item by item into the very foundations of your baby's mental life. Herein is hinted much of the philosophy of personality; and Professor Baldwin has written a solid book, mainly to show from the development of babies and little children that all other people are part of each of us, and each of us is part of all other people, and so there is really no separate personality, but we are all one spirit, if we did but know it.

5. Sex Differences[62]

As children become physically differentiated in respect of sex, so also does a mental differentiation ensue. Differences are observed in the matter of occupation, of games, of movements, and numerous other details. Since man is to play the active part in life, boys rejoice especially in rough outdoor games. Girls, on the other hand, prefer such games as correspond to their future occupations. Hence their inclination to mother smaller children, and to play with dolls. Watch how a little girl takes care of her doll, washes it, dresses and undresses it. When only six or seven years of age she is often an excellent nurse. Her need to occupy herself in such activities is often so great that she pretends that her doll is ill.

In all kinds of ways, we see the little girl occupying herself in the activities and inclinations of her future existence. She practices house work; she has a little kitchen, in which she cooks for herself and her doll. She is fond of needlework. The care of her own person, and more especially its adornment, is not forgotten. I remember seeing a girl of three who kept on interrupting her elders' conversation by crying out, "New clothes!" and would not keep quiet until these latter had been duly admired. The love of self-adornment is almost peculiar to female children; boys, on the other hand, prefer rough outdoor games, in which their muscles are actively employed, robber-games, soldier-games, and the like. And whereas, in early childhood, both sexes are fond of very noisy games, the fondness for these disappears earlier in girls than in boys.

Differences between the sexes have been established also by means of experimental psychology, based upon the examination of a very large number of instances. Berthold Hartmann has studied the childish circle of thought, by means of a series of experiments. Schoolboys to the number of 660 and schoolgirls to the number of 652, at ages between five and three-fourths and six and three-fourths years, were subjected to examination. It was very remarkable to see how, in respect to certain ideas, such as those of the triangle, cube, and circle, the girls greatly excelled the boys; whereas in respect of animals, minerals, and social ideas, the boys were better informed than the girls. Characteristic of the differences between the sexes, according to Meumann, from whom I take these details and some of those that follow, is the fact that the idea of "marriage" was known to only 70 boys as compared to 227 girls; whilst the idea of "infant baptism" was known to 180 boys as compared to 220 girls. The idea of "pleasure" was also much better understood by girls than by boys. Examination of the memory has also established the existence of differences between the sexes in childhood. In boys the memory for objects appears to be at first the best developed; to this succeeds the memory for words with a visual content; in the case of girls, the reverse of this was observed. In respect of numerous details, however, the authorities conflict. Very striking is the fact, one upon which a very large number of investigators are agreed, that girls have a superior knowledge of colors.

There are additional psychological data relating to the differences between the sexes in childhood. I may recall Stern's investigations concerning the psychology of evidence, which showed that girls were much more inaccurate than boys.

It has been widely assumed that these psychical differences between the sexes result from education, and are not inborn. Others, however, assume that the psychical characteristics by which the sexes are differentiated result solely from individual differences in education. Stern believes that in the case of one differential character, at least, he can prove that for many centuries there has been no difference between the sexes in the matter of education; this character is the capacity for drawing. Kerschensteiner has studied the development of this gift, and considers that his results have established beyond dispute that girls are greatly inferior in this respect to boys of like age. Stern points out that there can be no question here of cultivation leading to a sexual differentiation of faculty, since there is no attempt at a general and systematic teaching of draughtsmanship to the members of one sex to the exclusion of members of the other.

I believe that we are justified in asserting that at the present time the sexual differentiation manifested in respect of quite a number of psychical qualities is the result of direct inheritance. It would be quite wrong to assume that all these differences arise in each individual in consequence of education. It does, indeed, appear to me to be true that inherited tendencies may be increased or diminished by individual education; and further, that when the inherited tendency is not a very powerful one, it may in this way even be suppressed.