Human Traits and their Social Significance

m the beginnings of childhood, men experience an increasing sense of "personal selfhood" which finds various outlets in action or thought. So familiar, indeed, in the normal man is his

dily pain. As it grows older, it begins dimly to distinguish between Itself and Everything-Else; it finds itself to be something different, more vivid, more personal and interesting than the chairs and tables, the crib and bottle, the faces and hands, the smi

by distinguishes between persons and things. And as, in setting off his own body from other things, it discovers its "bodily self," so in setting off its own opinions, actions, and thoughts from other people, it discovers its "social self." It is because Nature does in some degree the "giftie gie us to see oursel

cDougall: loc.

ery largely on the individual's social experience, on the types and varieties of contact with other people that he has established. There will be differences, it goes without saying, that depend on initial differences in native capacity. But both the consciousness of self and the overt organization of instinctive and habitual actions are dependent primarily on the groups with which an individual comes in contact. In the formation of habits, both of action and thought, the individual is affected, as we have seen, largely by praise and blame. He very early comes

se approvals he has become most sensitive. Thus there develop certain typical personalities or characters, such as those of the typical lawyer or soldier or judge. T

to discover in the mirror of other men's opinions the status and locus of their own lives. As we shall see in a succeeding section, the degree of satisfaction which men experience in their consciousness of themselves is dependent intimately on the praise and blame by which their selfhood is, in the first place, largel

ards whose origin is remote in time, space, and intention from those operative in the predominant public opinion of his day. He may come to act habitually on the basis of ideal standards which he has himself set up through reflection, or which he has acquired from some moral system or tradition, far in advance of those which are the staple determinants of character for most of his contemporaries. He may be one of those rare moral geniuses, singularly unsusceptible to praise and blame, who create a new ideal of character by the dominant individuality of their own. Or, as more frequently happens, he may follow the ideals set up by such a one, instead of accepting the orthodoxies which are generally obser

ng more than differences in native capacities and native desires. The self that a man exhibits and of which he is conscious, at any given period of his life, depends on the complex system of habits he has in the course of his experience developed. One individual may, as we have seen, develop a number of sets of organized dispositions, a multiple character, as it were, as a consequence of the multiplicity of groups with which he has come in contact. But whether through deliberate or habitual conformity to one group as a norm, or the deliberate organization of habits of action and feeling and tho

ar system of behavior which he has come consciously to identify as his person or self; no interweaving of motives and stimuli by the persistent momentum of which his conduct is controlled; no single group of stimuli rather than another has, in his pulpy per

omentum of a man's "personal self." Will exists not as a thing, but as a process. To will an action means to identify it consciously with one's permanent self, to weigh and support it with all the emotions and energies connected with one's consciously realized habitual system of behavior. A man may bring to bear on t

drives to action. Even the ascetic feels the strong sting of sense-desire. A man in resisting temptation, in denying the pressure of an immediate stimulus, is setting up to block or inhibit it all the contrary reactions and emotions which have become part of the "permanent self." In more fa

d, or stirred by violent emotion, his systematic organization of habits begins to break down. The ideal permanent or inclusive self is then brought into conflict with a temporary passion. Love conflicts with duty,

ice withi

e suffocat

sonality is clearly abnormal. But it is almost as rare to find a completely integrated character. We are all of us more or less multiple personalities. Our various personalities usually keep their place and do not interfere with each other. Our profes

e thyself; an

mself, loses

ties; his business principles, with his religious scruples. A man can achieve a selfhood by thrusting out all interests save one, and achieving thereby unity at the expense of breadth. There are men who choose to be, and succeed in being, first and last, scholars or poets or musicians or doctors. All activities, interests, and ideals that do not contribute to that particular and exclusive self are practically negligible in their conduct. Such men, although they have attained a permanent self, have not achieved a broad, comprehensive, or inclusive one. They are like instruments which can sound only one note, however clear that may be; or like singers with only a single song. All lives are necessarily finite and exclusive; every choice of an interes

"self" of which we are conscious ceases to be our merely physical person, and comes to include our possessions. The house we live in and the garden we tend, our children, our f

mentos of the things he has thought and done, and there would be no "self" left. To speak of a man as a nonentity is to imply that he is no "self" worth speaking of; that he can be blown about hither and thither; that neither his opinions nor desires, nor possessions, nor associates make an iota of difference in the world. A man who is a "somebody," a "person to be reckoned with," is one who is a "self." He is one whose physical possessions or personal abilities or standing in the community make him one of the "powers that be." And it is the desire to be a factor in the world, t

es: Psychology,

pe and influence. Biologically we are so constituted as to perform many acts making for our self-preservation. The ordinary reflexes and instincts such as those whic

to seek their praise and avoid their blame. The instincts of self-display and leadership, and many of the non-social instincts, such as curiosity and acquisitiveness, are frequently called into play in the service of the more

e with no more recognition of their acts as their own than that displayed by an animal or a machine. In most men the sense of their personality and their interest in it are high, and the development of the self is sought in all possible or

deal self, leave undone those things which do not. The man or woman who wishes simply to cut a figure "socially" will cultivate the wit, the gayety, the facility, the smartness, which are the familiar ingredients of such a personality. The same persons will be singularly blind to abysses of ignorance which would be painfully in the consciousness of those who had set up for themselves ideals of erudition and culture. A laborer will live and move and have his being serenely in clothes and in surroundings that "would never do" for a professio

ith and have common sympathies with his fellows, and to pity those of them that are weak and distressed, there is nothing more unnatural about altruism than about egoism. It is true that in some men the so-called altruistic impulses, the impulse to sympathize with the emotions, feelings, aspirations and difficulties of others, and to pity them in their distress, are comparatively weak; that in some men the more obviously egoistic impulses, such as the gratification of bodily desires, the acquisition of physical

ected by praise and blame. Many a man in whom impulses of an egoistic sort are strong cannot resist th

calculate the benefits he will derive from his beneficence. Altruism is just as natural as egoism in its origins, though the impulses of self-preservation and personal physical satisfaction are natively stronger an

as the actuality they conceive themselves to be measures up to the ideal self, to the fulfillment of which they have dedicated themselves, they have a feeling of self-satisfaction, of elation. They are jubilant or crestfallen, satisfied or dissatisfied with themselves, in so far as they are in their own estimation making

always contain some patients who are literally mad with conceit, and whose fatuous expression and absurdly strutting or swaggering gait is in tragic contrast with their lack of any valuable personal quality. It is in these same castles of despair that we find the strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who think they have committed "the unpardonable sin" and are lost foreve

mes: loc. cit.,

isfaction will again be determined by the group among whom we move. The bank-robber will not boast of his exploits to a missionary conference; the surgeon will prefer to explain the details of his achievement to medical men who can critically appreciate its technique. The ideal self we set ourselves may far outreach our achievements, considerable and generally applauded though th

is not so frequently to be traced to the dazzling character of their achievement as to their resignation to their station. Young people are moody and unhappy not infrequently because they cannot make a reconciliation between what th

tioned, and generally forsaken they may be, they are yet integral parts of the whole of this brave world, have a fellow's share in the strength of the dairy horses, the happ

oc. cit., vol. I, p.

se who, in middle life, "lie among the failures at the foot of the hill." As Goethe, who had always been miraculously successful, said to one who came to complain to him about the difficul

ombine this consciousness with a sense of personal humility. In the same way a man who exerts great social power, who controls the economic lives of thousands of employees, or whose benefactions in the way of libraries and charitable institutions dot the land, develops inevitably a sense of his own selfhood as over agains

are that he had put it up, but he could not bring himself to consciousness of having done it any more than if he had produced the sa

uary of Andrew Carnegie in the Ne

heightened by contrast. When dissenting opinions are steadfastly maintained in the face of the opposition of a powerful majority, there develops a personality with edge and strength. The man who can persist in his belief against the prevailing winds of doctrine and of action may be wrong, but he is a personality. He is intensely and persistently aware of himself. Similarly, the exertion of power in the face of opposition increases the sense of one's own power and helps to consolidate it. One derives from it the same exhilaration t

e even tenor of one's way, and is content to let others pursue theirs. Men of very powerful personality have exhibited the utmost gentleness and consid

es a more violent manifestation of it. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in the heavens. A sense of injustice, of unfairness, will not only intensify a man's opinions but his consciousne

r violence. Others than the Germans have betaken themselves to arms to spread a specific and arbitrary type of life. On a small scale it is seen wherever a fanatical parent tries to force his own belief and type of life upon his children, reared in a younger and freer generation. In contemp

ent groups, provoke different selves in us. Nobody writes quite the same kind of letter to his different friends, or is, as has been pointed out, the same person in different situations. But, except for those intellectual wi

in the world and yet not be "self-conscious." It is indeed usually the little man who has a great air about him. The officiousness and pettiness of the small soul invested with authority has often been commented on. Proverbial wisd

illuminating brief discussion by H

ing the same thing. One need only to take a ride in a bus or street car to find the certain symptoms of self-display. These may consist in nothing more serious than a peculiarly conspicuous collar or hatband, or particularly high heels. It may consist in a loud voice full of pompous references to great banquets recently atte

ociferously and continuously into discussions, less for the contribution o

found in the almost universal de

scandal will suit them if nothing better is to be had. Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, is an example of the extremity to which this craving for notoriety may go in a pathological case. The newspapers b

mes: loc. cit.,

e to admit are determined by this desire for recognition. The loud, the vulgar, the notoriety

d in the presence of a stranger, however fluent and vivacious they may be with their friends. This type at its best may be described by the epithet of self-sufficient modesty. To be such a person may be said to be an achievement rather than a weakness. To

by the silen

by the sigh

t that the thin

ve, amusement

1: Self-De

nating men who are experts, even geniuses in their own field, but who shrink back from the loudness of publicity as from a plague. There are a number of wealthy philanthropists in all our large cities who consistently and steadily do go

o the feelings of others, to accept modification. Such a self not only has its initial force and momentum, but gains as it goes by the experience of others. A personality must be positive to contribute to the solution of difficulties and the management of enterprises, but it must be receptive in order to benefit by the ideas of others and co?perate with them. To have power and humility at once is sometimes sufficient to make

hose assent is as indispensable to success as it is difficult to attain. But to be afraid or ashamed of holding such an ideal set of principles in one's mind in their

orley: On Comp

e habitual definiteness of his own position that he cannot be swayed. In its worst form this is rampant egoism and dogmatism. All of us have met the loud-mouthed exponen

ably call its meaning; he will have conclusions as to what is to happen to him at death and after, as to what is and what should be the basis of conduct. He will know how the country should be governed, and why it is going to the dogs, why this piece of legislation is good and that bad. He will have

ed with problems admitted by the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that

ter: Instincts of

be ruthlessly insistent on the attainment of his own ends. This type of self has indeed been set up as an ideal by such philosophers as Nietzsche and Max Stirner, who urged that the re

d only thing to me-and not man: not the neighbor,

In that ye have despaired, there is much to honor. For ye have no

reach submission, and humility, and policy, and diligence,

O my brethren-these petty people: they

Zarathustra (Macmillan

thlessly asserting his priority, it is a dangerous procedure to identify one's ambitions with one's desserts. A

ence are martyrs and great leaders made. There are in every community men who will regard it as treachery to their highest ideals to compromise at all from the inviolable principles to which they feel themselves committed. Such men are difficult to deal with in human situations involving co?peration and compromise, and they e

o the world. The more certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth of his gospel, the more indignant will he become when his teaching is rejected.... The intense faith which enables him to withstand persecu

Proposed Roads to Fr

ors of the enthusiast are, when they have the earmarks of sincerity, contagious. A genuinely enthusiastic personality kindles his own fire in the hearts of others, and makes them appreciate as no mere formal analysis could, the vital and moving aspects of things. Good teaching has been defined as communication by contagion, and the teachers whom students usually testify to have influenced them most are not those who doled out flat prescribed wisdom, but tho

nce becomes richer in significance. Poets and the poetically-minded have to a singular d

in the person of his brother, who had a dozen different ambitions a year. But enthusiasm may be a long-sustained devotion to a single ideal. A curious instance of it was seen in the case of an Armenian scholar

siast, since he instinctively likes to share his emotions, not infrequently displays an intense desire for leadership, not so much that he may be a leader as that he may win converts to his own cause or creed. Such a personality finds

. Who could equal him in readiness of wit? Where was there such a raconteur? Who else could put the feel of a poem into one's heart? ... His voice was very deep, and exceedingly free and flexible. It always seemed to bri

n Stork: "A Great Teacher,"

only from observation, but from any positive or pronounced action. This has already been noted in connection with submissiveness. Most people in the presence of their intellectual and social

ase of the proverbial "poor relation," may become chronic. In its most disagreeable form it is exhibited as an o

wyer," I [David Copperfield] said,

" said Uriah. "Oh, no! I

round the palms against each other, as if to squeeze them dry and warm,

where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Coppe

he now?

ield, but we have much to be thankful for. How much ha

may become a complete and rapturous submissiveness to God. The records of many medi?val and of some modern mystics emphasize this comple

according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which

ames: Varieties of Relig

olony is an extreme example. But something of the same humility and submissiveness is exhibited every time a man makes a choice which places the welfare of other people before his own immediate success. It is shown by the thousands of physicians and settlement workers and teac

ty which sets them off from the general run of men. That some of these are accounted eccentric is to be explained in the light of man's tendency, as a gregarious animal, to think "queer" and "freakish" anything off the beaten track. Some are clearly and unmistakably abnormal in some physiological or ps

mental" types. In a civilization where most professions demand regularity, restraint, punctuality, and directness, unstability and excess emotionalism are necessarily at a discount. There are the vagabond types who, like young Georges, Jean-qhristophe's protégé, regard a profession as a prison house, in which most of one's capacities are cruelly confined. There are again those who, possessing singular and exclusive sensitivity to ?sthetic values, to music, art, and poetry, find the world outside their own lyri

raries or by posterity. In such cases society hesitates to apply its usual f

a finished child of nature, not a joint product, like most of us, of nature, history, and society, he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense, but was obtuse to the droll miscel

na: Winds of Doctrin

n likes to make himself great by wearing his hair long and living in a garret. But it is unquestionably true that a highly sensitive and creative mind is often ill at ease in the world of action, and remains a vagabond, an enfant terrible or an eccentric all through life. It remains a fact that in contemporary society there are a small number of people, some of

door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art-he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted;

ution. Brought up in a tenement and working as a clerk, this youngster wrote what competent judges pronounced to be really extraordinary lyrics. He was at the sam

ized the situati

any other people-less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.... If they are of a strong character, and break their

l: Essay on Libe

es are permanent representations of the melancholy thinker and the exuberant adventurer. The business man and the executive may be put over against the poet and the scholar; the strenuous organizer and administrator over against the quiet philosopher. Both have their outstanding uses, and, in their extreme forms, their outstanding defects. The active type, as we sa

t type of life; it may have been because they were themselves both philosophers. In its extreme form it is exhibited in such men as Spinoza or Kant, spending their lives in practical obscurity, speculating on time and space and eternity. But it is apparent in

s it, too, to behold great contests of war in full array over the plains, when you have no part in the danger. But nothing is more gladdening than to dwell in the calm high places, firmly embattled on the heights by the teaching of the wise, whence you can look down on

Rerum Natura (Bailey transl

ly interesting. The man of action finds an immediate satisfaction in movement, change, the clamor of affairs, the contacts with other people, t

s use goes without saying. The thinker and the dreamer

movers an

d, forever,

d of action in a far-reaching way. The researches of a Newton make possible eventually the feats of mode

er with the pale cast of thought." There is the hero of one Russian novel who reflects through three hundred pages on his wasted life, all at the ripe age of twenty-three.[1] The practical man gains width and insight by checking himself with reflection; the contemplative finds thought called home and made meaningful by contacts with the world. It was something of this

Contchareff

o be no one of these types to any degree at all is to be no character at all, is to be socially a nonentity, a minus quantity; it is to be determined by the vicissitudes of chance or circumstance; it is to be a successio

ndish cruelty of "Bill Sikes"; the angelic self-effacement of "Little Nell"; the hypocritical "Mr. Pecksniff"; the gossipy "Sairy Gamp." He had a unique gift for representing psychological

's love, as in the case of Medea or Othello, the pain of ingratitude as in Lear, the conflict between "the lower and the higher self," as in the case of Macbeth's loyalty and his ambition. These are the staple materials of drama. In common experience, an insult to one's wife or friend, an obstacle placed in the way of one's professional career, deprivation of one's liberty or one's property, or one's unhindered "pursuit of happiness," are the provocations to violent emotions in the sustaining of the self. How violent or what form the reaction will take depends on the situation of the "self" involved. If one has been grossly insulted by another upon whom one is utterly dependent socially and economically, a rankling and impotent rage may be the only outlet. To a person gifted with humility, the disillusions

ing citiless,

wedded me, a

.

even now my

quite this Jas

Oh, in all th

ull of fears

ed, and shrinkin

once spoil he

nd there moves,

rit between Hea

: Medea (Gilbert Murra

will go into a paroxysm of rage if its toy is taken away. Older people will fight for smaller or larger points of social position. There is the familiar citizen who will insist on his rights, often of a petty sort, in a hotel, theater, or department store. Or a man may display the last extremity of courage in defense

night that

e pit from

hatever g

nconquer

.

not how stra

ith punishmen

master of

aptain of

te 2: I

for our parents, though in part instinctive, is undoubtedly increased by the care and persistence with which they have fostered our own life and hopes, have educated us, and made possible for us a career. The same motives play a part in our affection f

he integrity of the group life, as in the case, for example, of national honor, the individual life and possession may come to be reckoned as naught. Man's gregariousness and his instinctive sympathy with his own kind make it easy for the individual to identify his own life with that of the group. Wha

influential in keeping Switzerland alive as a nationality through hundreds of years, though surrounded by powerful neighbors.[1] While a group does not exist save as an abstraction, looked at as a whole it may exhibit the same outstanding traits, or the same types of selfhood as an individual. It may be fiercely belligerent and dogmatic; it may, like literary exponents of the German ideal, desire to spread its own conception of Kultur

ntageous conditions, as in the strong sentiment for nationalism cu

tional Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the increase of renown that comes to his sovereign, his language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or his God

to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of

Wilson: Address to Co

p. In extreme cases, such as that of Germany under the imperial régime, the group individuality may completely ov

lofty claim.... The state eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of the individuals within its jurisdiction. This conception of the state which is as much a

al Organization and Development and the War Aga

rom Hegel down[2] there may be on the part of both individuals and groups the tendency to promote individuality as itself a social good. In such a case the social structure and educational systems and methods will be

ewey: German Philo

y is the theme of Montess

nly be a self in a social order; the individual is only an individual in contrast with others. It is doubtful, for example, whether a man living all his life alone on a desert island would discover any individuality at all. A man's character is displayed in action, and his actions are always, or nearly always, performed with reference to other people. And a man's best self-realization cannot be achieved save in

atic position, that a choice life lived by a few

y, that society is, after all, nothing more than an aggregate of selves. The "state," the "so

y and initiative. It is when "individualism" runs rampant, when self-realization on the part of one individual interferes with self-realization on the part of all

ses, nations, have been extremely unlike one another; they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who traveled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have t

l: Essay on Libe

ogether. It is the individuals who are the realities and the happiness of individuals which is the aim of social organization. Such happiness is only attainable when individuals are allowed to make the most of their native capacities and individual interests.