Education and political organization, the college and the legislature, however remote they may seem from the random impulses to cry and clutch at random objects with which a baby comes into the world, must start from just such materials as these. The same impulse which prompts a five-year-old to put blocks into a symmetrical arrangement is the stuff out of which architects or great executives are made. Patriotism and public spirit find their roots back in the same unlearned impulses which make a baby smile back when smiled at, and makes it, when a little older, cry if left too long alone or in a strange place. All the native biological impulses, which are almost literally our birthright, may, when understood, be modified through education, public opinion, and law, and directed in the interests of human ideals.
It is the aim of this book to indicate some of these more outstanding human traits, and the factors which must be taken into account if they are to be controlled in the interests of human welfare. It is too often forgotten that the problems which are to be dealt with in the world of politics, of business, of law, and education, are much complicated by the fact that human beings are so constituted that given certain situations, they will do certain things in certain inevitable ways. These problems are much clarified by knowing what these fundamental ways of men are.
HUMAN TRAITS AND THEIR
SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE
PART I
CHAPTER I
TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
The human animal. Any attempt to understand what the nature of man is, apart from its training and education during the life of the individual, must start with the realization that man is a human animal. As a human being he is strikingly set off by his upright posture and his large and flexible hand. But chiefly he is distinguished by his plastic brain, upon which depends his capacity to perform the complex mental activities—from administering a railroad to solving problems in calculus—which constitute man's outstanding and exclusive characteristic.[1]
[Footnote 1: The thinking process is discussed in detail in chapters III and XIV.]
But in his structure and functions man bears, as is now well known, a marked resemblance to the lower animals. His respiratory and digestive organs, for example, may be duplicated as far down in the animal scale as birds and chickens.[2] Man's whole physical apparatus and mode of life, save in complexity and refinement of operations, are the same as those of any of the higher mammals. But more important for the student of human behavior, man's mental life—that is, his way of responding to and dealing with his environment—is in large part identical with that of the lower animals, especially of the most highly developed vertebrates, such as the monkey. They have, up to a certain point, precisely the same equipment for adjusting themselves to the conditions of life. Apart from education, both man and animal are endowed with a set of more or less fixed tendencies to respond in specific ways to specific stimuli. These inborn or congenital tendencies are generally known as reflexes or instincts.[1] These are unlearned ways, exhibited by both human and animal organisms, of responding promptly and precisely, and in a comparatively changeless manner to a given stimulus from the environment. These tendencies to act, while they may be, and most frequently are of advantage to the organism, are not conscious or acquired. They are irresistible impulses to do just such-and-such particular things in such-and-such particular ways when confronted with just such-and-such particular situations. In the well-known words of James:
[Footnote 2: With certain modifications accounted for in their historical "descent" with modification from a common ancestor. See Scott: Theory of Evolution.]