Part 1 (1/2)

Human Traits and their Social Significance.

by Irwin Edman.

FOREWORD

This book was written, originally and primarily, for use in a course ent.i.tled ”Introduction to Contemporary Civilization,”

required of all Freshmen in Columbia College. It is an attempt to give a bird's-eye view of the processes of human nature, from man's simple inborn impulses and needs to the most complete fulfillment of these in the deliberate activities of religion, art, science, and morals. It is hoped that the book may give to the student and general reader a knowledge of the fundamentals of human nature and a sense of the possibilities and limits these give to human enterprise.

Part I consists of an a.n.a.lysis of the types of behavior, a survey of individual traits and their significance in social life, a brief consideration of the nature and development of the self, individual differences, language and communication, racial and cultural continuity. Those fruits of psychological inquiry have been stressed which bear most strikingly on the relations of men in our present-day social and economic organization. In consequence, there has been a deliberate exclusion of purely technical or controversial material, however interesting. The psychological a.n.a.lysis is in general based upon the results of the objective inquiries into human behavior which have been so fruitfully conducted in the last twenty-five years by Thorndike and Woodworth. To the work of the first-mentioned, the author is particularly indebted.

Part II is a brief a.n.a.lysis, chiefly psychological in character, of the four great activities of the human mind and imagination--religion, art, science, and morals. These are discussed as normal though complex activities developed, through the process of reflection, in the fulfillment of man's inborn impulses and needs. Thus descriptively to treat these spiritual enterprises implies on the part of the author a naturalistic viewpoint whose main outlines have been fixed for this generation by James, Santayana, and Dewey. To the last-named the writer wishes to express the very special obligation that a pupil owes to a great teacher.

The book as a whole, so far as can be judged from the experience the author and others have had in using it during the past year as a text at Columbia, should fit well into any general course in social psychology. It has been increasingly realized that the student's understanding of contemporary problems of government and industry is immensely clarified by a knowledge of the human factors which they involve.

This volume supplies a brief account of the essential facts of human behavior with especial emphasis on their social consequences. Part I may be independently used, as it has been with success, in a general course in social psychology. Part II, the ”Career of Reason,” presents material which many instructors find it highly desirable to use in introductory philosophy courses, but for which no elementary texts are available. The usual textbooks deal with the more metaphysical problems to the exclusion of religion, art, morals, and science, humanly the most interesting and significant of philosophical problems. Where, as in many colleges, the introductory philosophy course is preceded by a course in psychology, the arrangement of the volume should prove particularly well suited.

The ill.u.s.trative material has been drawn, possibly to an unusual extent, from literature. The latter seems to give the student in the vivid reality of specific situations facts which the psychologist is condemned, from the necessities of scientific method, to discuss in the abstract.

The book follows more or less closely that part of the syllabus for the course in Contemporary Civilization, which is called ”The World of Human Nature,” which section of the outline was chiefly the joint product of collaboration by Professor John J. Coss and the author. To the former the author wishes to express his large indebtedness. Also to Miss Edith G. Taber, for her careful and valuable editing of the ma.n.u.script in preparation for the printer, he desires to convey his deep appreciation.

I. E.

_Columbia University, June_ 1920.

INTRODUCTION

HUMAN TRAITS AND CIVILIZATION. Throughout the long enterprise of civilization in which mankind have more or less consciously changed the world they found into one more in conformity with their desires, two factors have remained constant: (1) the physical order of the universe, which we commonly call Nature, and (2) the native biological equipment of man, commonly known as human nature. Both of these, we are almost unanimously a.s.sured by modern science, have remained essentially the same from the dawn of history to the present. They are the raw material out of which is built up the vast complex of government, industry, science, art--all that we call civilization. In a very genuine sense, there is nothing new under the sun. Matter and men remain the same.

But while this fundamental material is constant, it may be given various forms; and both Nature itself and the nature of man may, with increasing knowledge, be increasingly controlled in man's own interests. The railroad, the wireless, and the aeroplane are striking and familiar testimonies to the efficacy of man's informed mastery of the world into which he is born. In the field of physical science, man has, in the short period of three centuries since Francis Bacon sounded the trumpet call to the study of Nature and Newton discovered the laws of motion, magnificently attained and appreciated the power to know exactly what the facts of Nature are, what consequences follow from them, and how they may be applied to enlarge the boundaries of the ”empire of man.”

In his control of human nature, which is in its outlines as fixed and constant as the laws that govern the movements of the stars, man has been much less conscious and deliberate, and more frequently moved by pa.s.sion and ignorance than by reason and knowledge. Nevertheless, custom and law, the court, the school, and the market have similarly been man's ways of utilizing the original equipment of impulse and desire which Nature has given him. It is hard to believe, but as certain as it is incredible, that the modern professional and businessman, moving freely amid the diverse contacts and complexities pictured in any casual newspaper, in a world of factories and parliaments and aeroplanes, is by nature no different from the superst.i.tious savage hunting precarious food, living in caves, and finding every stranger an enemy. The difference between the civilization of an American city and that of the barbarian tribes of Western Europe thousands of years ago is an accurate index of the extent to which man has succeeded in redirecting and controlling that fundamental human nature which has in its essential structure remained the same through history.

Man's ways of a.s.sociation and cooperation, for the most part, have not been deliberately developed, since men lived and had to live together long before a science of human relations could have been dreamed of. Only to-day are we beginning to have an inkling of the fundamental facts of human nature. But it has become increasingly plain that progress depends not merely on increasing our knowledge and application of the laws which govern man's physical environment.

Machinery, factories, and automatic reapers are, after all, only instruments for man's welfare. If man is ever to attain the happiness and rationality of which philosophers and reformers have continually been dreaming, there must also be an understanding of the laws which govern man himself, laws quite as constant as those of physics and chemistry.

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 const.i.tuted 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.