The social behavior of man is thus seen to be no curious anomaly and contradiction in the life of an otherwise thoroughly egoistic individual. Man is instinctively social; he finds social activity useful in the satisfaction of his own desires, and he comes from his native tendencies and acquired habits of social behavior to enjoy and take part in social activities for their own sake. The individual does not have to be coerced into social activity; he finds in such behavior the same pleasure that attends the fulfillment of any of his native or acquired reactions. Society has been variously pictured as a force holding the individual in check, as an organism of which he is a part, as a machine of which he is a cog. Society consists rather as the collective name for the coöperative and associated activities of human beings who find such activity, by nature and by habit, interesting for its own sake.
CHAPTER VI
CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE
The interpenetration of human traits. This chapter is devoted to a consideration of a number of individual human traits—curiosity, pugnacity, leadership, fear, love, hate, etc., and some of their more important social consequences. These are seldom present in isolation. A man is not, under normal circumstances, simply and solely pugnacious, curious, tired, submissive, or acquisitive. One's desire to own a particular house at a particular location may be complicated by the presence of several of these traits at once. The house may be wanted simply as a possession, a crude satisfaction of our native acquisitiveness. It may be sought further as a mode of self-display, an indication of how one has risen in the world. Its attractiveness may be heightened by the fact that it is situated next door to the house of a rather particularly companionable old friend. It may be peculiarly indispensable to one's satisfaction because it is also being sought by a detested rival. Moreover, as we shall see in the discussion of the Self, these traits are interwoven with each other and attain varying degrees of power as motive forces in an individual's character.
But while these distinctive human traits are seldom apparent in isolation, it is worth while to consider them separately, not only because the elements of human behavior will thus stand out more clearly, but because in certain individuals one or another of these-traits may be natively of especial strength. And further, in differing social situations, the possession or the cultivation of one or another of these native endowments may be of particular social value or danger. And in any given situation, one or another of them may be predominant, as when a man is intensely angry, or curious, or tired. Thus an individual may have a marked capacity for leadership, or an extraordinarily tireless curiosity, or an abnormally developed pugnacity or acquisitiveness. The capacity for leadership, as will later be discussed in some detail, will be of particular social value in large enterprises; patient and persistent inquiry may produce science; pugnacity when freely expressed may provoke quarrels, bickerings, and war. In the following discussion, the continual interpenetration and qualification of these traits by one another in a complex situation must be recognized. Else it may appear in the discussion of any single trait, as if by means of it all human action were being explained. Rather the aim is to trace them as one might the elements in the pattern of a tapestry, or the recurrent themes in the development of a symphony. But as the symphony is more than a single melody, the tapestry more than one element of line or color, so is human life more than any single trait.[1]
[Footnote 1: Philosophers and others have time and again made the mistake of simplifying human life to a single motive or driving power. Hobbes rested his case on fear; Bain and Sutherland on sympathy; Tarde on imitation; Adam Smith and Bentham on enlightened self-interest. In our own day the Freudians interpret everything as being sexual in its motive. And most recently has come an interpretation of life, as in Bertrand Russell and Helen Marot, in terms of the "creative impulse.">[
The fighting instinct. Almost all men exhibit in varying degrees the "fighting instinct"; that is, the tendency, when interfered with in the performance of any action prompted by any other instinct, to threaten, attack, and not infrequently, if successful in attack, to punish and bully the individual interfering.
The most mean-spirited cur will angrily resent any attempt to take away its bone, if it is hungry; a healthy infant very early displays anger if its meal is interrupted, and all through life most men find it difficult to suppress irritation on similar occasions. In the animal world the most furious excitement of this instinct is provoked in the male of many species by any interference with the satisfaction of the sexual impulse.[2]
[Footnote 2: McDougall: loc. cit., p. 60.]
This original tendency to fight is very persistent in human beings, but is susceptible of direction, and is not, in civilized life, frequently revealed in its crude and direct form, save among children and among adults under intense provocation and excitement. Occasionally, however, pugnacity is displayed in its simple animal form. "Man shares with many of the animals the tendency to frighten his opponent by loud roars or bellowings.... Many a little boy has, without example or suggestion, suddenly taken to running with open mouth to bite the person who has angered him, much to the distress of his parents."[1] As the individual grows older, he learns to control the outward and immediate expression of this powerful and persistent human trait. He learns in his dealings with other people not to give way, when frustrated in some action or ambition, to mere animal rage. The customs and manners to which a child is early subjected in civilized intercourse are effective hindrances to uncontrolled display of anger and pugnacity; superior intelligence and education find more refined ways than kicking, pummeling, and scratching of overcoming the interferences of others. But even in gentle and cultured persons, an insult, a disappointment, a blow will provoke the tell-tale signs of pugnacity and anger, the flushing of the cheeks, the flash of the eye, the incipient clenching of the fists, the compressing of the teeth and lips, and the trembling of the voice. We substitute sarcasm for punching, and find subtly civilized, and, in the long run, more terrible, ways than bruises of punishing those who oppose us in our play, our passions, our professions. But our ancestors were beasts of prey, and there is still "fighting in our blood."