Human Traits and their Social Significance

c., 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, curio

iveness 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 bein

ay 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 cont

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

endency, when interfered with in the performance of any action prompted by any other instinct, to threat

its meal is interrupted, and all through life most men find it difficult to suppress irritation on similar occasions. In the animal world the mos

cDougall: loc.

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 interferenc

cDougall: loc.

ate commuters have glared vindictively at trains they have just missed. The glint of anger is roused in our eye by an insolent stare, an ironic comment, or an impertinent retort. The "boiling point" varies in different individuals and races, and pugnacity is generally more readily roused in men than in women. The

y training and habits, from settling disputes by physical force. But as the instinct itself remains strong, it must find some other outlet. This it secures in more refined forms of rivalry, in business and sport, or, all thro

imaginative at least, in a great collective combat undoubtedly holds some fascination for the citizens of modern industrial society, despite the large-scale horror which war is in itself, and the desolation it leaves in its wake. During peace the fighting instinct for most men receives satisfaction on a small scale, sometimes in nothing more

f intense pugnacity and violent anger to the genuine friction that does exist between conflicting interests in the same society. The theory of a "clas

d Lang, attribute the superiority in culture and social organization of the European races over, say, the Chinese and East Indians, to the fighting instinct. In the long series of wars that for centuries constituted much of the history of Europe, those nations which survived, as in earlier times those tribes which survived

tainly every great reform movement has been intensely stimulated and has gathered about it the energies of men when it has become a "crusade for righteousness." Part of Theodore Roosevelt's power was in his picturesque phrasing of political issues as if they were great moral struggles. No one could forget, or fail to have his heart beat a trifle faster at Roosevelt's

Equivalent of War," in

trenuous exertion; to it we owe in a great measure even our science, our literature, and our art; for it is a strong, perhaps an essential, element of ambition, that last infirmity of noble minds."[1] In the overcoming of obstacles, whether in the work itself, or in the difficulties that a surgeon or a scholar meets with, or in frustrations deliberately put in our way by other people, pugnacity is an invaluable stimula

cDougall: loc.

ency to find satisfaction in following, partly submitting to, or completely surrendering to a person

tronger. The man who is bigger, who can outyell and outstare us, who can hit us without our hitting him, and who can keep us from moving, does originally extort a crestfallen, abashed physique and mind. Women in general are thus by original nature submissive

Educational Psychology

leader as well as a good, are evidence that men find an instinctive satisfaction in submission. Self-dependence stands out as a virtue or an accomplishment precisely because most men feel so utterly at sea without any loyalty, allegiance, or devotion. Any one who has spent a summer at a boy's camp will recall the helplessness of youngsters to mark out a program for themselves and to keep themselves happy on the one afternoon when there was no official program of play. Half the mischief performed on such occasions is initiated by some boy with just a little more independence and persuasiveness than the others. And it is not only among children that there is evinced an almost pathetic bewilderment and unrest in the absence of a leader. There is an equally pathetic and sometimes

cle by Wm. Hard in the Ne

rong, but may find its outlets in attachment, both to desirable and to undesirable persons or objects. Once aroused, attachment and submission may beco

ted that the gift of public speaking is of more decisive value than anything else. If a man is fluent, dextrous, and ready on the platform, he possesses the one indispensable requisite for statesmanship; if in addition he has the gift of moving deeply the emotions of his hearers, his capacity for guiding the infinite complex

1: Trotter

eadership, of a conspicuously emotional sort, may be more significant in determining the attachments and lo

f the profoundest loyalties for personal or class ends. The gifts of personal magnetism, of a kindly voice, an air of confidence and calmness, exuberant vitality, and a sensitivity to other people's feelings, along with some of the genuine q

sh leaders is therefore particularly easy. The large circulation of the "yellow press," the power in politics of the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the second-rate, are symptoms of how men's natural tendency to follow has been played upon in support of pl

tween men, and if the uninformed and the socially helpless could not be aroused to follow those great both in mind and magnanimity, it is difficult to see how the lot of mankind ever could have, or ever can improve. A good leader may make men support, out of instinctive loyalty, purposes and plans which, if they completely understood them, they would support out of reason. Up to the present most people have been, and will probably remain for a long time to come, too ill-educated or too poorly endowed by nature to understand the bearings of the

is, of course, his tendency to take it. Individuals tend to display persistently a

and extensive, he lifts his hoofs high in air as he parades before the eyes of his fellows.... Many children clearly exhibit this instinct of self-display; before they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in the admiring gaze or plaudits of the family circle as each new acquirement is practiced; a lit

Dougall; loc. c

e of one man it may be a charming smile and a gift of saying striking and stirring rather than significant things. In the case of another it may be his air of immense confidence, restraint, and reserve. It may be brute force or a terrible earnestness; it may even be, as in the case of certain religious reformers, extraordinary gentleness. Garibaldi "inspired among men of the most various temperaments love that nothing could shake, and devotion that fell little short of idolatry." "He enjoyed the worship and cast the spell of a legendary hero." Alc

XXI on "Personality" in

ies possessed by the vast majority only in minor degrees, win men's admiration and devotion because they are associated with the ability to accomplish great ends, to do the unusual, to succeed where most people fail. Most men are so conscious of their

fied by Carlyle, to assume that history was made by great men. Latterly, there has been wide dissent from this simplification of the processes of history, but it is clear that innovations must be started

he general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of thoughts that dwelt in the G

e: Heroes and Hero-

gh the world and changing its destiny, although in Nietzsche the Superman w

paign against slavery in this country assumed large proportions through the strenuous leadership of the Garrisons and the Wendell Phillipses. In our own day we have seen the same phenomenon; the great political and social changes of the last generation have all had their special advocates and leaders who, if they were mere

medium of the newspapers and periodicals. But this merely means that a leader may reach a wider

there as readily and, being creatures of habit, often more readily than along new paths. The immense following among the lower social classes that the Conservative Party had in England all through the nineteenth century in the face of proposed changes that would have bettered their own conditions, is an interesting illustration of this. This is partly because the influence of leaders is dependent on their social stat

he parental instinct, more common, of course, in women than in men. The feeling of affectionate pity and the impulse to rescue from pain are most intense when the distressed thing is a child, and part

ty thee!... Th

my arms, what sw

y neck! Belo

that this bos

ll the weary ni

n thy sicknes

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. Put up thine

now kiss me,

nd an anguish

f the East, ye

lay this inno

ong?.

Trojan Women'' (Gilbert Mu

son, shorn of his strength, has been a traditional occasion for pathos. The sick, the bereaved, the down-and-outers, the failures, the forlorn and broken-hearted, call out in most men an impulse to befriend and protect. Those who have been dealt with unjustly or severely by their associates and society a

ders. In the higher species, writes McDougall, "The protection and cherishing of the young is the constant and all-absorbing occupation of the mother, to which she devotes all her energies, and in the course of which she will at any time undergo privation, pain, and death.

cDougall: loc.

3: Cf. Ibi

same time the moral indignation which insists on the punishment of wrong-doers. It is clearly apparent in such movements as the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or to Animals, the antivivise

es. "Crouching, clinging, starting, trembling, remaining stock still, covering the eyes, opening the mouth and eyes, a temporary cessation followed by an acceleration of the heart-beat, difficulty in breathing, paleness, sweating, and erect

horndike: loc.

which it controls the individual. But there are certain typical situations that call it forth. Among young children, and not much less so among adults, fear is aroused by any sudden loud noise, by strange men and strange animals, black things and dark places, "vermin," such as spiders and snakes, among a great many adults fear of high places, and, among a few agaraphobia or fear of open

on of these, see James: Psy

fear he must first have learned to control and regulate his impulses in conformity with the needs of social life."[2] In contemporary society fear is not so explicitly present, but it is still a deep-seated power over men's lives. Fear of punishment may not be the only reason why citizens remain law-abiding, but

cDougall: loc.

kingly pointed out by Hilaire Belloc and Hobson, one of the greatest evils of our present hit-or-miss methods of employment is the fear of "losing his job," the uncomforta

and death followed dissent, it is not surprising that men feared to be dissenters. In contemporary society under normal conditions men have much less to fear in the way of punishment

ear novel political and social ideas before they can possibly understand what they have to be afraid of. The fact that thought so continually turns up the novel and the strange is, according to Bertrand Russell, precisely the reason why most men are afraid to think. And fear of the novel, the strange, the unaccustomed is, as

e 1: Pro

y associated very frequently with danger to the primitive savage, and an instinctive recoil from these centers of disaster was undoubtedly of survival value. But there is an increasing tendency to discount the utility of fear in civilized life.

es: Psychology,

ly, seems to some philosophic writers, especially Bertrand Russell, a key fact for social life. "No institution," he writes, "inspired by fear, can further life."[2] And in another connection: "In the world as we have been imagining it, economic fear will be removed out of life.... No one will be haunted by the dread of poverty....

and Russell: Why M

l: Proposed Roads t

bid., p. 186.

accompaniment in their dealings with individuals, especially when face to face, and experience more especially, in varying degrees, the emotions of love or hate. These terms are here used in the general sense of the receptive, positive, or expansive attitude and the cold, negative, repellent, and contractual attitude toward others. These may both be intense and consciously noted, as in the case of long-cherished and deep affections or

h man's tendency to experience sympathetically immediately the emotions of others. Every business man, lawyer, teacher, any one who comes much into contact with a wide variety of people, knows how, antecedent to any experience with an individual's capacities or talents, or even before one had a chance to draw any inferences from a person's walk, h

unds to the so

we troop

edcoat tur

and loo

om sky to s

crossed

apart the wor

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s at heart ha

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living, dr

I wish yo

n: The Shropshire Lad (Jo

s; and no sense is an indifferent organ. Each has, so to speak, its congenial rate of vibration, and gives its stimuli a varying welcome. Little as we may attend to these instinctive hospitalities of sense, they betray themselves in unjustified likes and dislikes felt for casual persons and things, in the je ne sais quai that makes instinctive sympathy."[2] From this immediate instinctive liking it may ri

ayana: Reason in

sympathies. Popular psychology has in various proverbs hit at and not entirely missed some of the obvious and contradictory elements: "Opposites attract," "Birds of a feather flock together," and so on. Intellectual qualities, in persons of marked intellectual interests, will also sustain friendship and deepen a

es, institutions, and ideas. One feels in the works of great thinkers the same warmth and loyalty to ideas and causes that ordinary people display toward their friends. Plat

t the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him...

Symposium (Jowett tr

ons. There are scholars almost literally in love with their subjects. There have been a greater number whose capacity for affection has extended t

his pity for the dumb helplessness of suffering animals was deep and true. He would lift the worm from his path lest a careless foot should crush it, and would encourage his

Kerr-Lawson: Assisi of

the Christian world, as the sup

us affection for humanity is required to enable men to endure for long the dreariness and disillusion so often incident to philanthropic work, the conflicts and disappointm

ghteen set out to make the world "a better place to live in." But more effective in dampening enthusiasm is the disillusion and weariness that set in after a period of exuberant and romantic benevolence to mankind in general. "We call pessimists," writes a contemporary French philosopher, "those who are in reality only disillusioned optimists."[1] So the cynic may be fair

arked: "At eighteen a man is interested in cau

: Reflection on Violence (

more interested in those for whom we entertain affection than in those to whom we are indifferent. In the same way our judgments of our own friends, families, and children are

pansive receptivity, is at the basis of what is called "charity for human

uch of what men

in the light o

h of what was g

transformed

ch of what the

be loud now fo

: "Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from S

nsight when they made man's salvation dependent on God's c

e e cor gentile son una cosa. To Dante the spontaneous impulse to love is the basis of all altruism

g. Such immediate revulsions of feeling contrast with the instances of "instinctive sympathy" previously cited, and are as direct and uncontrollable. Even kindly disposed persons cannot help experiencing in the presence of some persons they have never seen before, a half-conscious thrill of repulsion or a d

like you

n why I c

now, and kno

like you,

alification of our general attitude toward another. People of worldly experience learn to trust their first

ions, or ideas, interfere with our activities, desires, or ideals. The man who seriously obstructs our love, our pleasure, or our ambition, or who tries to do so, provokes hate, and its concomitants of jealousy, rage, and pugnacity. It is not only that we dislike the mere presence of the person (in the opposite case the m

liar, the strange, the startling, the unexpected. The facility with which sensational newspapers can work up in an ignorant population a hate for foreign nations, especially those of a totally alien civilization, is made possible by the fear which these uninformed reade

be indifferent to him. To dislike him intensely, in a sense increases our interest in him, though perversely. Just as we wish the beloved person to s

smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone;

cks of mine enemies that I mig

to German music or the German language, so closely have these become associated in their minds with ideas and practices which they detest. To a dogmatic Calvinist in the sixteenth cent

ding strength in its opposite. We cannot help hating, more or less, not only those who interfere with our own welfare, but with the welfare of those who, being dear to u

heir mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but

Proposed Roads to Fr

ent on destroying obstacles rather than solving problems. It consumes in hatred for individuals such energy as might more expeditiously be devoted to the improvement of the circumstances which make people do the m

de of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendl

arieties of Religious

g in conflict. But a keener appreciation of other viewpoints, which is possible through education, a less violent concern with one's own personal interests t