5gflSU t?LS3 HUMAN TRAITS AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE BY IRWIN EDMAN, Pn.D. INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO BAN FRANCISCO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (Cbc Ribntfbe ptttf CambnOge COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY IRWIN EDMAN Copyright, 1919, by Columbia University ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U . 8 . A BM TATW TBACHEW* COt-L AMTA AWARA CALIFORNIA FOREWORD _ JU ^, , I V *- ' " ' ' ' " THIS book was written, originally and primarily, for use in a course entitled "Introduction to Contemporary Civiliza- tion," 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 activi- ties 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 pos- sibilities and limits these give to human enterprise. Part I consists of an analysis 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 or- ganization. In consequence, there has been a deliberate ex- clusion of purely technical or controversial material, however interesting. The psychological analysis is in general based upon the results of the objective inquiries into human behav- ior 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 analysis, 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 im- pulses 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 gen- eration 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. iv FOREWORD The book as a whole, so far as can be judged from the e*r perience 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 hi 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 con- sequences. 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 in- structors find it highly desirable to use in introductory phi- losophy courses, but for which no elementary texts are avail- able. 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 philosophi- cal 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 illustrative 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 scien- tific method, to discuss in the abstract. The book follows more or less closely that part of the syl- labus 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 Pro- fessor 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 manu- script in preparation for the printer, he desires to convey his deep appreciation. I. B. Columbia University, June 1920. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION HUMAN TRAITS AND CIVILIZATION . . PART I -SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER I TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR The human animal The number and variety of man's in- stincts Learning in Eni'mala and men The prolonged period of infancy Consciousness of self and reaction to ideas Human beings alone possess language Man the only maker and user of tools. CHAPTER II TYPES OP HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE INSTINCT, HABIT, AND EMOTION , . . . . .18 Instinctive behavior The necessity for the control of in* stinct Habitual behavior The mechanism of habit The acquisition of new modes of response Trial and error and deliberate learning Some conditions of habit-forma- tion Drill versus attentive repetition in learning Learn- ing affected by age, fatigue, and health Habit as a time- saver Habit as a stabilizer of action Disserviceable habits in the individual Social inertia The importance of the learning habit The specificity of habits The conscious transference of habits Emotion. CHAPTER III REFLECTION 47 Instinct and habit versus reflection The origin and nature of reflection Illustration of the reflective process Reflection as the modifier of instinct Reflective behavior modifies habit The limits of reflection as a modifier of instinct and habit How instincts and habits impair the processes of reflection The value of reflection for life The social im- portance of reflective behavior Reflection removed from vi CONTENTS immediate application: science The practical aspect of science The creation of beautiful objects and the expres- sion of ideas and feelings in beautiful form. CHAPTER IV THE BASIC HUMAN ACTIVITIES 67 Food, shelter, and sex Physical activity Mental activity Quiescence: fatigue Nervous and mental fatigue. CHAPTER V THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN 81 Man as a social being Gregariousness Gregariousness im- portant for social solidarity Gregariousness may hinder the solidarity of large groups Gregariousness in belief Gre- gariousness in habits of action The effect of gregariousness on innovation Sympathy (a specialization of gregarious- ness) Praise and blame Praise and blame modify habit Desire for praise may lead to the profession rather than the practice of virtue The social effectiveness of praise and blame Social estimates and standards of conduct Im- portance of relating praise and blame to socially important conduct Education as the agency of social control So- cial activity and the social motive. CHAPTER VI CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE 110 The interpenetration of human traits The fighting instinct Pugnacity a menace when uncontrolled Pugnacity as a beneficent social force The "submissive instinct" Men display qualities of leadership Man pities and protects weak and suffering things Fear Love and hate Love Hate. CHAPTER VII THE DEMAND FOR PRIVACY AND INDIVIDUALITY . 138 Privacy and solitude Satisfaction in personal possession: the acquisitive instinct Individuality in opinion and belief The social importance of individuality in opinion. CHAPTER VIII THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE "SELF" . ,>.,.. . 148 Origin and development of a sense of personal selfhood The social self Character and will The enhancement of the self Egoism versus altruism Self-satisfaction and dissatis- faction The contrast between the self and others Types CONTENTS vii of self Self-display or boldness Self-sufficient modesty The positive and flexible self Dogmatism and self-asser- tion Enthusiasm The negative self Eccentrics The active and the contemplative Emotions aroused in the maintenance of the self The individuality of groups. CHAPTEB IX INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES . 186 The meaning of individual differences Causes of individual differences The influence of sex The influence of race The influence of immediate ancestry or family The influ- ence of the environment Individual differences Democ- racy and education. CHAPTER X LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 214 Language as a social habit Language and mental life The instability of language Changes in meaning Uniformities in language Standardization of language Counter-tend- encies toward differentiation Language as emotional and logical Language and logic. CHAPTER XI RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 243 Restriction of population Cultural continuity Uncritical veneration of the past Romantic idealization of the past Change synonymous with evil "Order" versus change Personal or class opposition to change Uncritical disparage- ment Critical examination of the past Limitations of the past Education as the transmitter of the past. PART II -THE CAREER OF REASON INTRODUCTION 275 CHAPTER XII RELIGION AND THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 279 The religious experience " The reality of the unseen " Ex- periences which frequently find religious expression Need and impotence Fear and awe Regret, remorse: repentance and penance Joy and enthusiasm : festivals and thanksgiv- ings Theology The description of the divine The divine as the humvn ideal The religious experience, theology and science Mechanistic science and theology Religion and viii CONTENTS science The church as a social institution The social con- sequences of institutionalized religion Intolerance and in- quisition Quietism and consolation: other-worldliness. CHAPTER XIII ABT AND THE ESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 331 Art versus nature The emergence of the fine arts The aes- thetic experience Appreciation versus action Sense satis- faction Form Expression Art as vicarious experience Art and aesthetic experience in the social order Art as an industry Art and morals. CHAPTER XTV SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 368 What science is Science as explanation Science and a world view The aesthetic value of science The danger of "pure science" Practical or applied science Analysis of scientific procedure Science and common sense Curios- ity and scientific inquiry Thinking begins with a prob- lem The quality of thinking: suggestion Classification Experimental variation of conditions Generalizations, their elaboration and testing The quantitative basis of scientific procedure Statistics and probability Science as an instru- ment of human progress. CHAPTER XV MORALS AND MORAL VALUATION 411 The pre-conditions of morality: instinct, impulse, and desire The conflict of interests between men and groups The levels of moral action: custom; the establishment of "folkways" Morality as conformity to the established The values of customary morality The defects of customary morality Custom and progress Origin and nature of reflective moral- ity Reflective reconstruction of moral standards The values of reflective morality Reflection transforms customs into principles Reflective action genuinely moral Reflec- tion sets up ideal standards The defects of reflective morality The inadequacy of theory in moral life The danger of in- tellectualism in morals Types of moral theory Absolutism Relativistic or teleological morality Utilitarianism Moral knowledge Intuitionalism Empiricism Ethics and life Moralitv and human nature Morals, law, and education. INDEX . . \ .-.... 461 INTRODUCTION Human traits and civilization. Throughout the long en- terprise 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 equip- ment of man, commonly known as human nature. Both of these, we are almost unanimously assured 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 con- trolled 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 dis- covered the laws of motion, magnificently attained and ap- preciated 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 passion and ignorance than by reason and knowledge. Nevertheless, custom and law, x INTRODUCTION 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 cer- tain as it is incredible, that the modern professional and busi- nessman, movingfreely amid the diverse contacts and complex- ities pictured in any casual newspaper, in a world of factories and parliaments and aeroplanes, is by nature no different from the superstitious 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 suc- ceeded in redirecting and controlling that fundamental human nature which has in its essential structure remained the same through history. Man's ways of association 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 rela- tions could have been dreamed of. Only to-day are we begin- ning 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 appli- cation 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 re- formers 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 mate- rials 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. Pa- INTRODUCTION ri triotism and public spirit find their roots back in the same unlearned impulses which make a baby smile back when amiled 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 inter- ests of human welfare. It is too often forgotten that the prob- lems 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 cer- tain 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 prob- lems in calculus which constitute man's outstanding and exclusive characteristic. 1 But hi 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 dupli- cated as far down in the animal scale as birds and chickens. 9 Man's whole physical apparatus and mode of life, save hi 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 annuals, espe- cially of the most highly developed vertebrates, such as the monkey. They have, up to a certain point, precisely the 1 The thinking process is discussed in detail in chapters in and xiv. 1 With certain modifications accounted for in their historical "descent" with modification from a common ancestor. 6e Scott: Theory of Evolution. 2 HUMAN TRAITS same equipment for adjusting themselves to the conditions of life. Apart from education, both man and animal are en- dowed 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 organ- ism, 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: The cat runs after the mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, etc., not because he has any notion either of life or death, or of self-preserva- tion. He has probably attained to no one of these conceptions in such a way as to react definitely upon it. He acts in each case sepa- rately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he must pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears there he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he must withdraw his feet from water, and his face from flame.' Similarly, the baby's reaching for random objects, and sucking them when seized, its turning its head aside, when it has had enough food, its crying when alone and hungry, are not, for the most part, deliberate methods invented by the infant to maintain its own welfare, but are almost as auto- matic as the number of sounds omitted by the cuckoo clock at midnight. 1 The difference between the two is largely one'of complexity. By a reflex is meant a very simple and comparatively rigid response; by an instinct a series of reflexes such that when the first is set off, the remainder are set off in a regularly determinate succession. * James: Psychology, vol. u, p. 384. TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 3 Why do men always lie down, when they can, on soft beds rather than on hard floors? Why do they sit round the stove on a cold day? . . . Why does the maiden interest the youth so that everything about her seems more important and significant than anything else in the world? Nothing more can be said than that these are human ways, and that every creature likes its own ways, and takes to the following of them as a matter of course. . . . Not one man in a bil- lion, when taking his dinner, thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good, and makes him want more. If you ask him why he should want to eat more of what tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philosopher, he will probably laugh at you for a fool. 1 These inborn tendencies to act vary in complexity from the withdrawing of a hand from a hot stove or the jerking of the knee when touched in a particular spot to startlingly involved trains of action to be found in the behavior of certain of the lower animals. Bergson cites the case of a species of wasp which with a skill, unconscious though it be, resembling that of the expert surgeon, paralyzes a caterpillar without killing it, and carries it home for food for its young. 2 There are again many cases of "insects which invariably lay their eggs in the only places where the grubs, when hatched, will find the food they need and can eat, or where the larvae will be able to attach themselves as parasites to some host in a way that is necessary to their survival." * In many instances these com- plicated trains of action are performed by the animal in a situation absolutely strange to it, without its ever having seen the act performed before, having been born frequently after its parents had died, and itself destined to die long before its grubs will have hatched. The number and variety of man's instincts. Various at- tempts have been made, notably by such men as James, McDougall, and Thorndike, to enumerate and classify the tendencies with which man is at birth endowed, or which, 1 Jamea: Psychology, vol. n, p. 388. * Bergson: Creative Evolution, p. 172. * McDougall: Social Psychology, p. 24. (Except where otherwise noted, all references are to the fourth edition.) 4 HUMAN TRAITS like the sex instinct, make their appearance at a certain stage in biological growth, regardless of the particular training to which the individual has been subjected. Earlier classifica- tions were inclined to speak of instincts as very general and as half consciously purposeful hi character. Thus it is still popu- larly customary to speak of the "instinct of self-preserva- tion," the "instinct of hunger," and the "parental instinct." The tendency of present-day psychology is to note just what responses take place in given specific situations. As a result of such observation, particularly by such biologists as Watson and Jennings, 1 instincts have come to be regarded not as general and purposive but as specific and automatic. Thus it is no instinct of self-preservation that drives the child to blink its eyes at a blinding flash of light; it is solely and simply the very direct and immediate tendency to blink its eyes hi just that way whenever such a phenomenon occurs. It is no deliberate intent to inhale the oxygen necessary to the suste- nance of lif e that causes us to breathe. No more is it a con- scious plan to provide the organism with nourishment that prompts us to eat our breakfast hi the morning; it is simply the immediate and irresistible enticement of food after a night's fast. Not a deliberate motive of maternity prompts the mother to caress and care for her baby, but an inevitable and almost invincible tendency to "cuddle it when it cries, smile when it smiles, fondle it and coo to it hi turn." In the last few years, as a result of the observation of animals under laboratory conditions, there has been increas- ing evidence of a large number of specific tendencies to act in specific ways, in response to specific given stimuli. As no stimuli are ever quite alike, and no annual organism is ever in exactly the same physico-chemical condition at two different tunes, there are slight but negligible differences in response. Allowing for these, animals may be said to be equipped with a wide variety of tendencies to do precisely the same things under recurrent identical circumstances. The ami of the 1 Watson: Behavior. II. 8. Jennings: Behavior of the Lower Organism*. TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 5 experimental psychologist is to discover just what actions occur when an animal is placed in any given circumstances, precisely as the chemist notes what reaction occurs when two chemicals are combined. While experiments with the human infant are more difficult and rare (and while it is among infants alone among humans that original tendencies can be observed free from the modifi- cations to which they are so soon subjected by training and environment) careful observers find in the human animal also a great number of these specific ways of acting. Just which of the large number of observed universal modes of behavior are original and unlearned, is a matter still in controversy among psychologists. There is practically complete agreement among them, however, with respect to such comparatively simple acts as grasping, reaching, putting things in the mouth, creeping, standing and walking, and the making of sounds more or less articulate. Most psychologists recognize even such highly complicated tendencies as man's restlessness in the absence of other people, his tendency to attract their at- tention when present, to be at once pitying and pugnacious, greedy and sympathetic, to take and to follow a lead. / In general, it may be said that man possesses not fewer instincts than animals, but more. His superiority consists in 'the fact that he has at once more tendencies to respond, and that in him these tendencies are more flexible and more sus- ceptible of modification than those of animals. A chicken has at the start the advantage over the human; it can at first do more things and do them better. But it is the human baby who, though it cannot find food for itself at the start, can eventually be taught to distinguish between the nutritive values of food, secure food from remote sources, and make palatable food from materials which when raw are inedible. An inventory and classification of man's original tendencies is made more difficult precisely because these are so easily modifiable and are, even in earliest childhood, seldom seen in their original and simple form. 6 HUMAN TRAITS At any given time a human being is being acted upon by a wide variety of competing and contemporaneous stimuli. In walking down a street with a friend, for example, one may be attracted by the array of bright colors, of flowers, jewelry and clothing hi the shop windows, blink one's eyes in the glare of the sun, feel a satisfaction hi the presence of other people and a loneliness for a particular friend, dodge before a passing automobile, be envious of its occupant, and smile benevo- lently at a passing child. It would be difficult in so complex and so characteristically familiar a situation to pick out com- pletely and precisely the original human tendencies at work, and trace out all the modifications to which they have been subjected hi the course of individual experience. For even single responses hi the adult are not the same in quality or scope as they were to start with. Even the simplest stimuli of taste and of sound are different to the adult from what they are to the child. What for the adult is a printed page full of significance is for the baby a blur, or at most chaotic black marks on white paper. But while it is difficult to disentangle out of even a simple, everyday occurrence the original unlearned human impulses at work, experimentation on both humans and animals seems clearly to establish that "in the same organism the same situ- ation will always produce the same response." It also seems clear that in man these native unlearned responses to given stimuli are unusually numerous and unusually controllable. Upon the possibility of the ready modification of these origi- nal elements in man's behavior his whole education and social life depend. Learning in animals and men. Men and animals are alike not only in that they have in common a large number of tend- encies to respond in definite ways to definite stimuli, but that these responses may be modified, some strengthened through use, and others weakened or altogether discarded through disuse. In both also the survival and strengthening of some native tendencies, the weakening and even the complete TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 7 elimination of others, depends primarily upon the satisfaction which flows from their practice. It must be remembered that any situation, while it calls forth on the part of the organism a characteristic response, may also call out others, especially if the first response made fails to secure satisfaction, or if it places the animal in a posi- tively annoying situation. There are certain situations being fed when hungry, resting when weary, etc. which are immediate and original satisfiers; there are others such as bit- ter tastes, being looked at with scorn by others, etc., which are natural annoyers. The first type the animal will try vari- ous means of attaining; the second, various means of avoiding. Through "trial and error," through going through every re- sponse it can make to a given situation, the animal or human hits upon some response which will secure for it satisfaction or rid it of a positive annoyance. Once this successful response is hit upon, it tends to be retained and becomes habitual in that situation, while other random responses are eliminated. As will be pointed out hi the following, man has developed in the process of reflection a much more effective and subtle mode of attaining desirable results, but a large part of human acquisition of skill, whether at the typewriter, the piano, the tennis court, or hi dealing with other people, is still a matter of making every random response that the situation provokes until the appropriate and effective one is hit upon, and making this latter response more immediately upon repeated experi- ences in the same situation. Once this effective response be- comes habitual it is just as automatic in character as if it had been made immediately the first time, and it is almost impos- sible without knowledge of the animal's or the human's earlier modes of response to detect the difference between an acquired response and one that is inborn. This process of trial and error is perhaps best illustrated in the behavior of the lower animals where careful experiments have been conducted for the purpose of tracing the process of learning. In the classic cases reported by Thoradike and 8 HUMAN TRAITS Watson, when chickens, rats, and cats were placed in situa- tions where the first response failed to bring satisfaction, their behavior was in each case marked by the following fea- tures. At the first trial the animals in every case performed a wide variety of acts useless to secure the satisfaction they were instinctively seeking, whether it was food in a box, or freedom from confinement in a cage. Upon repeated trials the act appropriate to securing satisfaction was performed with increasing elimination of useless acts, and consequent decrease of the time required to perform the act requisite to secure food, or freedom, or both, as the case might be. One of Thorn- dike's famous cat experiments is best told in his own report: If we take a box twenty by fifteen by twelve inches, replace its cover and front side by bars an inch apart, and make in this front side a door arranged so as to fall open when a wooden button inside is turned from a vertical to a horizontal position, we shall have means to observe such [learning by trial and error]. A kitten, three to six months old, if put in this box when hungry, a bit of fish being left outside, reacts as follows: It tries to squeeze through between the bars, claws at the bars, and at loose things in and out of the box, stretches its paws out between the bars, and bites at its confining walls. Some one of all these promiscuous clawings, squeezings, and bitings turns round the wooden button, and the kitten gains freedom and food. By repeating the experience again and again the animal gradually comes to omit all the useless clawings, and the like, and to manifest only the particular impulse (e.g., to claw hard at the top of the button with the paw or to push against one side of it with the nose) which has resulted successfully. It turns the button around without delay whenever put in the box. It has formed an associa- tion between the situation confined in a box with a certain appearance and the response of clawing at a certain part of that box in a certain definite way. Popularly speaking, it has learned to open a door by pressing a button. To the uninitiated observer the behavior of the six kittens that thus freed themselves from such a box would seem wonderful and quite unlike their ordinary accomplishments of find- ing their way to their food or beds. ... A certain situation arouses, by virtue of accident or more often instinctive equipment, certain responses. One of these happens to be an act appropriate to secure freedom. It is stamped in in connection with that situation. 1 1 Tborndike: Educational Psychology, Briefer Course, p. 129. TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR Perhaps the most significant factor to be noted in this, and in similar cases, is that the successful response to a baffling situation is acquired, and that this acquisition remains a more or less permanent possession of the human or animal organ- ism. Particularly important for the problem and practice of education is the mechanism by which these learned modes of behavior are acquired. For, to attain skill, knowledge, in- tellect, character, is to attain certain determinate habits of action, certain recurrent and stable ways of responding to a situation. The reason why the cat in the box ceased to per- form the hundred and one random acts of clawing and biting, and after a number of trials got down to the immediately necessary business of turning the button was because it had learned that one thing only, out of the multitude of things it could do, would enable it to get out of the box and get its food. To say that it learned this is not to say that it con- sciously realized it; it means simply that when placed in such a situation again after having been placed in it a sufficient number of times, it will be set off to the turning of the button which gets it food, instead of biting bars and clawing at random actions which merely serve further to frustrate its hunger. The animal has not consciously learned, but its nerv- ous system has been mechanically directed. A large part of the education of humans as well as of ani- mals consists precisely in the modification of our original responses to situations by a trial-and-error discovery of ways of attaining satisfactory and avoiding annoying situations. Both animals and humans, when they have several tunes per- formed a certain act that brings satisfaction, tend, on the re- currence of a similar situation, to repeat that action immedi- ately and to eliminate with successive repetitions almost all the other responses which are possible, but which are ineffec- tive in the attainment of some specific satisfaction. The whole training imposed by civilization on the individual is based ultimately on this fundamental fact that human beings can be taught to modify their behavior, to change their origi- 10 HUMAN TRAITS nal response to a situation in the light of the consequences that follow it. This means that while man's nature remains on the whole constant, its operations may be indefinitely varied by the results which follow the operation of any given instinct. The child has its original tendency to rtfach toward bright objects checked by the experience of putting its hand in the flame. Later his tendency to take all the food within reach may be checked by the looks of scorn which follow that manifestation of man's original greed, or the punishment and privation which are correlated with it. Through experience with punishment and reward, humans may be taught to do precisely the opposite of what would have been then* original impulse in any given situation, just as the monkey reported by one experimenter may be taught to go to the top of his cage whenever a banana has been placed at the bottom. The prolonged period of infancy. Probably the most sig- nificant and unique fact of human behavior is the period of "prolonged infancy "which is characteristic of human beings alone. Fiske and Butler in particular have stressed the im- portance of this human trait. In the lower animals the period of infancy that is, the period during which the young are dependent upon their parents for food, care, and training is very short, extending even in the highest form of ape to not more than three months. This would appear, at first blush, to be a great advantage possessed by the lower animals. They come into the world equipped with a variety of tenden- cies to act which, within a week, or,Nas hi the case of chick- ens, almost immediately after birth, are perfectly adapted to secure for them food, shelter, and protection. They are mechanisms from the beginning perfectly adjusted to their environment. The human inf ant, while it is born with a greater number of instinctive activities than other animals, is able to make little use of them just as they stand. For years after birth it is helplessly dependent on others to supply its most elementary needs. It must be fed, carried, and sheltered; it cannot by TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 11 itself even reach for an object, and it cannot for nearly two years after birth specifically communicate its wants to other people. But this comparatively long helplessness of the hu- man infant is perhaps the chief source of human progress. The human baby, because it can do so little at the start, because it has so many tendencies to act and has them all so plastic, undeveloped, and modifiable, has to a unique degree the capacity to learn. This means that it can profit by the experience of others and adjust itself to a great variety and complexity of situations. The chicken or the bird can do a limited number of things perfectly, but it is as if it had a number of special keys opening special locks. The power of modifying these instinctive adjustments, the capacity of learning, is like being put in -possession of a pass-key. As Professor Dewey puts it, "An original specialized power of adjustment secures immediate efficiency, but, like a railway ticket, it is good for one route only. A being who, in order to use his eyes, ears, hands, and legs, has to experiment in making varied combinations of their reactions, achieves a control that is flexible and varied." 1 The more complex the environment is in which the indi- vidual must live, the longer is the period of infancy needed in which the necessary habits and capacities may be acquired. In the human being the period of infancy extends hi a literal sense through the first five years of the individual's life. But in civilized societies it extends factually much longer. By the end of the first five years the child's physical infancy is over. It can take care of itself so far as actually feeding itself, mov- ing about, and communicating with others is concerned. But so complex are the habits to which it must become accus- tomed in our civilization that it is dependent for a much longer period. The whole duration of the child's education is a prolongation of the period of infancy. In most civilized countries, until at least the age of twelve, the child is literally dependent on its parents. And with every advance in civili- 1 Dewey: Democracy and Education, p. 53. 12 HUMAN TRAITS jsation has come a lengthening in the period of education, or learning. Intellectually, the period of infancy might be said not really to be over before the age of twenty-five, by which time habits of mind have become fairly well fixed. The brain and the nervous system remain fairly plastic up to that time, and if inquiry and learning have themselves become habitual, plasticity may last even longer. In the cases of the greatest intellects, of a Darwin, or a Newton, one might almost say the period of infancy lasts to old age. To be still learning at sixty is to be still a child in the best sense of the word. It is still to be open rather than rigid, still to be profiting by ex- perience. The great social advantages of the prolonged period of infancy lie in the fact that there is a unique opportunity both for the acquisition by individuals and for the imposition on the part of society of a large number of habits of great social value. The human being, born into a world where there are many things to be learned both of natural law and human re- lations, is, as it were, fortunately born ignorant. He has in- stincts which are pliable enough to be modified into habits, and in consequence socially useful habits can be deliberately inculcated in the immature members of a society by their elders. The whole process of education is a utilization of man's prolonged period of infancy, for the deliberate acquisi- tion of habits. This is all the more important since only by such habit formation during the long period of human infancy can the achievements of civilization be handed down from generation to generation. Art, science, industrial methods, social customs, these are not inherited by the individual as are the instincts of sex, pugnacity, etc. They are preserved only because they can be taught as habits to those beings who come into the world with a plastic equipment of instincts which lend themselves for a long time to modification. Consciousness of self and reaction to ideas. A significant difference between the actions of human beings and those of TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 18 animals is that human beings are conscious of themselves as agents. They may be said not only to be the only creatures who know what they are doing, but the only ones who realize their individuality in doing it. Dogs and cats are not, so far as we can draw inferences from extended observation of even their most complex actions, conscious of themselves. It is not very long, however, before the human animal begins to set itself off against the remainder of the universe, to discover that it is something different from the chairs, tables, and sur- rounding people and faces that at first constitute for it only a "blooming, buzzing confusion." . A human being performs actions with a feeling of awareness; he is conscious of himself. This consciousness of self (see chapters vii and vin) becomes more acute as the individual grows older. It has conse- quences of the gravest character in social, political, and economic life. It is a large factor at once in such different qualities of character as ambition, friendship, humility, and self-sacrifice, and is responsible in large measure for what- ever truth there is in the familiarly spoken-of conflict be- tween "the individual and society." Human beings are, furthermore, susceptible to a unique stimulation to action, namely, ideas. Animals respond to things only, that is, to things in gross: It may be questioned whether a dog sees a rainbow any more than he apprehends the political constitution of the country in which he lives. The same principle applies to the kennel in which he sleeps and the meat that he eats. When he is sleepy, he goes to the kennel ; when he is hungry, he is excited by the smell and color of meat; be- yond this, in what sense does he see an object? Certainly he does not see a house i.e., a thing with all the properties and relations of a permanent residence, unless he is capable of making what is present a uniform sign of what is absent unless he is capable of thought. 1 Human beings can respond to objects as signs of other things, and, what is perhaps more important, can abstract from those gross total objects certain qualities, features, ele- 1 Dewey: How We Think, p. 17. 14 HUMAN TRAITS ments, which are universally associated with certain conse- quences. They can respond to the meaning or bearing of an object; they can respond to ideas. To respond to ideas means to respond to significant similarities in objects and also to significant differences. It means to note certain qualities that objects have in common, and to classify these common qualities and their consequences in the behavior of objects. To note similarities and differ- ences in the behavior of objects is to enable individuals to act in the light of the future. The printing on this page would be to a dog or to a baby merely a blur. To the reader the black imprints are signs or symbols. To the animal a red lantern is a haze of light; to a locomotive engineer it is a sign to halt. To respond to ideas is thus to act in the light of a future. It makes possible acting in the light of the consequences that can be foreseen. Present objects or features of objects are responded to as signs of future or absent opportunities or dangers. Every time we read a letter, or act in response to something somebody has told us, we are responding not to physical stimuli as such, but to those stimuli as signs of other things. Human beings alone possess language. The value of the period of infancy in the acquisition of habits and the unique ability of human beings to respond to ideas is inseparably connected with the fact that man alone possesses a language, both oral and written. That is to say, men alone have an in- strument whereby to communicate to each other feelings, attitudes, ideas, information. To a very limited degree, of course, animals have vocal and gesture habits; specific cries of hunger, of sex desire, or distress. But they cannot, with their limited number of vocal mechanisms, possibly develop lan- guage habits, develop a system of sounds associated with defi- nite actions and capable of controlling actions. Only human beings can produce even the simplest system of written sym- bols, by which visual stimuli become symbols of actions, ob- jects, emotions, or ideas. Biologists in particular the ex- TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 15 perimentalist, Watson find, in the capacity for language, man's most important distinction from the brute. Language may be said, in fact, to be the most indispensable instrument of civilization. It is the means whereby the whole life of the past has been handed to us in the present. It is the means whereby we in turn record, preserve, and transmit our science, our industrial methods, our laws, our customs. If human relations were possible at all without a language, they would have to begin anew, without any cultural inheritance, in each generation. Education, the transmitter of the achievements of the mature generation to the one maturing, is dependent on this unique human capacity to make seen marks and heard sounds stand for other things. The extent to which civilization may advance is contingent upon the de- velopment of adequate language habits. And human beings have perfected a language sufficiently complicated to com- municate hi precise and permanent form then* discoveries of the complex relations between things and between men. Man the only maker and user of tools. One of the most important ways in which man is distinguished from the lower animals is in his manufacture and use of tools. So far as we know the ability to manufacture and understand the use of tools is possessed by man alone. "Monkeys may be taught a few simple operations with tools, such as cracking nuts with a stone, but usually they merely mimic a man." 1 ,' Man's uniqueness as the exclusive maker and user of tools is made possible by two things. The first is his hand, which with its four fingers and a thumb, as contrasted with the monkey's five fingers, enables him to pick up objects. The second is his capacity for reflection, presently to be discussed, which en- ables him to foresee the consequences of the things he does. The use of tools of increasing refinement and complexity is the chief method by which man has progressed from the life of the cave man to the complicated industrial civilization of to-day. Bergson writes in this connection: 1 Mills: The Realities of Modern Science, p. 1. 16 HUMAN TRAITS As regards human intelligence, it has not been sufficiently noted that mechanical invention has been from the first its essential fea- ture, that even to-day our social life gravitates around the manu- facture and use of artificial instruments, that the inventions which strew the road of progress have also traced its direction. This we hardly realize, because it takes us longer to change ourselves than to change our tools. Our individual and even social habits survive a good while the circumstances for which they were made, so that the ultimate effects of an invention are not observed until its novelty is already out of sight. A century has elapsed since the invention of the steam engine, and we are only just beginning to feel the depths of the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has effected in indus- try has nevertheless upset human relations altogether. New ideas are arising, new feelings are on the way to flower. In thousands of years, when, seen from the distance, only the broad lines of the pres- ent age will still be visible, our wars and our revolutions will count for little, even supposing they are remembered at all; but the steam engine and the procession of inventions that accompanied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we speak of the bronze or of the chipped stone of prehistoric times : it will serve to define an age. If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the con- stant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should not say Homo sapiens, but Homo faber. 1 Man's intelligence, it has so often been said, enables him to control Nature, but his intelligence in the control of natural resources is dependent for effectiveness on adequate material instruments. One may subscribe, though with qualification, to Bergson's further statement, that "intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture." Anthropologists distinguish the prehistoric epochs, by such terms as the Stone, Copper or Bronze, and Iron Ages, mean- ing thereby to indicate what progress man ha Thorndike: foe. eit., p. 20. 126 HUMAN TRAITS high places, and, among a few agoraphobia or fear of open spaces. 1 The deep-seatedness of fear has been explained by the fact that most of the things which instinctively arouse fear were, in primitive life, the source of very real danger and that under those conditions, where it was absolutely essential to beware of the unfamiliar and the strange, only those ani- mals survived who were equipped with such a protective mechanism as fear provides. The instinct of fear has important social consequences, es- pecially as its influence is not infrequently clothed over with reasons. In savage life, as McDougall points out, "fear of physical punishment inflicted by the anger of his fellows must have been the great agent of discipline of primitive man; through such 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 it is an important control over many of the less intelligent and the less socially minded. In an un- ideal society there are still many who will do as much evil as is "within the law," and fear of the consequences of failing a course is among some contemporary undergraduates still an indispensable stimulus of study. " Fear plays a part, however, not only in preventing people from breaking the law, but often from living their lives freely and after their own convictions. As has been strikingly 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 uncomfortable feeling of insecurity often felt by the workingman who, having so frequently nothing to store up against a rainy day, lives in perpetual fear of sickness or discharge. In earlier times fear of the consequences of expressing dis- 1 For a discussion of these, see James: Psychology, Self -Dependence. I THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 167 to be deflected from them, has sufficient flexibility and sensi- tivity to 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 cooperate with them. To have power and humility at once is sometimes sufficient to make a leader among men. Humility prevents us from rush- ing headlong along the paths of our own dogmatic errors; it enables us further to deal with other people who would be simply antagonized by our flat-footed insistence on every de- tail of our own initial position. The history of great states- manship is in part, at least, the history of wise compromise. Nor does this mean sordid temporizing and opportunism. As John Morley puts it: It is the worst of political blunders to insist on carrying an ideal set of principles into execution, where others have rights of dissent, and those others persons whose 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 highest and most abstract expression, does more than any other one cause to stunt or petrify those elements of character to which life should owe most of its savor. 1 Dogmatism and self-assertion. Too often, however, a person of powerful and distinctive opinions is so moved by the momentum of his own strong enthusiasms, so fixed by the habitual definiteness of his own position that he cannot be swayed. In its worst form this is rampant egoism and dogma- tism. All of us have met the loud-mouthed exponent of his own opinions, who speaks whatever be the subject, as if his position only were plausible or possible, and as if all who gain- said him were either fools or knaves. If we examine the mental furniture of the average man we shall find it made up of a vast number of judgments of a very precise kind 1 Morley: On Compromise, p. 123. 168 HUMAN TRAITS upon subjects of very great variety, complexity, and difficulty. He will have fairly settled views upon the origin and nature of the uni- verse, and upon what he will probably 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 strong views upon military and naval strategy, the principles of taxation, the use of alcohol and vaccination, the treatment of influenza, the prevention of hydrophobia, upon municipal trading, the teaching of Greek, upon what is permissible in art, satisfactory in literature, and hopeful in science. The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have any opinion on them at all. 1 In action as well as opinion dogmatism and unbridled self- assertion may be the dominant characteristics of a personal- ity. The man who has a strong will and little social sympa- thy will 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 really great man should express his own personality irrespective of the weaklings whom he might crush in his comet-like career. Thus writes Nietzsche in one of his char- acteristic passages: The Superman I have at heart; that is the first and only thing to me and not man: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the sorri- est, not the best. In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope. ... In that ye have despaired, there is much to honor. For ye have not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy. For to-day have the petty people become master; they all preach submission, and humility, and policy, and diligence, and considera- tion, and the long et cetera of petty virtues. These masters of to-day surpass them, O my brethren these petty people: they are the Superman's greatest danger! * 1 Trotter: Instincts of the Herd, p. 36. * Thus Spake Zarathustra (Macmillan edition), pp. 351-52. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 169 It need scarcely be noted that even if the genius 6r Super-' man were justified, as this philosophy insists, on ruthlessly asserting his priority, it is a dangerous procedure to identify one's ambitions with one's desserts. As already noted, a flamboyant assurance of one's own importance is sometimes a ludicrous symptom of the reverse. The more legitimate manifestation of strong individualism in action or opinion is in the case of deeply conscientious natures, who will not compromise by a hair's breadth from what they conceive to be the right. The fanatic is seldom an appealing character, but he is a type that enforces admiration. Of such unflinching insistence 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 com- mitted. Such men are difficult to deal with in human situa- tions involving cooperation and compromise, and they exhibit frequently a rigid austerity, bitterness, and hate that do not readily win sympathy. But it is to such men as these that many religious and social reforms owe their initiation. Ber- trand Russell, who, whether one agrees with him or not, ex- hibits a puritanical devotion to his social beliefs, has finely described the type: The impatient idealist and without some impatience a man will hardly prove effective is almost sure to be led into hatred by the oppositions and disappointments which he encounters in his en- deavors to bring happiness to the world. The more certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth of his gospel, the more indig- nant will he become when his teaching is rejected. . . . The intense faith which enables him to withstand persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest and must be actuated by some sinister motive of treachery to the cause. 1 Enthusiasm. The enthusiast is another type of self that plays an important part in social life and makes not the least, 1 Russell: Proposed Roads to Freedom, pp. xiii-xiv. 170 HUMAN TRAITS attractive of its figures. The exuberant exponent of ideas, causes, persons, or institutions is an effective preacher, teacher, or leader of men, and may be, apart from his utility, intrinsically of the utmost charm. Emotions vividly dis- played are, as already pointed out in connection with sym- pathy, readily duplicated in others, and the ardors 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 appre- ciate as no mere formal analysis could, the vital and moving aspects of things. Good teaching has been defined as com- munication by contagion, and the teachers whom students usually testify to have influenced them most are not those who doled out flat prescribed wisdom, but those whose own informed ardor for their subject-matter communicated to the student a warm sense of its significance. Leaders of great movements who have been successful in controlling the ener- gies and loyalties of millions of men have been frequently men of this high and contagious voltage. It certainly consti- tuted part of Theodore Roosevelt's political strength, and, in more or less genuine form, is the asset of every successful po- litical speaker and leader. Both for the one controlled by enthusiasm and for the others to whom it spreads, experience becomes richer in sig- nificance. Poets and the poetically-minded have to a singu- lar degree the power of clothing with imaginative enthusiasm all the items of their experience. Enthusiasm does not necessarily connote hysteria or senti- mentalism. The unstable enthusiast is a familiar type, the man who has another object of eagerness and loyalty each week. Mark Twain describes the type 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 who, so it is reported to the writer by a student of 'Armenian culture, spent forty years mgnastering cuneiform THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 171 script in order to prove that the Phrygians were descended from the Armenians, and not vice versa. Shelley could kindle the spirit of revolution in thousands who would have been bored to death with the same fiery doc- trines in the abstract and cold pages of Godwin, from whom Shelley derived his ideas of " political justice." The enthusi- ast, since he instinctively likes to share his emotions, not in- frequently 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 its satisfac- tion in some form of proselyting zeal, be it for a religion, for a favorite charity, for good books, poetry, or social justice. A well-known literary scholar who died recently was thus described by one of his former students: Dr. Gummere was not a teacher; he was a vital atmosphere and his lectures, as one considered them from an intellectual or emo- tional angle, were revelations or adventures. There never were such classes as his, we believed. 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 brim up as from a spirit overflowing. Everything about him was individual and spontaneous. He was perhaps most like a powerful river that braced one's energies, and carried one along without the slightest desire to resist. 1 The negative self. All the types of personality or self that have thus far been discussed are hi some way positive or assertive. But the self may be exhibited negatively, in a shrinking, not only from observation, but from any positive or pronounced action. This has already been noted in con- nection with submissiveness. Most people in the presence of their intellectual and social or even their physical superior, experience a sense of, to use McDougall's term, "negative self-feeling." In some people this negation or effacement of the self is a predominant characteristic. It may be mere social timidity, which, in the case of those 1 Charles Wharton Stork: "A Great Teacher," The Nation, July 26, 1919. 172 HUMAN TRAITS continually placed in servile positions, as in the case of the proverbial "poor relation," may become chronic. In its most disagreeable form it is exhibited as an obsequious flattering and a pretentious humility. Of this the classic instance is Uriah Heep in David Copperfield: "I suppose you are quite a great lawyer," I [David Copperfield] said, after looking at him for some time. "Me, Master Copperfield?" said Uriah. "Oh, no! I'm a very umble person." It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he fre- quently ground the palms against each other, as if to squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief. "I am well aware that I am the umblest person going," said Uriah Heep modestly, "let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble. He was a sexton." "What is he now?" I asked. "He is a partaker of glory, at present, Master Copperfield, but we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for, in living with Mr. Wickfield." Negative self-feeling may be provoked by a genuine sense of unworthiness or modesty, and when this takes place among religious people, it may become a complete and rapturous submissiveness to God. The records of many mediaeval and of some modern mystics emphasize this complete yielding to the will of God, and in His will finding peace. James quotes in this connection Pascal's Priere pour bien user Us maladies: I ask you, neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory. . . . You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master; do with me 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 is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 173 among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom. 1 Self-surrender, however, takes other forms than religious absorption or devotion. "Saintliness" is not unknown in secular forms of life, in the devotion of men to any ideal, despite pain and privation of worldly goods and successes. The doctor sacrificing his life in a leper colony is an extreme example. But something of the same humility and submis- siveness 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 teachers who spend their lives in patient devotion to labors that bring little remuneration and as little glory. Men of affairs and a large proportion of other men generally measure worth by worldly success. But even from the worldly, such signs of self-surrender elicit admiration. Eccentrics. There is one type of self so various and miscel- laneous that it can only be subsumed under the general epi- thet, "eccentric." These are the unexpectedly large number of individuals hi our civilization who do not come under any of the usual categories, who display some small or great ab- normality 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 physio- logical or psychological respect. From these are recruited the inmates of our penitentiaries and insane asylums and the candidates for them. But there are eccentricities of social behavior, types of personality which though they cannot be classed as either insane or criminal, yet definitely set an individual apart. These include what Trotter has called the "mentally un- stable," as set over against "the great class of normal, sen- sible, reliable middle age, with its definite views, its resiliency 1 Quoted in James: Varieties of BeUgiout Experience, p. 286. 174 HUMAN TRAITS to the depressing influence of facts, and its gift for forming the backbone of the State." There are the large group of slightly neurasthenic, made so, in part, by the high nervous tension under which modern, especially modern urban, life is lived. These include what are commonly called the hyster- ical or over-emotional, or "temperamental" types. In a civilization where most professions demand regularity, re- straint, punctuality, and directness, unstability and excess emotionalism are necessarily at a discount. There are the vagabond types who, like young Georges, Jean-Christophe's prote'ge', 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 aesthetic values, to music, art, and poetry, find the world out- side their own lyric enthusiasms flat, stale, and unprofitable. If, as so frequently happens, these combine, along with then- peculiar temperaments, little genius and slender means, social and economic life becomes for them a blind alley. Every year at our great universities we see small groups of young men, who, having spent three or four years on philosophy, litera- ture, and the liberal arts, and having no interest in academic life, are put to it to find a profession in which they can find a genuine interest or possible success. Among these "eccentrics "a few have been reckoned gen- iuses by their contemporaries or by posterity. In such cases society hesitates to apply its usual formulae. One cannot condemn out of hand a Shelley. He is not of the run of men. Shelley was one of those spokesmen of the a priori, one of those nurslings of the womb, like*, bee or a butterfly, a dogmatic, inspired, perfect, and incorrigible creature. . . . Being 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 miscellaneous lessons of fortune. The cannonade of hard inexplicable facts that knocks into most of us what little wisdom we have, left Shelley dazed and sore, perhaps, but unin- etructed. 1 . . ^ : . 1 Santayana: Winds of Doctrine; Shelley, p. 150. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 175 It is difficult to draw the line in some cases between genius and insanity. l There have been time and again in society Cassandras who have spoken true prophecies and have been thought mad. There have been, on the other hand, those who, having some of the external eccentricities of genius, have given an illusive impression of greatness. The pro- fessional Bohemian 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 them of considerable talents, who simply cannot be made to fit into the social routine. For such Bertrand Russell suggests a "vagabond's wage." This he conceives as being just large enough to enable them to get along, to give them a chance to wander and experiment, but sufficiently small to penalize them for not settling down to the accustomed social routines. 1 Mill has generalized the situation of the genius: Persona of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than 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 mem- bers the trouble of forming their own character. ... If they are of a 1 Thus Plato: "But he who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted ; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman." Ph&drus (Jowett translation), p. 550. 1 Russell: Proposed Roads to Freedom, p. 177. There was recently intro- duced to the writer a boy, aged nineteen, for whom this would be an admir- able solution. Brought up in a tenement and working as a clerk, this youngster wrote what competent judges pronounced to be really extraordi- nary lyrics. He was at the same time utterly helpless in the world of affairs. Even at college his casual habits and absorption would have prevented him from getting through his freshman year. 176 HUMAN TRAITS strong character, and break their fetters, they' become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to common- place, to point at with solemn warning as "wild," "erratic," and the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara River for not flowing smoothly between its banks, like a Dutch canal. 1 The active and the contemplative. One final distinction must be made, one that cuts across all the types of self hith- erto discussed, namely, the distinction between the man of action and the man of thought. One need not go far in liter- ature or in life to find the contrast made. In the Scriptures Mary is set over against Martha, Rachel against Leah. Hamlet and Ulysses 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 adminis- trator over against the quiet philosopher. Both have their outstanding uses, and, in their extreme forms, their out- standing defects. The active type, as we say, "gets things done." He builds bridges and industries; he manages mar- kets and men. His eye is on the practical; he is dependable, rapid, and efficient. In an industrial civilization he is the great heroic type. The statesman and the railroad builder, the newspaper editors and the political leaders captivate the imaginations as they control the destinies of mankind. On the other hand, there are those who stand aside (either from incapacity or disinclination or both) from the manage- ment of affairs and the life of action, and spend their lives in observation and contemplation. Plato and Aristotle regarded this as the highest 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 then* lives in practical obscurity, speculating on tune and space and eternity. But it is apparent in less extreme types. The "patient observer," the genial spectator of other men's actions is not infrequent. When he has literary gifts he is a phi- 1 Mill: Essay on Liberty, chap. in. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 177 losopher or a poet. Lucretius in a famous passage stated the contemplative ideal, contrasting it with its opposite: Sweet it is when on the great seas the winds are buffeting, to gaze from the land on another's great struggles; not because it is pleasure or joy that any one should be distressed, but because it is sweet to per- ceive from what misfortunes you yourself are free. Sweet is 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 hi the calm high places, firmly embattled on the heights by the teaching of the wise, whence you can look down on others, and see them wandering hither and thither and going astray, as they seek the way of life, in strife matching their wits or rival claims of birth, struggling night and day by surpassing effort to rise up to the height of power and gain possession of the world. 1 But in the two types it is not the fruit of action or contem- plation, but action and contemplation themselves that the two types find respectively interesting. The man of action finds an immediate satisfaction in movement, change, the clamor of affairs, the contacts with other people, the making of changes in the practical world. The man of thought finds as immediate enjoyment in noting the ways of men, and re- flecting upon them. That contemplation, disinterested thinking, also has its use goes without saying. The thinker and the dreamer may be something at least of what the Irish poet boasts: "... the movers and shakers Of the world, forever, it seems." The scholar, the thinker, the man who stands aside from immediate action, may, often does, help the world of action in a far-reaching way. The researches of a Newton make possible eventually the feats of modern engineering and teleg- raphy; the abstruse study of the calculus helps to build bridges and skyscrapers. Both types, in their extremes, have their weaknesses. The extremely practical man "may cut off the limb upon which he is sitting," or "see no further than the end of his nose." A 1 Lucretius: DC Rerun Natura (Bailey translation), book n, line* 1-12. 178 HUMAN TRAITS really great administrator is not penny-wise; he thinks far ahead, around and into a problem. He is concerned for to- morrow as well as to-day. The contemplative man may come to be "sicklied o'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 balance which Plato had in mind when he insisted that his future philosopher-king should, after fifteen years' study, go for fifteen years into the "cave" or world to learn to deal with men and affairs. The "mere theorist" is often an absurd if not a dangerous char- acter; the practical man may ceme to make the wheels go round without ever taking note of his direction. As pointed out in the beginning of this discussion, no one of these types is exclusively exemplified in any one individual. To be exclusively any one of these would be to be a caricature rather than a character. 2 But to 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 succession of vacillations rather than a distinctive self-determined per- sonality. Each of these types, moreover, if Hot extreme, has its specific excellences, and their various presence lends rich- ness and diversity to social life. Emotions aroused in the maintenance of the self. These various types of self may be defended with bitterness and 1 Contchareff: Oblomoff. 1 Dickens's success lay, perhaps chiefly, in his ability to draw these unfor- gettable exaggerations, these outstanding types: "Micawber" waiting for something to turn up; the fiendish 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 traits in large. The so-called psychological novelists like Meredith, trace a char- acter through its moods and Suctuations, making truer, more composite, though less memorable characters. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 179 pertinacity, and in their support the most powerful emotions may be enlisted. As pointed out in connection with individu- ality in opinion, men may be willing to die for their beliefs. Similarly invasion of one's home, infringement or threat against what one regards as one's rights or one's possessions, whether physical or social, may be bitterly contested. And in this conflict in support of the integrity of the self, anger, hate, fear, submissiveness, all the nuances of emotion may be aroused. The themes of great tragedy are built largely on this theme of insistent selfhood. Any obstruction of the self- integrity one has set one's self may provoke a violent reaction. It may be interference with one'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 profes- sional career, deprivation of one's liberty or one's property, or one's unhindered "pursuit of happiness," are the provoca- tions 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 in- sulted by another upon whom one is utterly dependent so- cially and economically, a rankling and impotent rage may be the only outlet. To a person gifted with humility, the disil- lusions of a false friendship may provoke nothing more than a deep but resigned disappointment. Where passion and determination run high, and retaliation is feasible, a violent hate may find violent fulfillment. In earlier and more bloodthirsty days, the dagger, the duel, and poison were, as illustrated in the history of the Borgias, ways of maintain- ing the self and venting one's anger or revenge. Even in modern society the still distressingly large number of crimes of violence may be traced in many, perhaps most cases, to blind and bitter hate. To any deep personal injury, hate, whether it takes overt form or not, is still the instinctive 180 HUMAN TRAITS answer; just such hate as Euripides represents in the jealous Medea, when she, a barbarian captive among the Greeks, sees Jason, her lover, about to be married to a Greek princess: "... But I, being citiless, am cast aside, By him that wedded me, a savage bride. "I ask one thing. If chance yet ope to me Some path, if even now my hand can win, Strength to requite this Jason for his sin, Betray me not! Oh, in all things but this, I know how full of fears a woman is, And faults at need, and shrinking from the light Of battle; but once spoil her of her right In man's love, and there moves, I warn thee well, No bloodier spirit between Heaven and Hell." l In defense of the self in its narrower or broader sense, cour- age and heroism may be displayed. The martyr will die rather than submit; there have been many to whom Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me death," was something more than rhetoric. The self for which we will fight, of course, varies. A spoilt child 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 of some ideal, as in a man's surrender of his life for his country. Something of the same heroism is displayed by individuals who stand out against their group in the face of ridicule or persecution. It is the general sympathy with the desire to preserve one's selfhood untarnished that gives point to Henley's lines: "Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. "It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." * 1 Euripides: Medea (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 16. * Invictue. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 181 In the same way as the emotions fear, anger, and hate, and their variations and degrees, may be aroused by attack or threat against the self, so help and encouragement of an indi- vidual's selfhood arouse love, affection, and gratitude. Even our affection 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 for teachers who have beneficently influ- enced our lives, for other older people who "give us a start," advice and encouragement or financial aid. Even the love of God has in religious ritual been colored with gratitude for God's mercies and benevolences. The individuality of groups. Groups may display the same individuality and sense of selfhood as is exhibited by indi- viduals. And the members of the group may come to regard the group lif e as something quite as important and inalienable as then- own personalities and possessions. Indeed hi defense of the 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. What threatens or endangers the group will in consequence arouse hi him the same emotions as are aroused by threats or dangers that concern his own personality. An insult to the flag may send a thrill of danger through the millions who read about it, just as would an insult to themselves or their families. Group feeling may exist on various levels. It may be nothing more momentous than local pride, having the tallest tower, the finest amusement park, the best baseball team, or being the "sixth largest city." It may be a belligerent im- perialism, a "desire for a place in the sun." It may be a desire for independence and an autonomous group life, mani- fested so strikingly recently by such small nationalities as 182 HUMAN TRAITS Poland and Czecho-Slovakia and influential in keeping Swit- zerland 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 through- out the world. 2 It may be insistent on its own position, or its own possessions or its own glory. It may be fanatic in aggrandizement. It may be interested in the welfare of other groups, as in the case of large nationalities championing and protecting the causes of small or oppressed ones, such an ideal as was expressed, for example, by President Wilson in his address to Congress on the entrance of America into the Great War: . . . We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts for democracy, for the right of those who sub- mit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. 8 The selfhood displayed by various groups varies with the degree and integration of the individual within the group. In extreme cases, such as that of Germany under the imperial regime, the group individuality may completely overshadow and engulf that of the individual. This ideal was not infre- quently expressed by German political writers: 1 Group feeling may be displayed under the most disadvantageous condi- tions, as in the strong sentiment for nationalism current among the Jews, even through all the centuries of dispersion. 1 Thorstein Veblen has pointed out how the "common man" comes to identify his interest with that of the group: "The common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the national Culture and its pres- tige 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 die- tary, or his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual assets of self-complacency are indeed to be rated as grounds of high-minded patriotism without afterthought." (The Nature of Peace, p. 66.) * Woodrow Wilson: Address to Congress, April 2, 1917. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 183 To us the state is the most indispensable as well as highest requi- site of our earthly existence. ... All individualistic endeavor must be unreservedly subordinated to this 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 part of our life as the blood in our veins, is nowhere to be found in the English constitution, and is quite foreign to English thought, and to that of America as well. 1 While custom-bound and feudal regimes may emphasize the tendency to suppress development of individuality, and insist on regimentation in thought and action an ideal proclaimed with increasing generality in Germany from 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 designed to promote individual- ity rather than to suppress it. Individual variations, if it be generally recognized that they are the only source of progress, will be utilized and cultivated instead of suppressed. 8 Throughout the nineteenth century (indeed throughout the history of political theory), the pendulum swung beween individualism and complete socialization. Spencer long ago proclaimed the dominance of the individual; T. H. Green, following the German philosophers, the dominance of the state. Like the contrast between egoism and altruism, an emphasis on either side is bound to be artificial. The indi- vidual can only 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 1 Eduard Meyer: England, Its Political Organization and Development and the War Against Germany (English translation), pp. 30-31. 1 See Dewey : German Philosophy and Politics. 1 Individuality is the theme of Montessori kindergarten methods. 184 HUMAN TRAITS congenial social order. A man will not readily grow into a saint among a society of sinners, and unless the social order provides opportunities for the highest type of life, it will exist only in a very fortunate and favored few. One of the charges that has been laid against democracy is that it fails to en- courage the highest types of scientific and artistic interests, that it is the gospel of the mediocre. 1 It is too often forgotten, on the other hand, by those who emphasize the importance of society, that society is, after all, nothing more than an aggregate of selves. The "state," the "social order" is nothing but the individuals who make it up, and their relations to each other. The group exists, after all, even as the most completely socialized political doctrines insist, for the realization of in- dividual selves, for freedom of opportunity 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 others that individualism becomes a menace. Individuality is itself valuable, in the first place, because as Mill pointed out in his essay on Liberty earlier quoted: What has made the European family an improving instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another; they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valu- able; and although at every period those who traveled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has endured in time to receive the good which the others have offered.* Apart from the variations in group customs and traditions, and their progressive application to changing circumstances 1 This is the essence of the aristocratic position, that a choice life lived by a few is better than a vulgar one shared by the many. 1 Mill: Essay on Liberty, chap. in. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 185 which individuality makes possible, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that society is the name for the process by which individuals live together. 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 ca- pacities and individual interests. The social group as a group will be more interesting, colorful, and various when every experimentation and variety of life are encouraged and pro- moted. And the individuals in such a society will be person- alities, not the mere mechanisms of a regimented routine. CHAPTER IX INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES The meaning of individual differences. The major part of this volume has been devoted to a consideration of those traits, interests, and capacities which all individuals share, and which may in general be described as the "original nature of man." These distinctive inborn tendencies were treated, for purposes of analysis, in the most general terms, and, on the whole, as if they appeared in the same strength and variety hi all individuals. When we thus stand off and abstract those characteristics which appear universally in all individuals, human nature appears constant. But there are marked vari- ations in the specific content of human nature with which each individual is at birth endowed. Put in another way, one might say that to be a human being means to be by nature pugnacious, curious, subject to fatigue, responsive to praise and blame, etc., and susceptible to training in all these re- spects. By virtue of the fact that we are all members of the human race, we have common characteristics; by virtue that we are individuals, we all display specific variations hi specific human capacities. There is, save abstractly, no such thing as a standard human being. We may intellectually set up a norm or standard, but it will be a norm or standard from which every individual is bound to vary. The fact that individuals do differ, and in specific and de- finable respects, has most serious consequences for social life. It means, briefly, that while general inferences may be drawn from wide and accurate observations of the workings of hu- man nature, these inferences remain general and tentative, and if taken as rigid rules are sure to be misleading. Theories of education and social reform certainly gain from the general laws that can be formulated about original human traits, INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 187 fatigue, memory, learning capacity, and the like. But they must, if they are to be applicable, take account also, in a pre- cise and systematic way, of the variety of men's interests and capacities. To this fact of variety in the original nature of different men social institutions and educational methods must be adapted. Arbitrary rules that apply to human na- ture in general do not apply to the specific cases and specific types of talent and desires. Educational and social organiza- tions can mould these, but the result of these environmental influences will vary with individual differences in original capacities. We can waste an enormous amount of time and energy trying to train a person without mechanical or mathe- matical gifts to be an engineer. We not only save energy and time, but promote happiness, if we can train individuals so that their specific gifts will be capitalized at one hundred per cent. They will be at once more useful to society and more content with themselves, when they are using to the full their own capacities. They will at once be unproductive and un- happy when they find themselves hi activities or social situa- tions where their genuine talents are given no opportunity and where their defects put them at a conspicuous handicap. Individuals differ, it must further be noted, not only in specific traits, but in that complex of traits which is commonly called "intelligence." In the broadest terms, we mean by an individual's intelligence his competence and facility in dealing with his environment, physical, social, and intellectual. This competence and facility, in so far as it is a native endowment, consists of a number of traits present in a more or less high degree, traits, for example, such as curiosity, flexibility of na- tive and acquired reactions, sociability, sympathy, and the like. In a sense an individual possesses not a single intelli- gence, but many, as many as there are types of activity in which he engages. But one may classify intelligence under three heads, as does Thorndike: 1 mechanical intelligence, in- volved in dealing with things; social intelligence, involved in 1 " Measuring Intelligence," Harper's Magazine, March, 1920. 188 HUMAN TRAITS dealing with other persons; and abstract intelligence, in- volved in dealing with the relations between ideas. Each of these types of intelligence involves the presence in a high de- gree of a group of different traits. Thus, in social intelligence, a high degree of sympathy, sensitivity to praise and blame, leadership, and the like, are more requisite than they are for intelligent behavior in the realm of mechanical operations or of mathematical theory. A person may be highly intelligent in one of these three spheres and mentally helpless in the others. Thus, a brilliant philosopher may be nonplused by a stalled motor; a successful executive may be a babe in the realm of abstract ideas. But what we rate as a person's gen- eral intelligence is a kind of average struck between his vari- ous competences, an estimate of his general ability to control himself in the miscellaneous variety of situations of which his experience consists. There have been a number of tests devised for the purpose of estimating an individual's general intelligence. 1 On a rating scale such as is used in these examinations most individuals will come up to a certain standard that may be called average or normal. There will be a certain number so far below the normal rating in a complex of traits that go to produce intelligent (competent and facile) behavior that they will have to be classed as subnormal, ranging from feeble- mindedness to idiocy. A certain number will be found so extraordinarily gifted in general traits and in specific abili- ties in given subject-matters, as, for example, in mathe- matics and music that they will be marked out as geniuses. Following the laws of probability, the greater the inferiority or superiority, the more exceptional it will be. 1 These, in large part, deal with words and ideas and are, therefore, weighted in favor of abstract intelligence, and put at a discount individuals whose experience and whose intelligence are predominantly social or mechan- ical in character. Some of the tests are fairly adequate for mechanical intelli- gence, but no good tests have been devised for social intelligence. These tests, however, as used in the army and for appraising college entrants, as at Columbia University, have been demonstrated to be fairly good indicea of general intelligence. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 189 Individual differences are, therefore, seen to be not simply differences with respect to given mental traits, but differences with respect to general mental capacity. Experimental in- vestigation points to a graded difference in mental capacity, ranging from idiocy to genius, the largest group being normal or average, the size of the group diminishing with further deviation from the average in either direction. Certain important correlations, furthermore, have been found between the level of intelligence and the level of charac- ter. The great in mind, it may be said briefly, are also great in spirit. "General moral defect commonly involves intellec- tual inferiority. Woods and Pearson find the correlation be- tween intellect and character to be about .5. ... General moral defect is due in part to a generally inferior nervous organization." l One other important correlation must be noted. While gifts and capacities are specific, superiority in a given trait commonly involves superiority in most others. Exceptional talent in one direction in most cases involves exceptionality in many other respects. While talents are not indiscrimi- nately transferable from one field to another, the same com- plex of traits which makes a person stand out preeminently in a given field, say law, would make him stand out in any one of half a dozen different fields into which he might have gone. There seems to be no evidence that extraordinary capacity in one direction is balanced by extraordinary incapacity and stupidity in others. The fact that individuals differ not only in specific traits but in general mental capacity has, also, cer- tain obvious practical consequences. It means that there are present in society, in the light of recent tests in the army, an unexpectedly large number of individuals below the level of normal intelligence. One in five hundred, Thorndike esti- mates, is the "frequency of intellectual ability so defective as to disturb the home, resist school influence, and excite popu- lar derision." These are clearly liabilities in the social order. 1 Thorndike: Educational Psychology (1910), p. 224. 190 HUMAN TRAITS On the other hand, there is a large number above the level of average intelligence. The importance of this group for hu- man progress can hardly be overestimated. As we have seen in other connections, progress is contingent upon variation from the "normal" or the accustomed, and such variation from the normal is initiated in the majority of cases by mem- bers of this comparatively small super-normal group. If civilization is to advance it must capitalize its intelligence; that is, educate up to the highest point of native ability. But in any case, its chief guarantee of progress lies in the com- paratively small group in whom native ability is exception- ally high. For it is among this group that original thinking, invention, and discovery almost exclusively occur. Causes of individual differences. Among the chief causes of individual differences may, in general, be set down the fol- lowing: (1) Sex, (2) Race, (3) Near Ancestry or Family, (4) Environment. The particular fund of human nature which an individual displays, that is, his specific native en- dowments, as they appear in practice, will be a resultant of these various causes. In the study of each of these charac- teristics, we should be able ideally to eliminate all the others and to consider them each in isolation. The influence of sex. In the case of sex, for example, we should not confuse individual differences due to the fact of sex with individual differences due to divergent training given to each of the sexes. In scientific experiments to determine sex differences in mental traits, there have been careful attempts to eliminate everything but the factor of sex itself. Thus in Karl Pearson's studies of fifty twin brothers and sisters, the factors of ancestry and difference of training and age were practically eliminated. In so far as allowance can be made for other contributing factors, studies of individual differences due to sex have re- vealed, roughly speaking, the following results. There have been, in the field of sensory discrimination and accuracy of motor response, slight and negligible differences of re- INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 191 sponses made by male and female. The subjects stated were, in most cases, selected so far as possible from the same social strata, social and intellectual interest, and background. 1 Thorndike reports the general results of such tests as fol- lows: The percentages of males reaching or exceeding the median ability of females in such traits as have been subjected to exact investigation are roughly as follows: In speed of naming colors and sorting cards by color and discriminating colors as in a test for color blindness . 24 In finding and checking small visual details such as letters 33 In spelling 33 In school "marks" in Kngliah 35 In school "marks" in foreign languages 40 In memorizing for immediate recall 42 In lowness of sensory thresholds 43 In retentiveness 47 In tests of speed and accuracy of association .... 48 In tests of general information .50 In school "marks" in mathematics 50 In school ''marks" (total average) 50 In tests of discrimination (other than for color) ... 51 In range of sensitivity ....52 In school "marks" in history ....55 In tests of ingenuity 63 In accuracy of arm movements 66 In school " marks " in physics and chemistry .... 68 In reaction time 70 In speed of finger and arm movement 71 The most important characteristic of these differences is their 1 small amount. The individual differences within one sex so enor- mously outweigh the differences between the sexes in these intel- lectual and semi-intellectual traits that for practical purposes the sex difference may be disregarded. So far as ability goes, there could hardly be a stupider way to get two groups alike within each group but differing between the groups than to take the two sexes. As is well known, the experiments of the past generation in educating wo- men have shown their equal competence in school work of elementary, secondary, and collegiate grade. The present generation's experi- ence is showing the same fact for professional education and business 1 As, for example, the members of the graduating and junior classes of the co-educational college at the University of Chicago, studied by Dr. Thompson. 192 HUMAN TRAITS service. The psychologists' measurements lead to the conclusion that this equality of achievement comes from an equality of natural gifts, not from an overstraining of the lesser talents of women. 1 That is, so far as experiments upon objectively measurable traits have been conducted, the specific differences that in- dividuals display have comparatively nothing to do with the fact that an individual happens to be a man or a woman. These experiments have been conducted with boys and girls as young as seven, and with men and women ranging up to the age of twenty-five. 2 These experiments have been conducted to test sensory discrimination, precision of motor response and some of the simpler types of judgment, such as those involved in the solu- tion of simple puzzles with blocks, matches, etc. The fact of the negligibility of sex difference with regard to certain minor measurable traits has been adequately demonstrated by a wide variety of experiments. The fact of sex equality or mental capacity has been less accurately but f airly universally noted by popular consensus of observation and opinion of the work of women in the various trades and professions. There are differences between men and women in physical strength and in consequent susceptibility to fatigue. These are im- portant considerations in qualifying the amount of work a woman can do as compared with that of a man, and have justly resulted in the regulation of hours for women, as a special class. But there do not seem to be, on the average, significant original differences in mental capacity. 8 There do exist, as a matter of practical fact, some of the special attributes commonly ascribed to the masculine and feminine mental life, but it is generally agreed by investigators that these are to be accounted for by the different environ- 1 Thorndike: Educational Psychology, briefer course, pp. 345-46. * There seems, as might be expected to be, a slightly higher differentiation between the two sexes after adolescence than before. On this subject there has been collected a large amount of accurate ex- perimental data. See Goldmark: Fatigue and Efficiency, part n, pp. 1-22. These refer to physiological differences. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 193 ment and standards socially established for men and for women. There are radical and subtle differences in training to which boys and girls are subjected from early childhood. There are deeply fixed traditions as to the standards of action, feeling, and demeanor to which boys and girls are respectively trained and to which they are expected to conform. If a boy should not live up to this training and expectation, he may be marked out as "effeminate." If a girl does not conform, she is defined as a "hoyden" or a "tomboy." These social distinctions, which are emphasized even in the behavior of young boys and young girls, grow more pro- nounced as individuals grow older. One need hardly call at- tention to actions regarded as perfectly legitimate for men which provoke disapproval if practiced by women. Rigid training in these different codes of behavior may cause ac- quired characteristics to seem inborn. But whether these general features commonly held to distinguish the mental life of man or woman are or are not intrinsic and original, they have been marked out by certain investigators as socially fundamental. Thus Heymans and Wiersma, two German investigators, set down as the differentia of feminine mental life (1) greater activity, (2) greater emotionality, (3) greater unselfishness of the female. 1 There are some general differences noted by both layman and psychologist, which, though not 'subject to quantitative determination, yet seem to differentiate somewhat definitely between feminine and masculine mental activity. These may be set down in general as occurring in the field of emo- tional susceptibility. Thorndike traces them back to the varying intensity of two human traits earlier discussed: the fighting instinct, relatively much stronger in the male, and the nursing or mothering instinct, much stronger in the fe- male. With this fact are associated important differences in the conduct of men and women in social relations. The ma- ternal instinct is held by some writers, for instance, to be in > Bee Tborndike's Educational Psychology (1910), p. 130. 194 HUMAN TRAITS large measure the basis of altruism, and is closely associated with sensitivity to the needs and desires of others. Thorn- dike writes: It has been common to talk of women's dependence. This is, I am sure, only an awkward name for less resentment at mastery. The actual nursing of the young seems likewise to involve equally un- reasoning tendencies to pet, coddle, and "do for" others. The existence of these two instincts has been long recognized by litera- ture and common knowledge, but their importance in causing differ- ences in the general activities of the two sexes has not. The fighting instinct is in fact the cause of a very large amount of the world's intellectual endeavor. The financier does not think merely for money, nor the scientist for truth, nor the theologian to save souls. Their intellectual efforts are aimed in great measure to outdo the other man, to subdue nature, to conquer assent. The maternal instinct in its turn is the chief source of woman's superiorities in the moral life. The virtues in which she excels are not so much due to either any general moral superiority or any set of special moral tal- ents as to her original impulses to relieve, comfort, and console. 1 Ordinary observation reveals, as literature has in general recorded, what Havelock Ellis has called the "greater affecta- bility of the female mind." There is evidenced in many women a singular and immediate responsiveness to other people's emotions, a quick intuition, a precise though non- logical discrimination, which, though shared to some extent by all individuals gifted with sympathy and affection, is a peculiarly feminine quality. Indeed when a man possesses it, it is common to speak of him as possessing "almost a woman's intuition." Such emotional susceptibility is mani- fested in the higher frequency of emotional instability and emotional outbreaks among women than among men, and the decreased power of inhibition which women have over in- stinctive and emotional reactions. Further than this, women more than men may be said to qualify their judgments of per- sons and situations by their emotional reactions to them. The common suspicion that in general women's abilities are less than those of men has seemed to gain strength from > Thorndikc: loc. cit., pp. 48-49. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 195 the greater number of geniuses and eminent persons there have been among men than among women. Professor Cat- tell writes hi this connection: I have spoken throughout of eminent men as we lack in English words including both men and women, but as a matter of fact women do not have an important place on the list. They have in all thirty- two representatives in the thousand. Of these eleven are hereditary sovereigns, and eight are eminent through misfortunes, beauty, or other circumstances. Belles-lettres and fiction the only depart- ment in which woman has accomplished much give ten names as compared with seventy-two men. Sappho and Joan d'Arc are the only other women on the list. It is noticeable that with the excep- tion of Sappho a name associated with certain fine fragments women have not excelled in poetry or art. Yet these are the depart- ments least dependent on environment, and at the same time those in which the environment has been perhaps as favorable to women as to men. Women depart less from the normal than men a fact that usually holds for the female throughout the animal series; in many closely related species only the male can be readily dis- tinguished. 1 In the facts of higher variability among males, and the hitherto restricted social opportunities provided for women are to be found the chief reasons for the comparatively high achievement of the male sex as compared with the female. But on the average the difference between the two sexes with respect to mental capacity is slight. The influence of race. A second factor in determining in- dividual differences in mental traits is race. There are cer- tain popular presuppositions as to the inherent differences in the mental activity of different races. The Irishman's wit, the negro's joyousness, the emotionality of the Latin races, the stolidity of the Chinese, are all supposed to be funda- mental. And in a sense they are. That is, in the life and culture of these groups, such traits may stand out distinc- tively. But most psychologists and anthropologists question seriously whether these traits are to be traced to radical differ- 1 Cattell: " A Statistical Study of Eminent Men," Popular Science Monthly, vol. LXII, pp. 375-77. 196 HUMAN TRAITS ences in racial inheritance. For the most part they seem rather to be the result of radical differences in environment. "Many of the mental similarities of an Indian to Indians and of his differences from Anglo-Saxons disappear, if he happens to be adopted and brought up as an Anglo-Saxon." l There have been various experimental studies made to determine how much divergences hi the mental activity of different races are determined by differences in racial in- heritance. Such experiments have been conducted chiefly upon very simple traits and capacities. The accuracy of sensory response among different races has, for example, been examined. There have proved to be, in regard to these, slight differences in the effectiveness and accuracy of response. There are racial differences hi hearing, as tested by the ticking of a watch or clock artificially made. In this test, Papuans, to take an instance, were inferior to Europeans. The sense of touch has been similarly tested, and comparatively negligi- ble differences have been found. In regard to the five senses, their efficiency seems to be about equal in all the races of man- kind. The proverbial keenness of vision of the Indian, for example, is found to be due to a superior training in its use, a training made imperative by the conditions of Indian life. In reaction time tests that is, tests in the speed of simple men- tal and motor performances the time consumed in response has been found to be about the same for all races tested. The results have been similar with regard to certain simple proc- esses of judgment or inference: There are a number of illusions and constant errors of judgment which are well known in the psychological laboratory, and which seem to depend, not on peculiarities of the sense organs, but on quirks and twists in the process of judgment. A few of these have been made the matter of comparative tests, with the result that peoples of widely different cultures are subject to the same errors, and in about the same degree. There is an illusion which occurs when an object, which looks heavier than it is, is lifted by the hand; it then feels, not only lighter than it looks, but even lighter than it 1 Thorndike: loc. cii., p. 62. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 197 really is. The contrast between the look and the feel of the thing plays havoc with the judgment. Women are, on the average, more subject to this illusion than men. The amount of this illusion has been measured in several peoples, and found to be, with one or two exceptions, about the same in all. Certain visual illusions, in which the apparent length or direction of a line is greatly altered by the neighborhood of other lines, have similarly been found present in all races tested, and to about the same degree. As far as they go, these results tend to show that simple sorts of judgment, being subject to the same disturbances, proceed in the same manner among various peoples; so that the similarity of the races in mental processes ex- tends at least one step beyond sensation. 1 Professor Woodworth also points out that these simple tests are not adequate to measure general intelligence. A good test for intelligence would be much appreciated by the comparative psychologist, since, in spite of equal standing in such rudimentary matters as the senses and bodily movement, attention and the simpler sorts of judgment, it might still be that great differ- ences in mental efficiency existed between different groups of men. Probably no single test could do justice to so complex a trait as intelligence. Two important features of intelligent action are quick- ness in seizing the key to a novel situation, and firmness in limiting activity to the right direction, and suppressing acts which are obvi- ously useless for the purpose in hand. A simple test which calls for these qualities is the so-called "form test." There are a number of blocks of different shapes, and a board with holes to match the blocks. The blocks and board are placed before a person, and he is told to put the blocks in the holes in the shortest possible time. The key to the situation is here the matching of blocks and holes by their shape; and the part of intelligence is to hold firmly to this obvious necessity, wasting no time in trying to force a round block into a square hole. The demand on intelligence certainly seems slight enough; and the test would probably not differentiate between a Newton and you or me; but it does suffice to catch the feeble-minded, the young child, or the chimpanzee, as any of these is likely to fail altogether, or at least to waste much time in random moves and vain efforts. This test was tried on representatives of several races and considerable differences appeared. As between whites, Indians, Eskimos, Ainus, Filipinos, and Singhalese, the average differences 1 Woodworth: " Racial Differences in Mental Trait*," Science, New Series, vol. 31, pp. 179-81. 198 HUMAN TRAITS were small, and much overlapping occurred. As between these groups, however, and the Igorot and Negrito from the Philippines and a few reputed Pygmies from the Congo, the average differences were great, and the overlapping small. 1 Equality among races in the various traits that have been measured by psychologists does not imply that common observation is wrong in counting one race as intellectually superior to another. There have, as yet, been no measure- ments of such general features of social life as energy, self-re- liance, inventiveness, and the like. But from indications of experiments already made, these so-called (and for practical purposes genuine) intellectual differences between the indi- viduals of different races must be attributed to differences in environment. Races as races seem to be equally gifted. Professor Boas points out that civilized investigators trav- eling among savage tribes commit one serious fallacy in in- sisting on the inferiority of these primitive peoples. They are said to be irrational, for example, when they are quite logical in their way of dealing with the material which is at their disposal. Without any scientific information available, for example, anthropomorphism, or the tendency to interpret cosmic phenomena in human terms is quite natural and rea- sonable. Again: The difference in the mode of thought of primitive man and that of civilized man seems to consist largely in the difference of character of the traditional material with which the new perception associates itself. The instruction given to the child of primitive man is not based on centuries of experimentation, but consists of the crude ex- perience of generations. When a new experience enters the mind of primitive man, the same process which we observe among civilized man brings about an entirely different series of associations, and therefore results in a different type of explanation. A sudden explo- sion will associate itself in his mind, perhaps, with the tales he has heard in regard to the mythical history of the world, and conse- quently will be accompanied by superstitious fear. When we recog- nize that neither among civilized men nor among primitive men the average individual carries to completion the attempt at causal Woodworth: loc. cit., pp. 171-86. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 199 explanation of phenomena, but carries it only so far as to amalga- mate it with other previously known facts, we recognize that the result of the whole process depends entirely upon the character of the traditional material. 1 This may be illustrated by our immediate reactions of pleas- ure or disgust at customs or ideas that provoke directly op- posite reactions among races reared in another tradition. Again primitive races have been accused of kicking self- control. The fact is that they exhibit self-control about matters which they regard as important, and lack of it in respect to matters which they regard as trivial. "When an Eskimo community is on the point of starvation, and their religious proscriptions forbid them to make use of the seals that are basking on the ice, the amount of self-control of the whole community which restrains them from killing those seals is certainly very great." 2 The case is similar with re- gard to nearly all the alleged inferiorities of primitive man, his improvidence, unreliability, and the like. In nearly every in- stance, it has been found that we are holding him to account for not being able to persist in courses of action which do not seem to him, with his training and education, worth persist- ing in, and for not conforming to standards which, given his background, are meaningless. But if differences in racial attainments are due to differ- ences in environment, it might be said that this itself is testi- mony to the superiority of the race that has the more complex and exacting environment. This is not by any means clearly the case. The " culture" or civilization which a race exhibits is a very uncertain index of its gifts or its capacities. The culture found in a race is, it may be said without exaggera- tion, largely a matter of accident or circumstance rather than of heredity. Some of the environmental causes for differences in culture may be explicitly noted. Any modern culture is the result of interminglings of many different cross-streams and cross- > Boas: Mind of Primilir* Man. pp. 203-04. Ibid., p. 108. borrowings. Races that have long been isolated as, for ex- ample, the African negroes, have no possibility of picking up all the acquisitions to which races that intermingle have access. Progress in the developments of arts, sciences, and institutions depends on fortunate individual variations. The smaller the race the less the number of variations possible, including those on the side of what we call genius. Again fortunate variations depend not so much on the general aver- age intellectual capacities of the race as on its variability. So one race may possess a relative superiority of achievement because of its high variability, just as, as we have already pointed out, the greater preeminence of the male sex with regard to intellectual accomplishment is due to the greater number of variations both above and below the norm which it displays. The reasons for variability are again, according to Professor Boas, largely environmental. "We have seen, when a people is descended from a small uniform group, that then its variability will decrease; while on the other hand, when a group has a much-varied origin or when the ancestors belong to entirely distinct types the variability may be con- siderably increased." l Again a race may be placed in such geographical conditions that a fortuitous variation on the part of one individual may prove of enormous value in the development of its civiliza-. tion. Or fortunate geographical conditions may stimulate types of activity that lie dormant, although possible, among other races. Thus by some investigators the flexibility and emancipation of the Greek genius were attributed to their access to the sea and their constant intermingUng with othei cultures, especially the Egyptian. On the subject of the fundamental equality of races despite their seeming disparity, as that at present, let us say, between whites and negroes, Professor Boas writes: t Much has been said of the hereditary characteristics of the Jews, 1 Boas: loc. tit., p. 93. LIBRARY 0TATV TfACHKWS COLL* ANTA BARBARA. CALIFORNIA INDIVroUAL DIFFERENCES 201 of the Gypsies, of the French and Irish, but I do not see that the external and social causes which have moulded the character of members of these people have ever been eliminated satisfactorily; and, moreover, I do not see how this can be accomplished. A num- ber of external factors that influence body and mind may easily be named climate, nutrition, occupation but as soon as we enter into a consideration of social factors and mental conditions we are unable to tell definitely what is cause and what is effect. The conclusions reached are therefore, on the whole, negative. We are not inclined to consider the mental organization of different races of man as differing in fundamental points. Although, therefore, the distribution of faculty among the races of man is far from being known, we can say this much: the average faculty of the white race is found to the same degree in a large proportion of individuals of all other races, and although it is probable that some of these races may not produce as large a proportion of great men as our own race, there is no reason to suppose that they are unable to reach the level of civilization represented by the bulk of our own people. 1 In contrast must be cited the opinions of a large class of psychologists and anthropologists who are inclined to regard racial differences as intrinsic and original. Of such, for ex- ample, is Francis Galton, who claims in his Hereditary Genius, that taking negroes on their own ground they still are inferior to Europeans by about one eighth the difference, say, be- tween Aristotle and the lowest idiot. Recent psychological experiments in the army reveal, again, certain fundamental intellectual inferiorities of negroes, though whether this is environmental or to be traced to hereditary causes is open to question. The fact remains that there are, despite the lack of evidence for hereditary mental differences, practical differences in the mental activity of different races that are of social importance. These differences, which seem so fundamental, have been explained primarily by the powerful control exercised over the individual by the habits which he acquires even before the Boas: loc. tit., pp. 116, 123. 202 HUMAN TRAITS age of five years. These, though unconscious, may be, as the Freudian psychologists maintain, all the more important for that reason. This would appear to be the only explanation of significant racial differences. Cultural differences cannot, biologists are generally agreed, be transmitted in the germs that pass from generation to generation. One may say, in effect, that an individual is differentiated in his mental traits by early association with a certain race, and by his immediate ancestry or family, rather than by the fact of belonging physi- cally to a certain race. The influence of immediate ancestry or family. A factor that is, on experimental evidence, rated to be of high impor- tance in the determination of the differences of the mental make-up of human beings, is "immediate ancestry" or fam- ily. Stated in the most simple and general terms this means that children of the same parents tend to display marked like- nesses in mental traits, and to exhibit less variation among themselves than is exhibited in the same number of individu- als chosen at random. A great number of experiments have been conducted to determine how far resemblances in mental traits are due to common parentage. The correlation be- tween membership in the same family and^fesemblances of social traits has been found to be uniformly high. The inference was made that children of the same family would show great resemblances in mental traits, when accu- rate experiments showed marked similarity in physical traits under the same conditions. The coefficient of correlation between brothers in the color of the eye, is, according to the results obtained by Karl Pearson, .52. l The coefficient of fraternal correlation in the case of the cephalic index (ratio of width to length of head) is .40. The correlation of hair 1 These facts are based on the reports of Karl Pearson in his On the Laws of Inheritance in Man. What is meant by coefficient of correlation may be explained as follows: If the coefficient of correlation between father and son la .3 and the coefficient of correlation between brother and brother is .5 we may say: a son on the average deviates from the general trend of the popula- tion by .3 of the amount of his father's deviation, a brother by .5 of the amount of his brother. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 203 color is found to be .55. The fact of high correlation be- tween resemblance of physical traits and membership in the same family is of crucial importance, because these traits are clearly due to ancestry, and not to environmental differ- ences. If physical traits show such a correlation, it is likely that mental traits will also, mental traits being ultimately de- pendent on the brain and the nervous system, which are both affected by ancestry. Measurements of measurable traits and observations of less objectively measurable ones, have revealed that immediate ancestry is in itself an influential factor hi producing likenesses and differences among men with respect to mental traits. One interesting case, interesting because it was a test of a capacity that might be expected to be largely environmental in its origins, was that of the spelling abilities of children in the St. Xavier School in New York. Thorndike thus reports the test: As the children of this school commonly enter at a very early age, and as the staff and the methods of teaching remain very constant, we have in the case of the 180 brothers and sisters included in the 600 children closely similar school training. Mr. Earle measured the ability of any individual by his deviation from the average for his grade and sex, and found the co-efficient of correlation between chil- dren of the same family to be .50 . That is, any individual is on the average fifty per cent as much above or below the average for his age and sex as his brother or sister. Similarities in home training might theoretically account for this, but any one experienced in teaching will hesitate to attribute much efficacy to such similarities. Bad spellers remain bad spellers though their teachers change. Moreover, Dr. J. M. Rice in his exhaustive study of spelling ability found little or no relationship between good spelling and any one of the popular methods, and little or none be- tween poor spelling and foreign parentage. Yet the training of a home where parents do not read or spell the language well must be a home of relatively poor training for spelling. Comman's more care- ful study of spelling supports the view that ability to spell is little influenced by such differences in school or home training as com- monly exist. 1 1 Thorndike: loc. eii., p. 78. 204 HUMAN TRAITS In general the influence of heredity may be said far to out- weigh the influence of home training. In all the cases re- ported, the resemblances were about the same in traits subject to training, and in those not subject to training. Thus indus- try and conscientiousness and public spirit, which are clearly affected by environment, show no greater resemblance than such practically unmodifiable traits as memory, original sen- sitiveness to colors, sounds, and distances. The influence of parentage, it must be added, consists in the transmission of specific traits, not of a certain "nature" as a whole. There are in the germ and the ovum which constitute the inheritance of each individual, certain determinant ele- ments. The elements that determine the original traits with which each individual will be born vary, of course, in the germs produced by a single parent less than among individu- als chosen at random, but they vary none the less. In this variation of the determining elements in the germs of the same individual is to be found the cause of the variation in the physical and mental traits among children of the same parents. Since the determining elements, the unit characters that appear in the sperm or ovum of each individual, do not ap- pear uniformly even in children of the same parents, brother and sister may resemble each other in certain mental traits, and differ in others. "A pair of twins may be indistinguisha- ble in eye color and stature, but be notably different in hair color and tests of intellect." Mental inheritance, as well as physical, is, then, organized in detail. It is not the inheritance of gross total natures, but of particular "mental traits." If we had sufficient data, we should be able to analyze out the unit characters of an in- dividual's mental equipment, so as to be able to predict with some accuracy the mental inheritance of the children of any two parents. In the case of physical inheritance, the laws of the hereditary transmission of any given traits are known in considerable detail. The detailed quantitative investigations INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 205 of inheritance, following the general lines set by Mendel, have given striking results. Physical traits have been found to be analyzable into unit- characters (that is, traits hereditarily transmitted as units), such as "curliness of hair," "blue eyes," and the like. Men- tal traits, however, do not seem analyzable into the fixed unit-characters prescribed by the Mendelian laws of inherit- ance. The success which breeders have had in the control of the reproduction of plants and animals, in the perpetuation of a stock of desirable characteristics and the elimination of the undesirable, has given rise to a somewhat analogous ideal hi human reproduction. That eugenics has at least its theo- retical possibilities with regard to physical traits, few biolo- gists will question. However difficult it may be hi practice to regulate human matings on the exclusive basis of the kind of offspring desired, it is a genuine biological possibility. In a negative way, it has already in part been initiated in the pre- vention of the marriage of some extreme types of the physi- cally unfit, by the so-called eugenic marriage laws in some states hi this country. 1 But whether scientific regulation of marriages for the production of eugenic offspring is feasible, even apart from the personal and emotional questions involved, is open to ques- tion. No mental trait such as vivacity, musical ability, mathematical talent, or artistic sense, has been analyzed into such definitely transmissible unit-characters as "blue eyes" and " curliness of hah*." So many unit-characters seem to be involved in any single mental trait that it will be long before a complete analysis of the hereditary invariable determinants of any single trait can be made. It is thus impossible to tell as yet with any security or pre- cision the biological components of any single mental trait. 1 There have been laws, as there is a fairly decided public opinion, adverse to reproduction by the feeble-minded and the morally defective. But (see Richardson: The Etiology of Arrested Mental Development, p. 9) there have been a number of cases of feeble-minded parents producing normal children. 206 \ HUMAN TRAITS The evidence at our disposal, however, does confirm us in the belief that one of the most significant and certain causes of individual differences, whether physical or mental, is immedi- ate ancestry or family. Individuals are made by what they are initially, and, as we shall presently see, therefore largely by their inheritance. With the latter, environment can do just so much, and no more. And the most significant and effective part of an individual's inheritance is his family for some generations back, rather than the race to which he be- longs. The influence of the environment. Those factors so far discussed which determine individual differences are inde- pendent of the particular conditions of life in which an indi- vidual happens to be placed. An individual's race, sex, fam- ily are beyond modification by anything that happens to him after birth. Maturity, in so far as it is mere growth inde- pendent of training, is also largely a fixed and unmodifiable condition. The original nature, determined by race, sex, and immedi- ate ancestry, with which a man starts life is subject to modifi- cation by his social environment, by the ideas, customs, com- panions, beliefs, by which he is surrounded, and with which he comes continuously hi contact. Commonly the influence of environment is held to be very high. It is difficult, how- ever, accurately to distinguish between effects which are due to original nature and effects which are due to environment. Differences in training are important, but the results vary with the natures trained. Precisely the same environment will not have the same consequences for two different natures. Two approximately same natures will show something like the same effects in dissimilar environments. Human beings are certainly differentiated by the customs, laws, ideals, friends, and occupations to which they are exposed. But what the net result will be in a specific case, depends on the individual's equipment to start with, an equipment that is fixed before the environment has had a chance to act at all. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 207 The kindliness and indulgence that save some children de- moralize others. In some people a soft answer turneth away wrath ; in others it will kindle it. Andrew Carnegie starts as a bobbin boy, and becomes a millionaire; but there were many other bobbin boys. The sunset that stirs in one man a lyric, leaves another cold. The same course in biology arouses in one student a passion for a life of science; it leaves another hoping never to see a microscope again. On the other hand, the same types of original capacity thrown into different en- vironments will yet attain somewhat comparable results, in the way of character and achievement. The biographies of a few poets, painters, philosophers, and scientists chosen at random, show the most diverse antecedents. 1 An individual, again, to a certain extent, makes his own environment. What kind of an environment he will make depends on the kinds of capacities and .interests he has to start with. Similarity of original tendencies and interests brings men together as differences among these keep them apart. The libraries, the theaters, and the baseball parks are all equally possible and accessible features of then* envi- ronment to individuals of a given economic or social class. Yet a hundred individuals with the same education and social opportunities will make themselves by choice a hun- dred different environments. They will select, even from the same physical environment, different aspects. The Grand Cafion is a different environment to the artist and to the geologist; a crowd of people at an amusement park con- stitutes a different environment to the man who has come out to make psychological observations, and the man who has come out for a day's fun. A dozen men, teachers and 1 Taking the social and professional status of a distinguished man's father as some index of the social environment to which he was subjected during his youth, we find some interesting examples: The father of John Keats was a livery stable-keep; his mother the daughter of one. Byron's father was a captain in the Royal Guards; his mother a Scottish heiress. Newton's father was a tanner; Pasteur's, a tanner; Darwin's, a doctor of considerable means. Francis Bacon's father was Lord Keeper of the Great >Seal ; Newton's was a farmer and the headmaster of a school ; Turner was the son of a barber. 208 HUMAN TRAITS students, selected at random on a university campus, might well be expected to note largely different though overlap- ping facts, as the most significant features of the life of the university. The environment is the less important in the moulding of character, the less fixed and unavoidable it becomes. If an individual has the chance to change his environment to suit his own original demands and interests, these are the less likely to undergo modification. This is illustrated in the ani- mal world by the migratory birds, which change their habita- tions with the seasons. Similarly human beings, to suit the original mental traits with which they are endowed, can and do exchange one environment for another. There are a very large number of individuals living hi New York City, in the twentieth century, for example, for whom a multiplicity of environments are possible. The one that becomes habitual with an individual is a matter of his own free choice. That is, it is choice, in the sense that it is independent of the circum- stances of the individual's life. But an individual's choice of his environment must be within the limited number of al- ternatives made possible by the original nature with which he is endowed. As pointed out in connection with our discus- sion of "Instinctive Behavior," we do originally what gives satisfaction to our native impulses, and avoid what irritates and frustrates them. We may be trained to find satisfactions in acquired activities, but there is a strong tendency to ac- quire habits that "chime in," as it were, with the tendencies we have to start with. There is, for example, to certain individuals, intrinsic satisfaction in form and color; to others in sound. To the former, pictures and paintings will tend to be the environ- ment selected; to the latter the hearing and the playing of music. To those gifted with sensitivity in neither of these directions, pictures may be through all their lives a bore, and a piano a positive nuisance. These facts of original nature, therefore, determine initially, INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 209 and consequently in large part, what our environment is going to be. Once we get into, or select through instinctive desires, a certain kind of environment, those desires become strengthened through habit, and that environment becomes fixed through fulfilling those habitual desires. A man may, in the first place, choose artists or scholars as companions because his own gifts and interests are similar. But such an environment will become the more indispensable for him when it has the reinforcement of habit to confirm what is already initially strong in him by birth. "To him who hath shall be given " is most distinctly true of the opportunities and environment open to those with native gifts to begin with. Original nature thus sets the scope and the limits of an individual's character and achievement. It tells "how much" and, in the most general way, "what" his capacities are. Thus a man born with a normal vocal apparatus can speak; a man born with normal vision can see. But what language he shall speak, and what sights he shall see, depend on the social and geographical situation in which he happens to be placed. Again, if a man is born with a "high general intelligence," that is, with keen sensory discriminations and motor responses, precise and accurate powers of analysis of judgment, a capacity for the quick and effective acquisition and modification of habits, we can safely predict that he will excel in some direction. But whether he will stand out as a lawyer, doctor, philosopher, poet, or executive, it is almost impossible from original nature to tell. 1 Individual differences Democracy and education. The fact that individuals differ in ability and interest has impor- tant consequences for education and social progress. It means, La the first place, that while current optimistic doc- trines about the modifiability of human nature are true, they are true within limits limits that vary with the individual. 1 The psychological tests used in the army, and being used now with modifications in the admission of students to Columbia College, are " general intelligence" tests. That is, they show general alertness and intellectual promise, but are not prophetic of any specialized talents or capacities. 210 HUMAN TRAITS Whether or not we shall ever succeed, through the science or the practice of eugenics, in eliminating low ability and per- petuating high exclusively, the fact remains that there are hi contemporary society the widest variations both in the lands of interest and ability displayed, and hi their relative efficacy under present social and industrial conditions. There are, it must be noted at the outset, a not inconsider- able number of individuals who must be set down as absolute social liabilities. Even if existing social and educational arrangements were perfect, these would remain unaffected and unavailable for any useful purpose. They would have to be endowed, cared for, or confined. There is the quite con- siderable class, who, while normal with respect to sensory and motor discrimination, seem to be seriously and irremediably defective in their powers of judgment. These also seem to offer invulnerable resistance to education, and their original natures would not be subject to modification even by an education perfectly adapted to the needs of normal people. But the more significant fact, more significant because it affects so many, is the fact that within the ranks of the great class of normal people, there are fundamental inherited differ- ences hi ability and interest. Next hi importance to the fact that an individual is human is the fact that he is an individual, with very specific initial capacities and desires. For educa- tion the implications are serious. Education aims, among other things, to give the individual habits that will enable him to deal most effectively with his environment. But an individual can be trained best, it goes without saying, hi the capacities and interests he has to begin with. Education can- not, therefore, be wholesale in its methods. It must be so ad- justed as to utilize and make the most of the multifarious variety of native abilities and interests which individuals dis- play. If it does not utilize these, and instead sets up arbi- trary moulds to which individuals must conform, it will be crushing and distorting the specific native activities which are the only raw material it has to work upon. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES , 211 There have not as yet been many detailed quantitative studies of individual differences that would enable educators, if they were free to do so, scientifically to adapt education to specific needs and possibilities. Beginnings in this direction are being made, though rather in advanced than in more elementary education. Professional and trade schools, and group-electives in college courses are attempts in this direc- tion. Any attempt, of course, to adapt education to specific needs and interests, instead of crushing them into a priori moulds, requires, of course, a wider social recognition and support of education than is at present common. For indi- vidual differences require attention. And where millions are to be educated, individual attention requires an immense investment in teaching personnel. But hi this utilization of original interests and capacities lies the only possibility of genuinely effective education. 1 In the first place to try in education to give individuals habits for which they have no special innate tendencies to begin with, is costly. Secondly, to train individuals for types of life or work for which their gifts and desires are ill adapted is to promote at once inefficiency and unhappiness. One reason why the chance to identify one's life with one's work (as is the case with the artist and the scholar) is so universally recog- nized as good fortune, is because it is so rare. A general and indiscriminate training of men, as if they were all fitted with the same talents and the same longings, does as much as un- derpayment or overwork to impair the quality of the work done and the satisfaction derived from it. It has latterly been recognized that industry offers the crucial opportunity to utilize to the fullest individual differ- 1 A beginning in the application of this principle has been made by the vocational guidance and employment management work which ia being done with increasing scientific accuracy throughout the United States. Individual differences and interests are studied with a view to putting " the right man in the right place." This slogan is borrowed from the Committee on Classi- fication and Personnel, which during the Great War, through its trade tests and other machinery of differentiation, utilized for the national welfare the specific abilities of thousands of drafted men. 212 HUMAN TRAITS ences. By "getting the right man in the right place," we at once get the work done better and make the man better satis- fied. If adequate attention is given to "placement," to the specific demands put upon men by specific types of work, and to the specific capacities of individuals for fulfilling those de- mands, we will be capitalizing variations among men instead of being handicapped by them. As it is, specific differences do exist, and men enter occupations and professions ignoring them. As a result both the job and the man suffer; the former is done poorly, and the latter is unsuccessful and un- happy. It must be noted that the existence of specific differences between individuals does not altogether, or often even in part, imply superiority or inferiority. It implies in each case in- feriority or superiority with respect to the performance of a particular type of work. Whether scientific insight and ac- curacy is better than musical skill, whether a gift for sales- manship surpasses a gift for mathematics, depends on the social situation and the standards that happen to be current among the group. An intensely disagreeable person may be the best man for a particular job. All scientific observation can do is to note individual differences, to note what work makes demands upon what capacities, and try to bring the man and the job together. It must be emphasized that, while individual capacities determine what an individual can do, social ideals and tradi- tions determine what he will do, because they determine what he will be rewarded and encouraged to do. There is no question but that in our industrial civilization certain types of ability, that of the organizer, for example, have a high social value. There is no question but that there are other abilities, which under our present customs and ideals we reward possibly beyond their merit, as, to take an extreme case, that of a championship prize fighter. We can through education and vocational guidance utilize all native capaci- ties. To make provision for the utilization of all native INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 213 capacities is to have an efficient social life. But to what end our efficient human machinery shall be used depends on the ideals and customs and purposes that happen to be current in the social order at any given time. In the words of Professor Thorndike, "we can invest in profitable enterprises the capital nature provides." But what profiteth a man or a society, is a matter for reflective determination; it is not settled for us, as are our limitations, at birth. The net result of scientific observation in this field is the discovery, in increasingly precise and specific form, that men are most diverse and unequal in interest and capacity. The ideal of equality comes to mean, under scientific analysis, equality of opportunity, leveling all social inequalities; the fact of natural inequalities and divergences remains incon- testable. There may even be, as recent psychological tests seem to indicate, a certain proportion of individuals who are not competent to take an intelligent part hi democratic govern- ment, who, having too little intellectual ability to follow the simplest problem needing cooperative and collective decision, must eternally be governed by others. If these facts come to be authenticated by further data, it merely emphasizes the fact that in a country professedly democratic it is essential to devise an education that will, hi the case of each individual, educate up to the highest point of native ability. Where a country is ostensibly democratic, a few informed citizens will govern the many uninformed, unless the latter are educated to an intelligent knowledge and appreciation of then- political duties and obligations. Furthermore, the citi- zens of a community who are prevented from using; their na- tive gifts will be both useless and unhappy. Certainly this is an undesirable condition in a society where all individuals are expected, so far as possible, to be ends in themselves and not merely means for the ends of others. CHAPTER X LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 1 IT was earlier pointed out that human beings alone possess language. They alone can make written symbols and heard sounds stand for other things, for objects, actions, qualities, and ideas. In this chapter the consideration of language may best be approached from the spoken tongue, under the influ- ence of which, except in the simplest type of pictorial writing, the written form develops. 2 From the point of view of the student of behavior, language, spoken language especially, is a habit, acquired like walking or swimming. It is made possible primarily by the fact that human beings possess a variety and flexibility of vocal reflexes possessed by no other animal. All the higher animals have a number of vocal reflexes, which are called out primarily in the expression of emotion or desire. Cries of pain, hunger, rage, sex desire or desire for companionship, are common to a great number of the animal species. But these cries and vocal utterances are limited, and comparatively unmodifiable. They are moreover expressed, so far as experimental observa- tion can reveal, with no consciousness of the specific signifi- cance of particular sounds and are used as the involuntary expression of emotion rather than as a specific means of communication. . . . The primates have a much larger number of such vocal in- stincts than the other mammals, and a much larger number of stimuli can call them out, e.g., injury to bodily tissue calls out one group; hunger calls out a certain group; sex stimuli (mate, etc.) another; and similarly cold, swiftly moving objects, tones, strange animals 1 Much of the technical material for this chapter is drawn from Leonard Bloomfield's The Study of Language, and W. D. Whitney's The Life and Growth of Language. 1 Bloomfield: loc. tit., pp. 7-8. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 215 call out others. When attachments are formed between the female and her offspring another large group is called into action. There is no evidence to show in the case of mammals that these vocal instincts are modified by the sounds of other animals. . . . These throat habits may be cultivated to such an extent in birds that we may get an approximation, more or less complete, to a few such habits possessed by the human being. Such throat habits, however, are not language habits. 1 In human beings language, it is clear, may attain extraor- dinary refinement and complexity, and may convey ex- tremely fine shades and subtleties of emotion or idea. This results from the fact that man is born with a vocal appa- ratus far superior in development to that of any of the animals. It is pretty clear that the mutant man, when thrown off from the primate stock, sprang forth with a vocal apparatus different from that of the parent stock, and possessing abundant richness in reflexes, even far surpassing that found in the bird. It is interesting to ob- serve, too, in this connection, that within the narrow space occupied by the vocal apparatus we have a system of muscular mechanisms which has within it, looking at it now as a whole, the same possibili- ties of habit formation that we find in the remaining portion of bodily musculature. ... It is probable that in a few years we shall under- take the study of such habits from exactly the same standpoint that we now employ in studies upon the acquisition of skill in the human being. 1 The human baby starts its expressive habits by emitting with wide-open mouth an undifferentiated shriek of pain. A little later it yells in the same way at any kind of discomfort. It begins before the end of the first year to croon when it is contented. As it grows older it begins to make different sounds when it experiences different emotions. And with remarkable rapidity its repertoire of articulatory movements has greatly increased. Speech that begins in the child as a mere vague vocal expression of emotion soon begins to exhibit a marked element of mimicry. The child begins to associate the words uttered 1 Wataon: Behavior, p. 323. Ibid., pp. 323-24. 216 HUMAN TRAITS by his nurse or parents with the specific objects they point to. He comes to connect "milk," "sleep," "mother" with the experiences to which they correspond. The child thus learns to react to certain sounds as significant of certain experiences. Unlike Adam, he does not have to give names to animals, or for that matter to anything else on earth. They all have spe- cific names in the particular language in which he happens to be brought up. In the case of other habits, largely through trial and error, he learns to associate given sounds expressed by other people about him with given experiences, pleasant or unpleasant. He learns further to imitate, so far as possi- ble, these sounds, as a means of more precisely communicating his wants or securing their fulfillment. In this connection students of language frequently have raised the question of how man first came to associate a given sound-sequence with a given experience. Like fire, language was once conceived to be a divine gift. Another theory postulated a genius who took it into his head to give the things of earth their present inevitable names. One other theory equally dubious held that language started in onomato- poetic expressions like "Bow-wow," for dog. Still another hypothesis once highly credited held that the sounds first uttered were the immediate and appropriate expressions called out by particular types of emotional experience. The validity of the last two theories has been rendered particu- larly dubious. The very instances of imitative words cited, words like "cuckoo," "crash," "flash," were, in their original forms, quite other than they are now. And that words are not immediately apposite expressions of the emotions which they represent, has been generally recognized. In gesture language, the gesture has to remain fairly imitative or expres- sive to be intelligible. But an examination of half a dozen casual words in contemporary languages shows how arbitrary are the signs used, and how little appositeness or relevance , they bear in their sound to the sense which they represent. The detailed study of the perfectly regular changes that so LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 217 largely characterize the evolution of language, have revealed the inadequacy of any of these views. There seems to be, in fact, no explanation of the origin of the language any more than there is of the origin of life. All that linguistic science can do is to reveal the history of language. And in this his- tory, human language stands revealed as a highly refined development of the crude and undifferentiated expressions which, under emotional stress, are uttered by all the animals. Language as a social habit. Language, as has repeatedly been pointed out, is essentially social in character. It is, in the first place, primarily an instrument of communication between individuals, and is cultivated as such. In human speech, interjections like " Oh! " or "Ah! " are still involuntary escapes of emotion, but language develops as a vehicle of communication to others rather than as a mere emotional out- let for the individual. Even if it were possible for the myth- ical man brought up in solitude on a desert island to have a language, it is questionable whether he would use it. Since language is a way of making our wants, desires, information known to others, it is stimulated by the presence of and con- tact with others. Excess vitality may go into shouting or song, 1 but language as an instrument of specific utterance comes to have a more definite use and provocation. Man, as already pointed out, is a highly gregarious animal, and language is his incomparable instrument for sharing his emo- tions and ideas and experience with others. The whole proc- ess of education, of the transmission of culture from the mature to the younger members of a society, is made possible through this instrument, whereby achievements and tradi- tions are preserved and transmitted in precise and public terms. Secondly, language is social in that, for the individual at least, it is socially acquired. The child first imitates sounds without any consciousness of their meaning, just as he imi- 1 Human song is by some linguistic experts, including Bloomfield, held to have originated in the chant of rhythmic labor, as in rowing or threshing. 218 HUMAN TRAITS tajes other actions in sheer "physiological sympathy." But he learns soon, by watching the actions of other people, that given sounds are always performed when these others do given actions. He learns that some sounds are portents of anger and punishment; still others of satisfaction and pleasure. He learns soon to specify his utterances, to use sounds as specific stimuli, to attain through other people specific satisfactions. The child is born with a flexible set of reflexes. In which way they shall be developed depends entirely on the accident of the child's environment. Whether he shall call it "bread" or "pain" or "brod," depends on the particular social environ- ment in which he from the first hears that particular item of experience referred to. A child of American missionaries in Turkey picks up the language of that country as well as that of his own. An English child brought up under a French nurse may learn with perfect ease the foreign tongue, and to the exclusion of that of his native country. Indeed, so com- pletely subject is one in this regard to one's early environ- ment, that it is not only difficult in later life to acquire a new pronunciation, but one finds it impossible to breathe freely, as it were, in the whole psychological atmosphere of a foreign language. Its grammatical categories, its spelling, its logic seem hopelessly irrational. It was perfectly natural of the Englishman in the story, when he was told that the French called it "pain," to insist, "Well, it's bread, anyhow." Many a reader of a foreign language which has become habitual can still not refrain from translating, as he reads, what seem to him irrational idioms into the familiar, facile, and sensible modes of his native tongue. Language and mental life. The connection of language with thought has repeatedly been noted. It has even been questioned whether thought in any effective sense is possible without words. In general it may be said that thinking de- mands clean-cut and definite symbols to work with, and that language offers these in incomparable form. A word enables one to isolate hi thought the dominant elements of an experi- LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 219 ence and prevents them from "slipping through one's fin- gers." The importance of having words by which concepts may be distinguished and isolated from one another will become clearer by a brief reminder of the nature of reflection. Think- ing is in large part (as will be discussed in detail in chapter xin) concerned with the breaking-up of an experience into its significant elements. But experience begins with objects, and so far as perceptual experience is concerned, ends there. We perceive objects, not qualities, actions, or ideas apart from objects. And the elements into which thinking analyzes an experience are never present, save in connection with, as parts of, a sensibly perceived object. Thus we never perceive whiteness save in white objects; warmth save in warm ob- jects; red save in red objects. We never, for that matter, perceive so abstract a thing as an "object." We experience red houses or red flags; white flowers, white shoes, white paper; warm stoves, warm soup, and warm plates. Even houses and stoves and shoes are, in a sense, abstractions. No two of these are ever alike. But it is of the highest impor- tance for us to have some means of identifying and preserving in memory the significant resemblances between our experi- ences. Else we should be, as it were, utterly astounded every time we saw a chair or a table or a fork. Though they may, in each case hi which we experience them, differ in detail, chairs, tables, forks have certain common features which we can "abstract" from the gross total experience, and by a word or " term," define, record, communicate, and recall. The advantage of a precise technical vocabulary over a loose "popular" one is that we can by means of the former more accurately single out the specific and important elements of an experience and distinguish them from one another. The common nouns, or "general names" in a language indicate to what extent and in what manner that language, through some or other of its users, classifies its experiences. Highly developed languages make it possible to classify similarities 220 HUMAN TRAITS not easily detected in crude experience. They make it possible to identify other things than merely directly sensed objects. In primitive languages experience is described and classified only in so far as it is perceptual. In other words, primitive languages have names for objects only, not for ideas, qualities, or relations. Thus it is impossible in some Indian languages to express the concept of a "brother" by the same word, un- less the "brother" is in every case in the same identical cir- cumstances. One cannot use the same word for "man" in different relations: "man-eating," "man-sleeping," "man- standing-here," and "man-running-there" would all be sepa- rate compound words. Among the Fuegians there is one word which means "to look at one another, hoping that each will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do." l Marett writes hi this connection: Take the inhabitants of that cheerless spot, Tierra del Fuego, whose culture is as rude as that of any people on earth. A scholar who tried to put together a dictionary of their language found that he had got to reckon with more than thirty thousand words, even after suppressing a large number of forms of lesser importance. And no wonder that the tally mounted up. For the Fuegians had more than twenty words, some containing four syllables, to express what for us would be either "he" or "she"; then they had two names for the sun, two for the moon, and two more for the full moon, each of the last named containing four syllables and having no elements in common. 2 It is easy to see how very little refinement or abstraction from experience could be made with such a cumbersome and inflexible vocabulary. The thirty thousand word vocabulary expressed a poverty of linguistic technique rather than a rich- ness of ideas. At the other extreme stands a language like English, which is, to an extraordinary degree, an " analytic " language. It has comparatively no inflections. This means that words can be used and moved about freely in different situations and rela- 1 Marett: Anthropology, p. 140. Ibid., pp. 138-39. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 221 tions. Thus the dominant elements of an experience can be freely isolated. A noun standing for a certain object or rela- tion is not chained to a particular set of accompanying circum- stances. "Man" stands as a definite concept, whether it be used with reference to an ancient Greek, a wounded man, a brave, a wretched, a competent, or a tall man. We can give the accompanying circumstances by additional adjectives, which are again freely movable verbally and intellectually. Thus we can speak of a brave child and a tall tower as well as a brave man and a tall man. In Marett's words: The evolution of language then, on this view, may be regarded as a movement away from the holophrastic [compound] in the direction of the analytic. When every piece in your playbox of verbal bricks can be dealt with separately, because it is not joined on hi all sorts of ways to the other pieces, then only can you compose new construc- tions to your liking. Order and emphasis, as is shown by English, and still more conspicuously by Chinese, suffice for sentence-build- ing. Ideally, words should be individual and atomic. Every modi- fication they suffer by internal change of sound, or by having pre- fixes or suffixes tacked on to them, involves a curtailment of their free use and a sacrifice of distinctness. It is quite easy, of course, to think confusedly, even whilst employing the clearest type of lan- guage. ... On the other hand, it is not feasible to attain a high degree of clear thinking, when the only method of speech available is one that tends toward wordlessness that is to say, one that is relatively deficient in verbal forms that preserve their identity in all contexts. 1 Languages differ not only in being more or less analytic, but in their general modes of classification. That is, not only do they have more or less adequate vocabularies, but in then* syntax, their sentence structure, their word forms, they vari- ously organize experience. It is important to note that in these divergent classifications no one of them is more final than another. We are tempted, despite this fact, to think that the grammar, spelling, and phonetics of our own lan- guage constitute the last word in the rational conveyance of thought. > Marett: loc. tit., pp. 141-42. 222 HUMAN TRAITS The instability of language. Language being a social habit, it is to be expected that it should not stay fixed and change- less. The simpler physiological actions are not performed in the same way by any two individuals, and no social practice is ever performed in the same way by two members of a group, or by two different generations. In this connection writes Professor Bloomfield: The speech of former times, wherever history has given us records of it, differs from that of the present. When we read Shakspere, for example, we are disturbed by subtle deviations from our own habits in the use of words and in construction; if our actors pro- nounced their lines as Shakspere and his contemporaries did we should say that they had an Irish or German brogue. Chaucer we cannot read without some grammatical explanation or a glossary; correctly pronounced his language would sound to us more like Low German than like our English. If we go back only about forty gen- erations from our time to that of Alfred the Great, we come to Eng- lish as strange to us as modern German, and quite unintelligible, unless we study carefully both grammar and lexicon. 1 There are, in general, three kinds of changes that take place in a language. "Phonetic" changes, that is, changes hi the articulation of words, regardless of the meaning they bear. This is illustrated simply by the word "name" which, in the eighteenth century was pronounced ne'm. "Analogic" changes, that is, changes hi the articulation of words under the influence of words somewhat similar in meaning. The word "flash," for example, became what it is because of the sound of words associated in meaning, "crash," "dash," "smash." The third process of change hi language alters not only the articulate forms of words, not only then- sound, but their sense. All these changes, as will be presently pointed out, can easily be explained by the laws of habit early dis- cussed in this book, these laws being applicable to the habit of language as well as to any other. In the case of phonetic change, it is only to be expected that the sounds of a language will not remain eternally changeless. 1 Bloomfield: loc. tit., p. 195. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 223 A language is spoken by a large number of individuals, no two of whom are gifted with precisely the same vocal appa- ratus. In consequence no two of them will utter words in precisely the same way. Before writing and printing were general, these slight variations in articulation were bound to have an effect on the language. People more or less uncon- sciously imitate the sounds they hear, especially if they are not checked up by the written forms of words. Even to-day changes are going on, and writing is at best a poor representa- tion of phonetics. The Georgian, the Londoner, the Welsh- man and the Middle Westerner can understand the same printed language, precisely because it does not at all represent their peculiarities of dialect. Variant sounds uttered by one individual may be caught up in the language, especially if the variant articulation is simpler or shorter. Thus the shorten- ing of a word from several syllables to one, though it starts accidentally, is easily made habitual among a large number of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the classic example, pre-English, "habeda" and "habedun" became in Old English, " hsefde" and " hsefdon," and are in present Eng- lish (I, we) " had." 1 In the same way variations that reduce the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to pro- duce the unstressed syllables "with shortened, weakened ar- ticulations . . . lessening as much as possible all interference with the breath stream." 8 Thus "contemporaneous pro- hibition" becomes " kntempa'jejnjas paha'bifn." Sound changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the la- bor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of Bloomfield: loc. eit., p. 211. * Ibid., p. 212. 224 HUMAN TRAITS & language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in English and palatalization in Slavic are examples. 1 These changes of sound in language so far discussed are made independently of the meaning of words. Other changes in articulation occur, as already noted, by analogy of sound or meaning. That is, words that have associated meanings come to be similarly articulated. This is simply illustrated in the case of the child who thinks it perfectly natural to assim- ilate by analogy "came" to "come." Thus the young child will frequently say, until he is corrected, he "corned," he "bringed," he "fighted." In communities where printing and writing and reading are scarce, such assimilation by analogy has an important effect in modifying the forms of words. Changes in meaning. The changes in language most im- portant for the student of human behavior are changes hi meaning. Language, it must again be stressed, is an instru- ment for the communication of ideas. The manner in which the store of meanings hi a language becomes increased and modified (the etymology of a language) is, in a sense, the his- tory of the mental progress of the people which use it. For changes hi meaning are primarily brought about when the words in a language do not suffice for the larger and larger store of experiences which individuals within the group desire to communicate to one another. The meanings of old words are stretched, as it were, to cover new experiences; old words are transferred bodily to new experiences; they are slightly modified in form to apply to new experiences analogous to the old; new words are formed after analogy with ones already in use. A simple illustration of the application of a word already current to a wider situation is the application of the word "head" as a purely objective name, to a new experience, which has certain analogies with the old; as when we speak of a "head" of cabbage, the "head" of an army, the "head" > Ibid., p. 218. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 225 of the class, or the "headmaster." In many such cases the transferred meaning persists alongside of the old. Thus the word "capital" used as the name for the chief city in a country, persists alongside of its use in "capital" punish- ment, "capital" story, etc. But sometimes the transferred meaning of the word becomes dominant and exclusive. Thus "disease" (dis-ease) once meant discomfort of any kind. Now it means specifically some physical ailment. The older use has been completely discarded. To "spill" once meant, in the most general sense, to destroy. Now all the other uses, save that of pouring out, have lapsed. "Meat" which once meant any kind of nourishment has now come to refer almost exclusively (we still make exceptions as in the case of sweet- meat) to edible flesh. Whenever the special or novel applica- tion of the word becomes dominant, then we say the meaning of the word has changed. Mental progress is largely dependent on the transfer of words to newer and larger spheres of experience, the modifica- tion of old words or the formation of new ones to express the increasing complexity of relations men discover to exist be- tween things. In the instances already cited some of the transferred words lost their more general meaning and became specialized, as in the case of "meat," "spill," etc. Other words, like " head," though they may keep their specific objec- tive meaning, may come to be used in a generalized intellec- tual sense. One of the chief ways by which a language remains adequate to the demands of increasing knowledge and experi- ence of the group is through the transfer of words having originally a purely objective sense to emotional and intel- lectual situations. These words, like "bitter," "sour," "sharp," referring originally only to immediate physical experiences, to objects perceived through the senses, come to have intellectual and emotional significance, as when we speak of a "sour" face, a "bitter" disappointment, a "sharp" struggle. Most of our words that now have abstract emo- tional or intellectual connotations were once words referring 226 HUMAN TRAITS exclusively to purely sensible (sense perceptual) experiences. "Anxiety" once meant literally a "narrow place," just as when we speak of some one having "a close shave." To "refute" once meant literally "to knock out" an argument. To "understand" meant "to stand in the midst of." To " confer " meant " to bring together." Sensation words them- selves were once still more concrete in their meaning. "Vio- let" and "orange" are obviously taken as color names from the specific objects to which they still refer. Language has well been described as "a book of faded metaphors." The history of language has been to a large extent the assimilation and habitual mechanical use of words that were, when first used, strikingly figurative. The novel use of a word that is now a quite regular part of the language may in many cases first be ascribed to a dis- tinguished writer. Shakespeare is full of expressions which have since, and because of his use of them, become literally household words. Many words that have now a general application arose out of a peculiar local situation, myth, or name. ' ' Boycott ' ' which has become a reasonably intelligible and universal word, only less than fifty years ago referred particularly and exclusively to Boycott, a certain unpopular Irish landowner who was subjected to the kind of discrimina- tion for which the word has come to stand. "Burke" used as a verb has its origin in the name of a notorious Edinburgh murderer. Characters in fiction or drama, history or legend come to be standard words. Every one knows what we mean when we speak of a Quixotic action, a Don Juan, a Galahad, a Chesterfield. To tantalize arises from the mythical perpetual frustration of Tantalus in the Greek Btory. Expressions that had a special meaning in the works of a philosopher or litterateur come to be generally used, as "Platonic love." l Again words that arise as mere popular witticisms or vulgarisms may be brought into the language as permanent acquisitions. "Mob," now a quite 1 Though this is very loosely and inaccurately used. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 227 legitimate word, was originally a shortening of mobile vul- gum, and was, only a hundred years ago, suspect in polite dis- course. Outside the deliberate invention by scientists of terms for the new relations they have discovered, more or less spon- taneous variation in the use of words and their unconscious assimilation by large numbers with whose other language habits they chance to fit, is the chief source of language growth. One might almost say words are wrenched from their original local setting, and given such a generalized appli- cation that they are made available for an infinite complexity of scientific and philosophical thought. Uniformities in language. Thus far we have discussed changes in language from the psychological viewpoint, that is, we have considered the human tendencies and habits which bring about changes hi the articulation and meaning, in the sound and the sense, of words. It is evident from these con- siderations that there can be no absolute uniformity in spoken languages, not even in the languages of two persons thrown much together. Within a country where the same language is ostensibly spoken, there are nevertheless differ- ences in the language as spoken by different social strata, by different localities. There are infinite subtle variations be- tween the articulation and the word uses of different individ- uals. There are languages within languages, the dialects of localities, the jargon of professional and trade groups, the special pronunciations and special and overlapping vocabu- laries of different social classes. But while there are these many causes, both of individual difference and of differing social environments, why languages do not remain uniform, there are similar causes making for a certain degree of uniformity within a language. There is one very good reason why, to a certain extent, languages do attain uniformity; they are socially acquired. The individual learns to speak a language from those about him, and individuals brought up within the same group will consequently learn to 228 HUMAN TRAITS speak, within limits, the same tongue; they will learn to articulate through imitation, and, while no individual ever precisely duplicates the sounds of others, he duplicates them as far as possible. He learns, moreover, as has already been pointed out, to attach given meanings to given words, not for any reason of then* peculiar appositeness or individual caprice, but because he learns that others about him habitually attach certain meanings to certain sounds. And since one is stimu- lated to expression primarily by the desire and necessity of communication of ideas a premium is put upon uniformity. It is of no use to use a language if it conceals one's thoughts. In consequence, within a group individual variations, unless for reasons already discussed they happen to lend themselves to ready assimilation by the group, will be mere slips of the tongue. They will be discarded and forgotten, or, if the indi- vidual cannot rid himself of them, will like stammering or stuttering or lisping be set down as imperfections and social handicaps. The uniformity of language within groups whose individual members have much communication with each other is thus to a certain extent guaranteed. A man who is utterly individualistic in his language might just as well have no language at all, unless for the satisfaction of expressing to himself his own emotions. 1 Language is learned from the group among whom one moves, and those sounds and senses of words are, on the whole, retained, which are intelligible to the group. Those sounds and meanings will best be under- stood which are already in use. No better illustration could be found of how custom and social groups preserve and en- force standards of individual action. The obverse of the fact that intercommunication promotes uniformity in language is that lack of communication brings about language differentiation. The less the intercommuni- cation between groups, the more will the languages of the 1 There have been a few poets, like Emily Dickinson, or mystics like Blake, some of whose work exhibits almost complete unintelligibility to most read- era, though doubtless it had a very specific meaning and vividness to the writers concerned. [LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 229 groups differ, however unif orm they may be within the groups themselves. The most important factor in differentiation of language is local differentiation. In some European countries every village speaks its own dialect. In passing from one village to another the dialects may be mutually intelligible, but by the time one has passed from the first village in the chain to the last, one may find that the dialect of the first and last are utterly unintelligible to each other. A real break in language, as opposed to dialect variations, occurs where there is a considerable barrier between groups, such as a mountain range, a river, a tribal or political boundary. The more impenetrable the barriers between two groups the more will the languages differ, and the less mutually intelligible will they be. Looking back over the history of language the student of linguistics infers that those languages which bear striking or significant similarities are related. Thus Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Roumanian are traceable directly back to the Latin. This does not mean that all over the areas occupied by the speakers of these languages Latin was origi- nally spoken. But the Romans in their conquests, both mili- tary and cultural, were able to make their own language predominant. The variations which make French and Rou- manian, say, mutually unintelligible, are due to the fact that Latin was for the natives in these conquered territories as- similated to their own languages. So that, in the familiar example, the Latin "homo" becomes "uomo" in Italian, "homme" in French, "hombre" in Spanish, and "om" ii> Roumanian. Similarly related but mutually unintelligible languages among the American Indians have been traced to three great source-languages. The history of European languages offers an interesting example of differentiation. English and German, for exam- ple, are both traceable back to West-Germanic; from that, in turn to a hypothecated primitive West-Germanic. All the European languages are traceable back to a hypothe- 230 HUMAN TRAITS cated Primitive Indo-European. l The theory held by most students of this subject is that the groups possessing this single uniform language spread over a wider and wider area, gradually became separated from each other by geographical barriers and tribal affiliations, and gradually (and on the part of individual speakers unconsciously) modified their speech so that slight differences accumulated, and resulted finally in widely different and mutually unintelligible lan- guages. The process of differentiation in the languages of different groups is very marked. We find, for example, in the early history of Greece and Rome, a number of widely different dialects. There seems every evidence that these were derived from some more primitive tongue. We find, likewise, on the American continent, several hundred different languages, which to the untrained observer bear not the slightest resemblance to each other. This welter and confusion can also be traced back to a few primitive and uniform languages. Thus the history of civilization reveals this striking differentiation in the language of different groups, a coun- ter-tendency making for a wider uniformity of particular lan- guages. One "favored dialect" becomes standard, predom- inant and exclusive. Thus out of all the French dialects, the one that survives is the speech of Paris; Castilian becomes standard Spanish, and hi ancient Greece the language of Athens supersedes all the other dialects. The reasons for the survival of one out of a great welter of dialects may be various. Not infrequently the language of a conquering people has, in more or less pure form, succeeded the language of the con- quered. This was the case in the history of the Romance languages, which owe their present forms to the spread of Roman arms and culture. There was, as is well known, a *By the word "primitive" the linguistic experts mean a language the existence of which is inferred from common features of several related lan- guages, of which written records are current, but of which no actual records exist. Thus, if there were no written records of Latin the approximate recon- struction of it by linguists would be called " Primitive Romance." LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 281 similar development in the case of the English language. The Norman Conquest introduced, under the auspices of a socially superior and victorious group, a language culturally superior to the Anglo-Saxon. The latter was, of course, not entirely replaced, but profoundly modified, especially in the enrich- ment and enlargement of its vocabulary. One has but to note such words as "place," "choir," "beef," etc., which came entirely to replace in the language the indigenous Anglo- Saxon names for those objects. Colonization and commercial expansion may bring about the replacement of the native language of special localities by the language of the colonizers, at least in hybrid form. The spread of English through Australia, and through the larger part of North America, the spread of Spanish through South America, hi each instance practically replacing the native tongues, are cases in point. 1 Standardization of language. At the present time, and for some tune hi the past, the differentiation of language has been greatly lessened by the stabilizing influence of print. The printed word continually recalls the standard pronunciation and moaning, and the changes in language (save those delib- erately introduced by the addition of scientific terms, or the official modifications of spelling, etc., as in some European countries 2 ) are much less rapid, various, and significant than hitherto. It is true that differences in articulation and usage, especially the former, do still, to a degree, persist and develop. Our Southern accent, with its drawling of words and slurring of consonants, our Middle- Western accent, with its stressed articulation of "r's" and its nasalizing tendencies, are in- stances of this persistence. But the printed language English, for example the official language, which is published in the newspapers, peri- 1 Dialects and jargons are often the result of the partial assimilation by the speakers of one language of another language to which they are exposed. French-Canadian and Pennsylvania Dutch are examples of such a mixture. 1 In France the Ministry of Education from time to time settles points of orthography definitely. HUMAN TRAITS odicals, and books, which is taught in the schools, and spoken from the pulpit, the platform, on the stage, in cultivated society, is more or less alike all over the United States and wherever English is spoken. It is, of course, only a standard, a norm, an ideal, which like the concept of the circle, never quite appears in practice. The language which is spoken, even in the conversation of the educated, by no means con- forms to the ideal of "correct usage." But the important fact is that the standard language is a standard, that it is, moreover, a widely recognized and effective standard. The dictionaries and the grammars become authoritative, and are referred to when people consciously set about discovering what is the accepted or correct meaning or pronunciation. But a more effectual authority is exerted by the teaching they receive at school, and the continuous, though unnoticed, influ- ence of the more or less standard language which they read in print. Even phonetic changes, though they persist, are checked from spreading to the point of mutually unintelligible dialects by the standards enforced in print. The "accents" in vari- ous parts of the United States, for example, differ, but not to the point of becoming absolutely divergent languages. The Southerner and the Westerner may be conscious in each other's speech of a quaint and curious difference hi pronun- ciation, but they can, except hi extreme cases, completely understand each other. 1 The most important stabilizing influence of print, however, is its fixation of meanings. It makes possible their mainte- nance uncorrupted and unmodified over wide stretches in which there are phonetic variations. These variant articula- tions in different parts of a large country where the same lan- guage is spoken, would, if unchecked, eventually modify the 1 Some of the isolated districts in the Kentucky mountains reveal dialects with some important differences in vocabulary and construction. These are shown most strikingly in some of the ballads of that region which have been collected by William Aspinwall Bradley, and by Howard Brockway. Rural schools and the breakdown of complete isolation will probably in time elimi- nate this divergence. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 233 sense of words. Print largely prevents this from happening. One can read newspapers published in Maine, California, Virginia, and Iowa, without noticing any significant, or, in many cases, even slight differences in vocabulary or construc- tion. There are, of course, local idioms, but these persist in conversation, rather than in print, save where they are caught up and exploited for literary purposes by a Bret Harte, a Mark Twain, or an O. Henry. Counter-tendencies toward differentiation. While the standard language does become fixed and stable, there are, in the daily life of different social groups, varying actual lan- guages. Every class, or profession, every social group, whether of interest, or occupation, has its slight individuality in articulation or vocabulary. We still observe that mem- bers of a family talk alike; sometimes households have liter- ally then* own household words. And on different economic and social levels, in different sports, intellectual, professional, and business pursuits, we notice slightly different "actual" languages. These partly overlap. The society lady, the business man, the musician, the professor of literature, the mechanic, have specializations of vocabulary and construc- tion, but there is, for each of them, a great common linguistic area. Every individual's speech is a resultant of the various groups with whom he associates. He is affected in his speech habits most predominantly, of course, by his most regular associates, professional and social. In consequence we still mark out a man, as much as anything, by the kind of lan- guage he speaks. The mechanic and the man of letters are not likely to be mistaken for each other, if overheard in a street car. Many literary and dramatic characters are memo- rable for their speech habits. Such types are successful when they do hit upon really significant linguistic peculiarities. Their frequent failures lie in making the language of a par- ticular social type artificially stable. No one ever talks quite as the conventional stage policeman, stage professor, and stage Englishman talk. 234 HUMAN TRAITS These actual variations in the language, as it is used by various groups who are brought up under the same standard language, operate to prevent complete stabilization of lan- guage. Such variations are remarkably influential, consider- ing the conservative influences upon language of the repeated and continuous suggestion made by the printed page. The language is, in the first place, being continually enriched through increments of new words and modifications of old ones, from the special vocabularies of trades, professions, sciences, and sports. Through some accidental appositeness to some contemporaneous situation, these may become gen- erally current. A recent and familiar example is the term "camouflage," which from its technical sense of protective coloration has become a universally understood name for moral and intellectual pretense. The vocabulary of baseball has by this time already given to the language words that show promise of attaining eventual legitimacy. An increas- ingly large source of enrichment of the native tongue comes from the "spontaneous generation" of slang, which, starting in the linguistic whimsicality of one individual, gets caught up in conversation, and finds its ultimate way into the lan- guage. Important instruments, certainly in the United States, in spreading such neologisms are the humorous and sporting pages of the newspapers, in which places they not infrequently originate. 1 Whether a current slang expression will persist, or perish (as do thousands initiated every year), 1 H. L. Mencken in his suggestive book, The American Language, sees in this upahoot of phrases indigenous to the soil and the temper of the American people, and of grammatical constructions also, symptoms of the increasing divergence of the American from the English language. That there are a large number of special expressions exclusively used in the United States, and parts of the United States, that are not found in use in England, goes without saying. Every one knows that the Englishman says " lift " where we say "elevator," "shop," where we are likely to say "store." There are sig- nificant differences to be found even in the casual expressions of American and English newspapers. But it is doubtful whether the divergence can go very far, in view of the constant intercommunication, the rapidity of travel between the two countries, and the promiscuous reading of English books in America, and American books in England. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 235 depends on accidents of contemporary circumstances. If the expression happens to set off aptly a contemporary situation, it may become very widespread until that situation, such as a political campaign, is over. But it may, like the metaphor of a poet, have some universal application. "Log-rolling," " graft," " bluff," have come into the language to stay. Roose- velt's "pussy-foot," and "Ananias Club" are, perhaps, re- membered, but show less promise of permanency. " Movies " has already ceased to be a neologism, its ready adoption illus- trating a point already mentioned, namely, that a variation that facilitates speech (as " movies " does in comparison with " moving pictures," or " motion pictures ") has a high poten- tiality of acceptance. Language as emotional and logical. Since language is primarily useful as an instrument of communication, it should ideally be a direct and clean-cut representation of experience. It should be as unambiguous, and immediate, as telegraphy, algebra, or shorthand. But language has two functions, which interfere with one another. Words not only represent logical relations; they provoke emotional responses. They not only explicitly tell ; they implicitly suggest. They are not merely skeletons of thought; they are clothed with emotional values. They are not, in consequence, transitive vehicles of thought. Words should, from the standpoint of communica- tion, be mere signals to action, which should attract attention only in so far as they are signals. They should be no more regarded as things in themselves than is the green lamp which signals a locomotive engineer to go ahead. They should be as immediate signals to action as, at a race, the " Ready, set, go " of the starter is to the runner. Yet this rarely happens in the case of words. They frequently impede or mislead action by arousing emotions irrelevant to their intellectual significance, or provoke action on the basis of emotional associations rather than on their merits, so to speak, as logical representations of ideas. To take an example: England, as an intellectual symbol, 236 HUMAN TRAITS may be said to be a name given to a small island bounded by certain latitudes and longitudes, having a certain distribution of raw materials and human beings, and a certain topography. It might just as well be represented by X for all practical purposes. Thus in the secret code of the diplomatic corps if X were agreed on as the symbol for England, it would be just as adequate and would even save time. But England (that particular sound) for a large number of individuals who have been brought up there, has become the center of deep and far-reaching emotional associations, so that its utterance in the presence of a particular listener may do much more than represent a given geographical fact. It may be associated with all that he loves, and all that he remembers with affec- tion; it may suggest landscapes that are dear to him, a familiar street and house, a particular set of friends, and a cherished historical tradition of heroic names and storied places. It may arouse such ardor and devotion as Henley expresses in his famous England, my England : "What have I done for you, England, my England, What is there I would not do, England, my own? With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things and dear, As the song on your bugles blown, England Round the world on your bugles blown!" Words thus become powerful provocatives of emotion. They become loaded with all the energies that are aroused by the love, the hate, the anger, the pugnacity, the sympathy, for the persons, objects, ideas, associated with them. People may be set off to action by words (just as a bull is set off by a red rag), although the words may be as little freighted with meaning as they are deeply weighted with emotion. Poets and literary men in general exploit these emotional values that cling to words. Indeed, in epithets suggesting LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 287 illimitable vistas, inexpressible sorrows, and dim-remembered joys, lies half the charm of poetry. "Before the beginning of years, There came to the making of man, Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran; Pleasure with pain for a leaven, Summer with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from Heaven, And madness risen from Hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath, Night the shadow of light, And life, the shadow of death." * Swinburne does not, to be sure, give us much information, and what there is is mythical, but he uses words that are fairly alive with suggested feeling. But this emotional aura in which words are haloed, beauti- ful though it is in literature, and facile though it makes the communication of common feelings, is a serious impediment in the use of words as effective instruments of communication. Language oscillates, to speak metaphorically, between algebra and music. To be useful as an instrument of thought it should keep to the prosaic terseness of a telegraphic code. One should be able to pass immediately from the word to the thing, instead of dissolving in emotions at the associations that the mere sound or music of the epithet arouses. Words should, so to speak, tend to business, which, in their case, is the com- munication of ideas. But words are used in human situa- tions. And they accumulate during the lifetime of the indi- vidual a great mass of psychological values. Thus, to take another illustration, "brother" is a symbol of a certain rela- tionship one person bears to another. " Your " is also a sym- bolic statement of a relation. But if a telegram contains the statement " Your brother is dead," it is less a piece of informa- tion to act on than a deep emotional stimulus to which one responds. Bacon long ago pointed out how men ' ' worshipped 1 Swinburne: Atalanla in Calydon (David Mackay edition), p. 393. 238 HUMAN TRAITS words." As we shall see presently, he was thinking of errors in the intellectual manipulation of words. Perhaps as serious is the inveterate tendency of men to respond to the more or less irrelevant emotions suggested by a word, instead of to its strict intellectual content. If the emotions stirred up by an epithet were always appropriate to the word's significance, this might be an advantage. But not inf requently, as we shall see immediately, words suggest and may be used to suggest emotions that, like "the flowers that bloom in the spring," have nothing to do with the case. In practice, political and social leaders, and all who have to win the loyalties and support of masses of men have appre- ciated the use and misuse that might be made of the emotional fringes of words. Words are not always used as direct and transparent representations of ideas; they are as frequently used as stimuli to action. A familiar instance is seen hi the use of words in advertisements. Even the honest advertiser is less interested in giving an analysis of his product that will win him the rational estimation and favor of the reader than in creating hi the reader through the skillful use of words, emotions and sympathies favorable to his product. The name of a talcum powder or tobacco is the subject of mature consideration by the advertising expert, because he knows that the emotional flavor of a word is more important in securing action than its rational significance. 1 "Ask Dad! He knows!" does not tell us much about the article it adver- tises, but it gives us the sense of secure trust that we had as a boy hi those mysterious things in an almost completely un- known world which our fathers knew and approved. On a larger scale, hi political and social affairs words are powerful provocatives of emotion and of actions, determining to no small degree the allegiances and loyalties of men and 1 It has been pointed out that such an expression as "cellar door," con- sidered merely from the viewpoint of sound, is one of the most romantically suggestive words in the English language. A consideration of some of the names of biscuits and collars will show a similar exploitation of both the euphony and the emotional fringes of words. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 289 the satisfaction and dissatisfactions which they experience in causes and leaders. A word remains the nucleus of all the associations that have gathered round it in the course of an individual's experience, though the object for which it stands may have utterly changed or vanished. This is illustrated in the history of political parties, whose personnel and principles change from decade to decade, but whose names remain stable entities that continue to secure unfaltering respect and loy- alty. In the same way, the name of country has emotional reverberations for one who has been brought up in its tradi- tions. Men trust old words to which they have become accus- tomed just as they trust old friends. To borrow an illustra- tion from Graham Wallas, for many who call themselves Socialists, Socialism is something more than a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working classes, the growing social sympathy of many members of all classes, and the belief, based on the growing authority of scientific method, that social arrangements can be transformed by means of conscious and deliberate contrivance. 1 Rather the need for something for which one may love and work has created for thousands of workingmen a personified Socialism: Socialism, a winged goddess with stern eyes and a drawn sword, to be the hope of the world, and the protector of those that suffer. 1 Political leaders and advertising experts, no less than poets, have recognized the importance of the suggestive power of words. Half the power of propaganda lies in its arousing of emotions through suggestion, rather than in its effectiveness as an instrument of intellectual conversion.' Language and logic. Even where words are freed from > Wallas: Human Nature in Politics, p. 92. Ibid., p. 93. 1 During the recent Liberty Loan campaigns, for example, when it was of the most crucial practical importance that bonds be bought, the stimuli used were not in the form of reasoned briefs, but rather emotional admonition : " Finish the job," " Every miser helps the Kaiser," " If you were out in No Man's Land." 240 HUMAN TRAITS irrelevant emotional associations, they are still far from being adequate instruments of thought. To be effectively repre- sentative, words must be clean-cut and definitive; they must stand for one object, quality, or idea. Words, if they are to be genuine instruments of communication, must convey the same intent or meaning to the listener as they do to the speaker. If the significance attached to words is so vague and pulpy that they mean different things to different men, they are no more useful in inquiry and communication than the shock of random noise or the vague stir and flutter of music. Words must have their boundaries fixed, they must be terms, fixed and stable meanings, or they will remain instru- ments of confusion rather than communication. Francis Bacon stated succinctly the dangers involved in the use of words: For men imagine that their reason governs words, whilst in fact words react upon the understanding; and this has rendered phi- losophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive. Words are gen- erally formed in a popular sense, and define things by those broad lines which are most obvious to the vulgar mind; but when a more acute understanding or more diligent observation is anxious to vary these lines, and adapt them more accurately to nature, words oppose it. Hence the great and solemn disputes of learned men terminate frequently in mere disputes about words and names, in regard to which it would be better to proceed more advisedly in the first instance, and to bring such disputes to a regular issue by definitions. Such definitions, however, cannot remedy the evil ... for they con- sist themselves of words, and these words produce others. . . . If, to take an extreme case, a speaker said the word "chair," and by "chair" his listener understood what we commonly mean by the word "table," communication would be impos- sible. There must be some common agreement in the words used. In the case of simple terms referring to concrete ob- jects there are continual concrete reminders of the meaning of a word. We do not make mistakes as to the meaning of words such as chair, river, stone, stove, books, forks, knives, 1 Novum Organum, bk. i, aphorism 59. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 241 because we so continually meet and use them. We are con- tinually checked up, and the meanings we attach to these cannot go far astray. But the further terms are removed from physical objects, the more opportunity is there for ambiguity. In the realm of politics and morals, as Socrates was fond of pointing out, the chief difficulties and misunderstandings of men have come from the ambiguities of the terms they use. "Justice," " lib- erty," "democracy," "good," "true," "beautiful," these have been immemorial bones of contention among philoso- phers. They are accepted, taken for granted, without any question as to their meaning by the individual, until he finds, perhaps, in discussion that his acceptation of the term is entirely different from that of his opponent. Thus many an argument ends with "if that's what you mean, I agree with you." Intellectual inquiry and discussion to be fruitful must have certain definitive terms to start with. Discussion . . . needs to have the ground or basis of its various component statements brought to consciousness in such a way as to define the exact value of each. The Socratic contention is the need compelling the common denominator, the common subject, under- lying the diversity of views to exhibit itself. It alone gives a sure standard by which the claims of all assertions may be measured. Until this need is met, discussion is a self-deceiving play with un- judged, unexamined matters, which, confused and shifting, impose themselves upon us. 1 To define our terms means literally to know what we are talking about and what others are talking about. One of the values of discussion is that it enables us more clearly to realize the meaning of the words with which we constantly operate. A man may entertain for a long while a half-conscious defini- tion of democracy as meaning political equality, and suddenly come face to face with another who means by it industrial cooperation and participation on the part of all workers. Whether he agrees with the new definition or not, at least his own becomes clearer by contrast. > Dew Bonar : Philosophy and Political Economy in their Historic Relations, p. 205. 246 HUMAN TRAITS , compelled yearly to seed some of it; otherwise it would raise up the levels of their gardens by half an inch, every year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the acre as we do, but from fifty to one hundred tons of various vegetables on the same space; not 51 pounds worth of hay, but 100 pounds worth of vegetables of the plainest description, cabbages and carrots. 1 Of intensive industry the same might be said. Where for- merly a man could produce only enough for one man's con- sumption, under conditions of machine production one man's work can supply quantities sufficient for many. With a de- clining birth-rate and the vastly increased productivity of industry and agriculture, there is a greatly reduced danger of the population growing beyond their possible sustenance by the available food supply. Under certain economic and social conditions there are marked variations in the birth-rate. This may be due to various causes which are, by different writers, variously assigned. The variation of the birth-rate among different classes is again a matter of common observation and statisti- cal certainty. Higher standards of living are found regularly to be correlated with a decrease in the number of children in a family. An important factor in the voluntary restriction of population is the desire to give children that are brought into the world adequate education, environment, and social opportunity. Cultural continuity. To the very young the world seems an unprecedented novelty. It seems scarcely older than their own memories, which are few and short, and their own experi- ence, which is necessarily limited and confined. Through education our experience becomes immeasurably widened; we can vicariously live through the experiences of other people through hearing or reading, and can acquire the racial mem- ory which goes back as far as the records of history, or an- thropological research. As we grow older we come to learn that our civilization has a history; that our present has a past. 1 Kropotkin: Fields, Factories, and Workshops, p. 74. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 247 This past extends back through the countless aeons before man walked upright. The past of human life on earth goes back itself over nearly half a million years. With this long past, the present is continuous, being as it were, additional pages in process of being written. The physical continuity of the race is insured, as we have just seen, by a mechanism, which, though it may be subjected to rational consideration, is instinctive in its operation. The human beings that people the earth to-day are offspring of human ancestors reaching back to the appearance of the human animal in the long process of the evolution of life on earth. So far as we can see, posterity will be for countless generations physically similar to ourselves, as they certainly will, unless all records or evidences of the fact are obscured, trace their ancestry continuously back to us. Not only is there continuity of physical descent, however, but continuity of cultural achievement. The past, in any literal temporal sense, is over and done with. The Romans are physically dead, as are the generations of barbarians of the Dark Ages, and all the inhabitants of mediaeval and modern Europe, save our own contemporaries. Yesterdays are irrevocably over. The past, in any real sense, exists only in the form of achievements that have been handed down to us from previous generations. The only parts of the past that survive physically are the actual material products and achievements of bygone generations, the temples and the cathedrals, the sculptures and the manuscripts, the roads and the relics of earlier civilizations. Even these exist in the present; they are evidences, memorials, mementos of the past. These heritages from past civilizations may be inter- esting, intrinsically, as in the case of paintings and statues, or useful, as in the case of roads, reservoirs, or harbors. But we inherit the past in a more vital sense. We inherit ways of thought and action, social systems, scientific and in- dustrial methods, manners and morals, educational bequests and ideals, all that we have and are. Without these, each 248 , HUMAN TRAITS generation would have to start anew. If the whole of existing society were destroyed, and a newborn generation could be miraculously preserved to maturity, its members would have to start on the same level, with the same ignorances, uncer- tainties, and impotences as primitive savages. In order to make the nature and variety of our abject dependence on the past clear, we have only to consider our language, our laws, our political and social institutions, our knowledge and education, our view of this world and the next, our tastes and the means of gratifying them. On every hand the past dominates and controls us, for the most part unconsciously and without protest on our part. We are in the main its willing adherents. The imagination of the most radically-minded cannot transcend any great part of the ideas and customs transmitted to him. When once we grasp this truth, we shall, according to our mood, humbly congratulate ourselves that ... we are permitted to stand on the giant's shoulders, and enjoy an outlook that would be quite hidden to us, if we had to trust to our own short legs; or we may resentfully chafe at our bonds and, like Prometheus, vainly strive to wrest ourselves from the rock of the past, in our eagerness to bring relief to the suffering children of men. In any case, whether we bless or curse the past, we are inevitably its offspring, and it makes us its own long before we realize it. It is, indeed, almost all that we can have. 1 The cultural achievements of the past, which we inherit chiefly as social habits, are obviously not transmitted to us physically, as are the original human traits with which this volume has so far been chiefly concerned. They are not in our blood; they are acquired like other habits, through contact with others and through repeated practice. We are thus to a very large extent conditioned by the past. It is as if we had inherited a fortune composed of various kinds of properties, houses, books, automobiles, warehouses, mu- sical instruments, and in addition, trade concessions, business secrets, formulaBS, methods, and good-will. Our activities will be limited in measure by the extent of the property, its con- stituent items, and the repair in which we keep it. We may squander or misinvest our principal, as when we use scientifii 1 Robinson : The New History, pp. 2S&-57. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 249 knowledge for dangerous or dubious aims, for example, for conquest or rapine. We may add to it, as in the development of the sciences and industrial arts. We may, so to speak, live on the income. Such is the case when a society ceases to be progressive, and fails to add anything to a highly developed traditional culture, as happened strikingly in the case of China. Again we may have inherited " white elephants," which may be of absolutely no use to us, encumbrances of which we cannot easily rid ourselves, influential ideas which are no longer adequate to our present situation, obsolete emotions, methods, or institutions. We may allow our cultural inheritance, through bad education, to fall into disrepair and decay. Since we are so dependent on the past, our attitude toward it, which in turn determines the use we make of it, is of the most crucial significance. The several characteristic and varying attitudes toward the past which are so markedly current are not determined solely by logical considerations. For individ- uals and social groups particular features of their heritage have great emotional associations. The living past is composed of habits, traditions, values, which are vivid and vital issues to those who practice them. Traditions, customs, or social methods come to have intrinsic values; they become the cen- ter of deep attachments and strong passion. They are a rich element of the atmosphere of the present; they are woven into the intimate fabric of our lives. The awe which we feel in great cathedrals is historical as well as religious. Those vast solemn arches are the voices of the past speaking to us. The moral appeal of tradition appears with beautiful clarity in the opening chapter of Pater's Marius the Epicurean. A sense of conscious powers external to ourselves, pleased or dis- pleased by the right or wrong conduct of every circumstance of daily life that conscience, of which the old Roman religion was a formal, habitual recognition, had become in him a powerful current of feeling and observance. The old-fashioned, partly Puritanic awe, the power 01 which Wordsworth noted and valued so highly in a northern 250 HUMAN TRAITS peasantry, had its counterpart in the feeling of the Roman lad, a she passed the spot, "touched of heaven," where the lightning had struck dead an aged laborer in the field: an upright stone, still with moldering garlands about it, marked the place. He brought to that system of symbolic usages, and they in turn developed hi him further, a great seriousness, an impressibility to the sacredness of tune, of life and its events, and the circumstances of family fellowship of such gifts to men as fire, water, the earth from labor on which they live, really understood by him as gifts a sense of religious responsibility in the reception of them. It was a religion for the most part of fear, of multitudinous scruples, of a year-long burden of forms. 1 To the past, as it is made familiar to us through song, study, and traditional practice, we may experience a piety amount- ing almost to religious devotion. In some individuals and in some nations, this sense for tradition is very strong. Every one has felt more or less keenly this sense of being a link in a great tradition, whether of a college, family, or coun- try. Sometimes this sense for tradition takes an aesthetic form, as in the case of ritual, whether social or religious. Old streets, ivied towers, ancient rooms, become symbols of great and dignified achievements; ceremonies come to be invested with a serious beauty and memorable charm. They become re- minders of a "torch to be carried on," of a spirit to be cher- ished and kept alive, of a history to be carried on or a purpose or an ideal to be fulfilled. As we shall see in a moment, this sense for the past, which, as Santayana says, makes a man loyal to the sources of his being, has both its virtues and vices. It is of immense value in preserving continuity and cultural integration, in keeping many men continuously moving to- ward a single fixed end. It may also wrap dangerously ir- relevant habits and institutions in a saving and illusive halo. There are, on the other hand, individuals with very little sense for tradition. This may be accounted for in some cases by a marked aesthetic insensibility, which sees in ritual, cere- mony, or habit, merely the literal, without any appreciation Walter Pater: Marina the Epicurean (A . L. Burt edition), pp. 3-4. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 251 at all of its symbolic significance. 1 In other cases, individ- uals are unsusceptible and hostile to tradition, because they have themselves been socially disinherited. This is illustrated not infrequently in the case of foreigners who, for one reason or another, have left and lost interest in their native land, and become men without a country. There are others by temperament rebellious and iconoclas- tic, who combine a keen sense of present difficulties and prob- lems with small reverence, use for, or interest in the past, and small imaginative sympathy with it. The past is to them a "sea of errors." They regard all past achievements as bad ecribblings which must be erased, so that we may start with a clean slate. There have been included among such, great historical reformers. Bentham's enthusiasm for progress led him into most intemperate attacks on history and historical method. The most noted of the eighteenth-century philoso- phers saw nothing but evil in tradition. Such sentiments were echoed in the early nineteenth century by Shelley, God- win, and their circle, as expressed, for example, in Shelley's "Hellas": "The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. "Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendor of ita prime; And leave, if nought so bright can live, All earth can take or Heaven can give." It is not surprising that men with an eye fixed on the future 1 This is illustrated by the crass excesses of certain radical satirists of reli- gious forms. Those who are the enemies of religion for economic, social, or intcllectualistic reasons combine a singular sense of the literal absurdities of religious forms with a marked insensibility to their symbolic valises. One may find interesting examples, from Voltaire to Robert Ingersoll. 252 HUMAN TRAITS should develop a contempt or an obliviousness of the past. Utopians nearly always start with "a world various and beau- tiful and new." Perhaps the chief ingredient in such discounting of all past history is the rebel temperament which wants to break away from what it regards as the chains, the dead weight, the ruts of tradition. It cheerfully says, "Nous changerons tout cela," and does not stop to discriminate between the roads and the ruts that have been made by people in the past. These two temperaments, 1 play a large part in determining attitudes toward the past. The one regards with awe and reverence past achievement, and rests his faith on the experi- ments which have been tested and proved by time. The other, to state the position extremely, regards each day as the possible glorious dawn of a completely new world. The first attitude, when intemperately preached and practiced, be- comes an uncritical veneration of the past; the second, an un- critical disparagement. We shall briefly examine each. Uncritical veneration of the past. The extreme form of un- critical veneration of the past may be said to take the position that old things are good simply because they are old; new things are evil simply because they are new. Institutions, Ideas, Customs are, like wines, supposed to attain quality with age. A custom, a law, a code of morals is defined or maintained on the ground of its ancient and honorable history, of the great span of years during which it has been current, of the generation after generation that has lived un- der its auspices. The ways of our fathers, the old time-tested ways, these, we are told, must be our ways. The psychological origins of this position have in part been discussed. There is in some individuals a highly developed 1 One is reminded of the song of the sentry before the House of Parliament in Gilbert and Sullivan's "lolanthe": " *T is strange how Nature doth contrive That every little boy or gal, That's born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative! " RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 253 sentiment and reverence for tradition as such, and an aesthetic sensibility to the mellowness, ripeness, and charm that so often accompany old things. 1 The new seems, as it often is, loud, brassy, vulgar, and hard. But there are other and equally important causes. Men trust and cherish the familiar in ideas, customs, and social organization, just as they trust and cherish old friends. They know what to expect from them; they have their well-noted excellences, and, while they have their defects, these also are definitely known and can be defi- nitely reckoned with. The old order may not be perfect, but it is an order, and an order whose outlines and possibilities are known and predictable. Change means change to the unaccustomed and the unfamiliar. And the unaccustomed and the unfamiliar, as already pointed out, normally arouse fear. One of the conventional phrases (which has become conventional because it is accurate) with which changes have been greeted is the clich6, "we view with alarm." No small part of genuine opposition to change comes from the cautious and conscientious types of mind which will not sanction the reckless taking of chances, especially where the interests of large groups are concerned, which want to know precisely where a change will lead. Such a mind holds off from com- mitting society to making changes that will put a situation beyond control and lead to unforeseen and uncontrollable dangers. Especially is this felt by the administrator, by the man who has experience with the difficulties of putting ideas in practice, who knows how vastly more difficult it is to oper- ate with people than with paper. 2 The man of affairs knows 1 "Oxford," said a distinguished visitor to that venerable institution, "looks just as it ought to look." And one is reminded of the story of the American lady who, admiring the smooth lawns at Oxford, asked a gardenei how they managed to give them that velvet gloss. " We roll them, madam,' he said, "for eight hundred years." 1 Thus writes Catharine II, in a letter to Diderot, the French philosopher and humanitarian: " M. Diderot, in all your schemes of reform, you entirely forget the difference in our position; you work only on paper, which endures all things; it offers no obstacle, either to your pen or your imagination. But I, poor Empress that I am, work oa a far more delicate and irritable sub* stance, the human skin." S54 HUMAN TRAITS how easy it is to check and change ideas in one's mind, but knows also the uncontrollable momentum of ideas when they are acted upon by vast numbers of men. Again, the maintenance of ways that have been practiced in the past has a large hold over people, for reasons already discussed in the chapter on Habit. The old and the accus- tomed are comfortable and facile; change means inconven- ience and frustration of habitual desires. This is in part the explanation of the increasing conservatism of men as they grow older. Not only do they have a keener sense of the difficulty of introducing changes, but their own fixed habits of mind and emotion make part of the difficulty. They like the old ways and persist in them just as they like and keep old books, old friends, and old shoes. Romantic idealization of the past. Reverence for the past may also be due to a romantic idealization of it. In such cases, it is not an interest hi maintaining the present order; it is rather a contempt for the present and wistful yearning for the "good old days." Every one indulges more or less in such idealization. Such halos are made possible because we retain the pleasant rather than the painful and dreary aspects of our past experience. The college alumnus return- ing to the campus tells of the since unsurpassed intellectual and athletic feats of the freshman class of which he was a member. The elderly gentleman sighs over his newspaper at the bad ways into which the world is degenerating, and yearns for the old days when the plays were better, con- versation more interesting, houses more comfortable, and men more loyal. In similar trivial instances we are all in- clined to indulge in such mythology. The universality and age of this tendency has been well described by a student of Greek civilization. This is the belief of the old school of every age there was once a "good" time; and it matters not at all in the study of moral ideals that no such time can be shown to have existed. The men of the fourth century [B.C.] say that it was in the fifth; those of the fifth RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 255 say it was in the sixth; and so on infinitely. The same ideal was at work when William Morris looked to the thirteenth century, forget- ting that Dante looked to a still earlier period; and both forgot that the men of that earlier period said the same "not now, indeed, but before us men were happy." So simpler men incline to say that then- grandfathers were fine fellows, but the "old college is going to the dogs," or "the House of Commons is not what it was once," for reverence and faith and manliness once ruled the world. The old school lives upon an ignorance of history; it is genuinely moved by a simple moral ideal of life and character which its own imagination has created. And when evil becomes obvious, it is the new-fangled notions that are to blame. "Trying new dodges" has brought Athens down in the world as Aristophanes in 393 B.C. makes his protagonist say: "And would it not have saved the Athenian state, If she kept to what was good, and did not try Always some new plan?" l On a large scale the romantic idealization of the past has been made into a philosophy of history. The "golden age," instead of being put in a roseate and remote future, is put in an equally remote and roseate past. The Greek legends were fond of a golden age when the gods moved among men. The Garden of Eden is the Christian apotheosis of the world's perfections. Various philosophers have pointed out the fallacy of finding such a mythological locus for our ideals, and evolution and the general revelations of history have indicated the completely mythical character of the golden age. His- tory may, in general, be said to reveal that, whatever the imperfections of our own age, we have immeasurably im- proved in many pronounced respects over conditions earlier than our own. The idealized picture of the Middle Ages with its guardsmen and its courtly knights and ladies, is coming, with increasing historical information, to seem insignificant and untrue in comparison with the unspeakable hardships of the mass of men, the evil social and sanitary conditions, the plagues and pestilences which were as much a part of it. The picture of the ideally gentle and benevolent attitude of the * C. Delisle Burns: Greek Ideals, pp. 118-19. 256 HUMAN TRAITS master to his slaves is by no means regarded as a typical p!c ture of conditions of slave labor in the South. We know, positively, on the other hand, that our medicine and surgery, our scientific and industrial methods, our production and our resources are incomparably greater than those of any earlier period in history, as are the possibilities of the control of Nature still unrealized. If there were time I might try to show that progress in knowledge and its application to the alleviation of man's estate is more rapid now than ever before. But this scarcely needs formal proof; it is so obvious. A few years ago an eminent French litterateur, Brunetiere, declared science bankrupt. This was on the eve of the discoveries in radio-activity which have opened up great vistas of possible human readjustments if we could but learn to control and utilize the inex- haustible sources of power that lie in the atom. It was on the eve of the discovery of the function of the white blood corpuscles, which clears the way for indefinite advance in medicine. Only a poor dis- couraged man of letters could think for a moment that science was bankrupt. No one entitled to an opinion on the subject believes that we have made more than a beginning in penetrating the secrets of the organic and inorganic worlds. 1 Even hi the face of these facts, reverence for the past may amount to such religious veneration that change may come literally to be regarded as sacrilegious. In primitive tribes the reasons for this insistence are clear. Rites and rituals are used to secure the favor of the gods and any departure from traditional customs is looked upon as fraught with actual dan- ger. But the past, as it lives in established forms and prac- tices, is still by many, and in highly advanced societies, al- most religiously cherished, sustained, and perpetuated. Every college, religion, and country has its traditional forms of life and practice, any infringement of which is regarded with the gravest disapproval. 2 In social life, generally, there are fixed forms for given occasions, forms of address, greeting, conver- sation, and clothes, all that commonly goes under the name of 1 Robinson: The New History, p. 262. * It has been said that a custom repeated on a college campus two years la succession constitutes a tradition. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 257 the " conventions " or " proprieties." In law, as is well known, there is developed sometimes to an almost absurd degree a ritual of procedure. In religion, traditional values become embodied in fixed rituals of music, processional, and prayer. In education, especially higher education, there has developed a fairly stable tradition in the granting of degrees, the ele- ments of a curriculum, the forms of examination, and the like. To certain types of mind, fixed forms in all these fields have come to be regarded as of intrinsic importance. Love of " good form," the classicist point of view at its best, may develop into sheer pedantry and Pharisaism, an insistence on the fixed form when the intent is changed or forgotten, a re- gard for the letter rather than the spirit of the law. In a large number of cases, the fixed modes of life and practice which are our inheritance come to be regarded as symbols of eternal and changeless values. Thus many highly intelligent men find ritual in religion and traditional customs in education or in social life freighted with symbolic significance, and any infringement of them as almost sacrilegious in character. Change synonymous with evil. Change, again, may be dis- couraged by those who hold, with more or less sincerity, that no good can come of it. Such a position may, and frequently is, maintained by those in whom fortunate accident of birth, favored social position, exuberant optimism, or a stanch and resilient faith, induces the belief that the social order and social practices, education, law, customs, economic condi- tions, science, art, et al., are completely satisfactory. Like *'ippa, in Browning's poem, they are satisfied that "God's in His Heaven; all's right with the world." That there are no imperfections, in manners, politics, or morals, in our present social order, that there are no improvements which good-will, energy, and intelligence can effect, few will maintain without qualification. To do so implies, when sin- cere, extraordinary blindness to the facts, for example, of poverty and disease, which, though they do not happen to touch a particular individual, are patent and ubiquitous 258 HUMAN TRAITS enough. In the face of undeniable evils the position that the ways we have inherited are completely adequate to our con- temporary problems cannot be ingenuously maintained. The position more generally expounded by the opponents of change is that OUT present modes of lif e give us the best possi- ble results, considering the limitations of nature and human nature, and that the customs, institutions, and ideas we now have are the fruits of a ripe, a mellow, and a tune-tested wis- dom, that any radical innovations would, on the whole, put us in a worse position than that in which we find ourselves. Persons taking this attitude discount every suggested im- provement on the ground that, even though intrinsically good, it will bring a host of inevitable evils with it, and that, all things considered, we had better leave well enough alone. Some extreme exponents of this doctrine maintain, as did some of the Hebrew prophets, that whatever evils are ours are our own fault, that fault consisting in a lapse from the accus- tomed ancient ways. To continue without abatement the established ways is the surest road to happiness. Education, social customs, political organization, these are sound and wholesome as they are; and modification means interference with the works and processes of reason. "All Nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right." * Later Hegel developed an elaborate philosophy of history in which he tried to demonstrate that the history of the past was one long exemplification of reason; that each event that happened was part of the great cosmic scheme, an indispensa- ble syllable of the Divine Idea as it moved through history; each action part of the increasing purpose that runs through the ages. That these contentions are, to say the least, ex- 1 Pope: Essay on Man, epistle i, lines 289 ff. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 259 trerae, will appear presently in the statement of the opposite position which sees nothing in the past but a long succession of blunders, evils, and stupidities. " Order " versus change. Finally, genuine opposition to change arises from those who fear the instability which it im- plies. Continuation in established ways makes for integra- tion, discipline, and stability. It makes possible the con- verging of means toward an end, it cumulates efforts resulting in definite achievement. In so far as we do accomplish any- thing of significance, we must move along stable and determi- nate lines; we must be able to count on the future. 1 It has already been pointed out that it is man's docility to learning, his long period of infancy 2 which makes his eventual achieve- ments possible. But it is man's persistence in the habits he has acquired that is in part responsible for his progress. In individual life, the utility of persistence, and concentra- tion of effort upon a definite piece of work, have been suffi- ciently stressed by moralists, both popular and professional. "A rolling stone gathers no moss," is as true psychologi- cally as it is physically. Any outstanding accomplishment, whether in business, scholarship, science, or literature, de- mands perseverance in definite courses of action. We are inclined, and usually with reason, to suspect the effective- ness of a man who has half a dozen professions in half as many years. Such vacillations produce whimsical and scat- tered movements; but they are fruitless in results; they liter- ally "get nowhere." Just as, in the case of individuals, any significant achieve- ments require persistent convergence of means toward a defi- nite end, so is it in the case of social groups. No great busi- ness organizations are built up through continual variations of policy. Similarly, in the building up of a university, a government department, a state, or a social order, consecutive and disciplined persistence in established ways is a requisite of progress. Without such continuous organization of efforts 1 The uncertainty that business men feel during a presidential campaig \ is an illustration. * See ante, p. 10. 260 HUMAN TRAITS toward fixed goals, action becomes frivolous and fragmentary, a wind along a waste. The history of the English people has elicited the admiration of philosophers and historians because it has been such a gradual and deliberate movement, such a measured and certain progress toward political and social freedom. To those who appreciate the value of unity of action, of the assured fruits of cumulative and consistent action along a given path, change as such seems fraught with danger. Nor is it specific dangers they fear so much as the loss of moral fiber, the scattering of energies, the waste and futility that are frequently the net result of casual drif tings with every wind that blows. No one has more eloquently expressed this view than Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the French Revolution: But one of the first and most leading principles on which the com- monwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary pos- sessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would be little better than the flies of e summer. ......... To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest preju- dice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions, but with due caution ; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. 1 * Edmund Burke- Reflections on the French Revolution (George Bell & SOBS, 1888), pp. 366-68. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 261 Personal or ckss opposition to change. Sincere fear of the possible evils of novelty in the disorganization which it pro- motes, habituation to established ways, or a sentimental and aesthetic allegiance to them all these are factors that deter- mine genuine opposition to change. But aversion to change may be generalized into a philosophical attitude by those who have special personal or class reasons for disliking specific changes. The hand-workers hi the early nineteenth century stoned the machinists and machines which threw them out of employment. Every change does discommode some class or classes of persons, and part of the opposition to specific changes comes from those whom they would adversely affect. It is not surprising that liquor interests should be opposed to prohibition, that theatrical managers should have protested against a tax on the theater, or those with great incomes against an excess profits tax. Selfish opposition to specific changes is, indeed, frequently veiled in the disguise of plausi- ble reasons for opposition to change in general. Those who fear the results to their own personal or class interests of some of the radical social legislation of our own day may disguise those more or less consciously realized motives under the form of impartial philosophical opposition to social change in gen- eral. They may find philosophical justification for maintain- ing unmodified an established order which redounds to their own advantage. Uncritical disparagement. The other extreme is repre- sented by the position that old things are bad because they are old, and new things good because they are new. This is illustrated in an extreme though trivial form by faddists of every kind. There are people who chiefly pride themselves on being up-to-the-minute, and exhibit an almost pathological fear of being behind the times. This thirst for the novel is seen on various levels, from those who wear the newest styles, and dine at the newest hotels, to those who make a point of reading only the newest books, hearing only the newest music, and discussing the latest theories. For such temperaments, 262 HUMAN TRAITS and more or less to most people, there is an intrinsic glamour about the word "new." The physical qualities that are so often associated with newness are carried over into social and intellectual matters, where they do not so completely apply. The new is bright and unf rayed; it has not yet suffered senil- ity and decay. The new is smart and striking; it catches the eye and \he attention. Just as old things are dog-eared, worn, and tattered, so are old institutions, habits, and ideas. Just as we want the newest books and phonographs, the latest conveniences in housing and sanitation, so we want the lat- est modernities in political, social, and intellectual matters. Especially about new ideas, there is the freshness and infinite possibility of youth; every new idea is as yet an unbroken promise. It has not been subjected to the frustrations, dis- illusions, and compromises to which all theory is subjected in the world of action. 1 Every new idea is an experiment, a possibility, a hope. It may be the long-awaited miracle; it may be the prayed-for solution of all our difficulties. This susceptibility to the novel is peculiarly displayed by those who see nothing but evil in the old. Against the out- worn past with its disillusions, its errors, its evils, and its hypocrisies, the new shines out in glorious contrast. There are persons who combine a very genuine sense of present evils with a resilient belief in the possibilities of change. The classic instance of this is seen in the Messianic idea. Even hi the worst of times, the pious Jew could count on the saving appearance of the Messiah. Every Utopian is as sure of the salvation promised by his prize solution as he is of the evils which it is intended to rectify. The ardent Socialist may 1 "Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity em- bodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world." (Bertrand Russell: Mysticism and Logic, pp. 60-61.) RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 63 equally divide his energies between pointing out the evils of the capitalist system, and the certain bliss of his Socialist republic. The past is nothing but a festering mass of evils; industry is nothing but slavery, religion nothing but supersti- tion, education nothing but dead traditional formalism, social life nothing but hypocrisy. Where the past is so darkly conceived, there comes an un- critical welcoming of anything new, anything that will take men away from it. Nothing could be worse than the present or past; anything as yet untried may be better. As Karl Marx told the working classes: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." The past is, by its ruthless critics, conceived not infre- quently as enchaining or enslaving. Particularly, the radical insists, are men enslaved by habits of thought, feeling, and action which are totally inadequate to our present problems and difficulties. War-like emotions, he points out, may have been useful in an earlier civilization, but are now a total dis- utility. Belief in magic may have been an asset to primitive man in his ignorance; it is not to modern man with his science. The institution of private property may have had its values in building up civilization; its utility is over. We still make stereotyped and archaic reactions where the situation has utterly changed. The institutions, ideas, and habits of the past are at once so compelling and so obsolete that we must make a clear break with the past; we must start with a clean slate. To continue, so we are told, is merely going further and further along the wrong paths; it is like continuing with a broken engine, or without a rudder. Critical examination of the past. That both positions just discussed are extreme, goes without saying. The past is neither all good nor all bad; it has achieved as well as it has erred. But it is, in any case, all we have. Without the knowledge, the customs, the institutions we have inherited, we should have no advantage at all over our ancestors of ten thousand years ago. Biologically we have not changed. The 264 HUMAN TRAITS past is our basic material. Each generation starts with what it finds in the way of cultural achievement, and builds upon that. Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should take a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the dis- covery is well-taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, antiquitas sceculi iuventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrograde, by a computation backwards from ourselves. 1 The past, save what we discover in our generation, is our sole storehouse of materials. And a very small part of our useful knowledge in the industrial arts, in science, in social organization and administration does come from our own generation. It is the accumulated experience of generations of men. We can, out of this mass of materials, select what- ever is useful in clarifying the issues of the present, whatever helps us to accomplish those purposes which we have, after critical consideration, decided to be useful and serviceable. If, for example, we decide to build a bridge, it is of importance that we know all that men have in the past discovered of mechanical relations and industrial art which will enable us to build a bridge well. If we want to establish an educational system in some backward portion of the world, it is useful for us to know what methods men have used in similar situations. Whatever we decide to do, we are so much the better off, if we know all that men before us have learned in analogous instances. But to use the inheritance of the past implies an analysis of present problems, and an acceptance of the course to be pursued. The experience of the past, the heritage of knowl- edge that has come down to us, is so various and extensive that choices must be made. The historian in writing even a comprehensive history of a country must still make choices and omissions. Similarly, in using knowledge inherited from the past as materials, we must have specific problems to 1 Bacon: The Advancement of Learning, Collected Works, vol. i, p 172. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 265 govern our choice. The statistician could collect innumerable statistics; he collects only those which have a bearing on his subject. The lawyer searches out that part of the legal tradi- tion which is applicable to his own case. Without some lead or clue we should lose ourselves in the multifariousness of transmitted knowledge at our disposal. To use the past as an instrument for furthering present purposes implies neither veneration nor disparagement of it. We neither condemn nor praise the past as a whole; we regard specific institutions, customs, or ideas, as adequate or inade- quate, as serviceable or disserviceable. In general, it may be said that the value of any still extant part of the past, be it a work of art, a habit, a tradition, has very little to do with its origin. The instinct of eating is still useful though it has a long history. The works of the Old Masters are not really great because they are old, nor are the works of contempora- ries either good or bad because they are new. Man himself is to be estimated no differently, whether he is descended from the angels or the apes. If we would appreciate our own morals and religion we are often advised to consider primitive man and his institutions. If we would evaluate marriage or property, we are often directed to study our remote ancestors. . . . Such considerations as these have diverse effects according to our temperaments. They quite uniformly pro- duce, however, disillusionment and sophistication. . . . This exalta- tion of the past, as the ancestral home of all that we are, may make us regret our loss of illusions and our disconcerting enlightenment. . . . We may break with the past, scorn an inheritance so redolent of blood and lust and superstition, revel in an emancipation unguided by the discipline of centuries, strive to create a new world every day, and imagine that, at last, we have begun to make progress. 1 The standards of value of the things we have or do or say, the approvals or disapprovals we should logically accord them, are determined not by their history, not by their past, but by their uses in the living present in which we live. An institu- tion may have served the purposes of a bygone generation; it Woodbridgc: The Purpose of Hitiory, p. 72. 266 HUMAN TRAITS does not follow that it thereby serves our own. The reverse may similarly be true. For us the specific features of our social inheritance depend upon the ends or purposes which we reflectively decide upon and accept. Whether capital punish- ment is good or evil; whether private property is an adequate or inadequate institution for social welfare; whether marriage is a perfect or an imperfect institution; whether collective bargaining, competitive industry, old age insurance, income taxes, nationalization of railroads are useful or pernicious depends neither on their age nor their novelty. Then* value is determined by their relevancy to our own ideals, by the extent to which they hinder or promote the results which we consciously desire. The past may be studied with a view to clarifying present issues. In the first place, we may study past successes and failures in order to guide our actions in present similar situa- tions. A man setting out to organize and administer a news- paper will benefit by the experiences others have had in the same situation. In the same way, we can learn from past history something, at least, bearing on present political and social issues. It is true enough that history has been much misused for the drawing of lessons and guidance. As Pro- fessor Robinson says: To-day, however, one rarely finds 'a historical student who would venture to recommend statesmen, warriors, and moralists to place any confidence whatsoever in historical analogies and warnings, for the supposed analogies usually prove illusive on inspection, and the warnings impertinent. Whether or no Napoleon was ever able in his own campaigns to make any practical use of the accounts he had read of those of Alexander and Crcsar, it is quite certain that Admiral Togo would have derived no useful hints from Nelson's tactics at Alexandria or Trafalgar. Our situation is so novel that it would seem as if political and military precedents of even a century ago could have no possible value. As for our present " anxious morality," as Maeterlinck calls it, it seems equally clear that the sinful extrava- gances of Sardanapalus and Nero, and the conspicuous public virtue of Aristides and the Horatii, are alike impotent to promote it. 1 1 Robinson : The New History, p. 36. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 267 But situations are, within limits, duplicated in historical processes, and it is illuminating at least to see wherein men failed and wherein they succeeded in the things they set them- selves to do. The history of labor legislation certainly testi- fies to the effectiveness of "collective bargaining" in securing improved labor conditions, as the history of strikes does also to the public loss and injury incident to this kind of industrial warfare. If compulsory arbitration has been a successful method of dealing with labor difficulties hi Australia in the past, we can, by a careful study and comparison of conditions there and conditions current in our country at the present, illuminate and clarify our own problems. A campaign man- ager in one presidential campaign does not forget what was effective in the last, nor does he hesitate to profit by his mis- takes or those of others. An impartial survey of the heritage of the past undertakes critically to examine institutions, customs, ideas still current with a view to determining their relevancy and utility to our present needs. This demands, on the one hand, clarity as to what those needs are, and, on the other hand, freedom from prejudice for or against existing modes of life simply because they have a history. A critical examination of the past amounts practically to a taking stock, a summary of our social assets and liabilities. We shall find our ideas, for ex- ample, and our customs, a strange mixture of useful preserva- tions, and absurd or positively harmful relics of the past. Ideas which were natural and useful enough in the situation in which they originated, live on into a totally changed situa- tion, along with other ideas, like that of gravitation, which are as true and as useful now as when they were first enunciated. Many customs and institutions which may be found to have as great utility now as when they were first practiced genera- tions ago, the customs and institutions, let us say, of family life, may be found persisting along with customs and institu- tions, like excess legal formalism (or, as their opponents claim, a bi-cameral legislative system or a two-party system) which t68 HUMAN TRAITS may come generally to be regarded as impediments to prog- ress. 1 The unprejudiced observer, scientifically interested in preserving those forms and mechanisms of social life which are of genuine service to his own generation, will not condemn or applaud "the past" en masse. He will, rather, examine it in specific detail. He will not, for example, dismiss classical education, because it is classical or old. He will rather try experimentally to determine the actual consequences in the case of those who study the classics. He will examine the claims made for the study, try in specific cases to find out whether those claims are fulfilled, and condemn or approve the study, say, of Latin and Greek, according to his estimate of the desirability or undesirability of those consequences. If he finds, for example, that the study of Latin does promote general literary appreciation, his decision that it should or should not be continued will depend on his opinion of the value of general literary appreciation as compared with other values in an industrial civilization. Similarly, with "freedom of con- tract," "freedom of the seas," military service, bi-cameral systems, party caucuses, presidential veto, and all the other political and social heritages of the past. But a man who impartially examines the past will usually exhibit also an appreciation of its attainments and a sense of the present good to which it has been instrumental. He will not glibly dismiss institutions, habits, methods of life that are the slow accumulations of centuries. He will have a sense of the continuous efforts and energies that have gone into the making of contemporary civilization. He will have, in suggesting ruthless innovations, a sobering sense of the gradual evolution that has made present institutions, habits, ideas, what they are. The student of the past knows, moreover, that the present without its background of history is literally meaningless. ! The situation in the case of outworn social institutions is paralleled in the case of the human appendix, once possessing a function in the digestive sys- tem of primitive man, but now useless and likely on occasion to become a positive disutility. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 269 In the words of a well-known student of the development of human culture: Progress, degradation, survival, modification, are all modes of the connection that binds together the complex network of civilization. It needs but a glance into the trivial details of our own daily life to set us thinking how far we are really its originators, and how far but the transmitters and modifiers of the results of long past ages Looking round the rooms we live in, we may try here how far he who knows only his own time can be capable of rightly comprehending even that. Here is the honeysuckle of Assyria, there the fleur-de-lis of Anjou, a cornice with a Greek border runs round the ceiling, the style of Louis XIV and its parent the Renaissance share the looking glass between them. Transformed, shifted or mutilated, such ele- ments of art still carry their history plainly stamped upon them. . . . It is thus even with the fashion of the clothes men wear. The ridicu- lous little tails of the German postilion's coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd rudiments; but the English clergyman's bands no longer so convey then* history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the intermediate stages through which they came down from the more serviceable wide collars, such as Milton wears in his portrait, and which gave their name to the " band-box " they used to be kept in. In fact, the books of costume showing how one garment grew or shrank by gradual stages and passed into another, illustrate with much force and clear- ness the nature of the change and growth, revival and decay, which go on from year to year in more important matters of life. In books, again, we see each writer not for and by himself, but occupying his proper place in history; we look through each philosopher, mathe- matician, chemist, poet, into the background of his education through Leibnitz into Descartes, through Dalton into Priestly, through Milton into Homer. 1 Besides understanding the present better in terms of its history, there is much in the heritage of the past, especially of its finished products, that the citizen of contemporary civilization will wish preserved for its own sake. The works of art, of music, and of li terature which are handed down to us are "possessions forever." Whatever be the limitations of our social inheritance, as instruments for the solution of our difficulties, those finished products which constitute the " best * Tylor, Edward B.: Primitive Culture, vol. i, pp. 17 fl. 870 HUMAN TRAITS that has been known and thought" in the world are beyond cavil. They may not solve our problems, but they immensely enrich and broaden our lives. They are enjoyed because they are intrinsically beautiful, but also because they widen men's sympathies and broaden the scope of contemporary purposes and ideals. The culture that this transmission of racial experience makes pos- sible, can be made perfect by the critical spirit alone, and, indeed, may be said to be one with it. For who is the true critic but he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure. And who is the true man of culture, if not he in whom fine scholarship and fastidious rejection . . . develops that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the real spirit, as it is the real fruit of the intellectual life, and thus attains to intellectual clar- ity; and having learned the best that is known and thought in the world, lives it is not fanciful to say so among the Immortals. 1 The student of Greek life knows that the Greeks in their view of Nature and of morals, in their conception of the way life should be lived, in then: discrimination of the beautiful, have still much to teach us. He knows, however much we may have outlived the hierarchy of obedience which consti- tutes mediaeval social and political life, we should do well to recover the humility in living, the craftsmanship in industry, and precision in thinking which constituted so conspicuous features of mediaeval civilization. He knows that progress is not altogether measured by flying machines and wireless telegraphy. He is aware that speed and quantity, the key values in an industrial civilization, are not the only values that ever have been, or ever should be cherished by mankind. Limitations of the past. Along with a sensitive appre- ciation of the achievements and values of the past, goes, in the impartial critic, an acknowledgment of its limitations. We can appreciate the distinctive contributions of Greek cul- ture without setting up Greek life as an ultimate ideal. We know that with all the beauty attained and expressed in Oscar Wilde: Intentions, pp. 192-93. RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 271 their art and, to a certain extent, in their civilization, the Athenians yet sacrificed the majority to a life of slavery in order that the minority might lead a life of the spirit, that their religion had its notable crudities and cruelties, that their science was trivial, and their control of Nature neg- ligible. In the words of one of their most thoroughgoing admirers: The harmony of the Greeks contained in itself the factors of its own destruction. And in spite of the fascination which constantly fixes our gaze on that fairest and happiest halting place in the secular march of man, it was not there, any more than here, that he was destined to find an ultimate reconciliation and repose. 1 Again, we know the many beautiful features of mediaeval life through its painting and poetry and religion. We know Saint Francis and are familiar with the heroic records of saintliness and renunciation. We know the great cathedrals, the pageantry and splendor, the exquisite handicraft, the tapestries and illuminated manuscripts, the vast learning and the incomparable dialectic. We know also the social injustices, the misery and squalor, the ignorance in which the mass of the people lived. We can stop, therefore, neither in perpetual adoration of nor perpetual caviling at the past. Each age had its special excel- lences and its special defects, both from the point of view of the ideals then current, and those current in our own day. In so far as the past is dead and over with, we cannot legiti- mately criticize it with standards of our own day. We cannot blame the Greeks for sanctioning slavery, nor criticize James I because he was not a thoroughgoing democrat. But in so far as the past still lives, it is open to critical examination and revision. Traditions, customs, ideas, and institutions in- herited from the past, which still control us, are subject to modification. We are justified in welcoming changes and modifications which, after careful inquiry, seem clearly to promise betterment in the life of the group. Thus to welcome * O. Lowes Dickinson: Greek View of Life, p. 248. 272 HUMAN TRAITS changes which upon experimental evidence show clearly the benefits that will accrue to the group, is not radicalism. Nor is opposition to changes on the ground that upon critical examination they give promise of harmful consequences, con- servatism. Verdicts for or against change reached on such a basis reflect the spirit and technique of experimental science. They reflect the desire to settle a course of action on the basis of its results in practice rather than on any preconceived prejudices hi favor either of stability or change. To the crit- ical mind, neither stability nor change is an end hi itself. There is no hypnotism about "things as they are"; no lure about things as they have not yet been. The problem is shifted to a detailed and thoroughgoing inquiry into the con- sequences of specific changes in social habits, ideas and insti- tutions, education, business, and industry. Whether changes should or should not win critical approval depends on the kind of ideals or purposes we set ourselves and, secondly, on the practicability of the proposed changes. Change may thus be opposed or approved, in a given case, on the grounds of desirability or feasibility. Whether a change is or is not de- sirable depends on the ideals of the individual or the group. Whether it is or is not feasible is a matter open increasingly to scientific determination. Thus a city may hire experts to discover what land of transportation or educational system will best serve the city's needs. But whether it will or will not spend the money necessary depends on the social interests current. Education as the transmitter of the past. Education is the process by which society undertakes the transmission of its social heritage. Indeed the mam function of education in static societies is the initiation of the young into already established customs and traditions. It is the method used to hand down those social habits which the influential and articulate classes in a society regard as important enough to have early fixed in its young members. The past is simply transmitted, handed down en masse. It is a set of patterns RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY 273 to be imitated, of ideals to be continued, of mechanisms for attaining the fixed purposes which are current in the group. In progressive societies education may be used not simply to hand down habits of doing, feeling, and thinking, from the older generation to the younger, but to make habitual in the young reflective consideration of the ends which must be attained, and reflective inquiry into the means for attaining them. The past will not be handed down in indiscriminate completeness. The present and its problems are regarded as the standard of importance, and the past is considered as an incomparable reservoir of materials and methods which may contribute to the ends sought in the present. But there is so much material and so little time, that selection must be made. Many things in the past, interesting on their own merits, must be omitted in favor of those habits, traditions, and recorded files of knowledge which are most fruitful and enlightening in the attainment of contemporary purposes. What those pur- poses are depends, of course, on ideals of the group in control of the process of education. But these purposes of ideals may be derived from present situations and not taken merely be- cause they have long been current in the group. Thus, in a predominantly industrial civilization, it may be found more advisable and important to transmit the scientific and tech- nical methods of control which men have acquired in recent generations than the traditional liberal arts. Science may be found more important than the humanities, medicine than moral theory. Even such education that tends to call itself "liberal" or "cultural" is effective and genuine education just in so far as it does illuminate the world in which we live. The religion and art, the literature and life of the past broaden the meaning and the background of our lives. They are valu- able just because they do enrich the lives of those who are exposed to their influence. If studying the great literature and the art of the past did not clarify the mind and emanci- pate the spirit, enabling men to live more richly in the pres- ent, they would hardly be as studiously cherished and trans- 274 HUMAN TRAITS mitted as they are. We are, after all, living in the present. The culture of the past either does or does not illuminate it. If it does not it is a competing environment, a shadow world in which we may play truant from actuality, but which brings neither "sweetness nor light" to the actual world in which we live. PART H THE CAREER OF REASON THE foregoing analysis of human behavior might thus be briefly summarized. We found that man is born a creature with certain tendencies to act in certain definite ways, tenden- cies which he largely possesses in common with the lower ani- mals. We found also that man could learn by trial and error, that his original instinctive equipment could be modified. Thus far in his mental life man is indistinguishable from the beasts. But man's peculiar capacity, it appeared, lay in his ability to think, to control his actions in the light of a future, to choose one response rather than another because of its consequences, which he could foresee and prefer. This capac- ity for reflection, for formulating a purpose and being able to obtain it, we found to be practical in its origins, but persisting on its own account in the disinterested inquiry of philosophy and science and the free imaginative construction of art. And in all man's behavior, whether on the plane of instinct, habit, or reflection, we found action to be accompanied by emotion, by love and hate, anger and awe, which might at once impede action by confusing it, or sustain it by giving it a vivid and compelling motive. The second part of the book was devoted to an analysis of the various specific traits which human beings display and the consequences that these have in men's relations with one another. Under certain conditions, one or another of these may become predominant; in particular historical conditions, one or another of them may have a high social value or the reverse. These traits vary in different individuals; hi any of them, a man may be totally defective or abnormally developed. But taken in general, they constitute the changeless pattern 76 THE CAREER OF REASON of human nature, and fix the conditions and the limits of action. But while these universal traits determine what man may do, and fix definitively the boundaries of human possibility, within these limits the race has a wide choice of ideals and attainments. The standards of what man will and should do, within the boundaries of the nature which is his inheritance, are to be found not in his original impulses, but in his mind and imagination. The human being is gifted with the ability to imagine a future more desirable than the present, and to contrive ingeniously in behalf of anticipated or imagined goods. These anticipated goods we call ideals, and these ideals arise, in the last analysis, out of the initial and inborn hungers and cravings of men. " Intellect is of the same flesh and blood with all the instincts, a brother whose superiority lies in his power to appreciate, harmonize, and save them all." The function of reason is not to set itself over against men's orig- inal desires, but to envisage ideals and devise instruments whereby they may all, so far as nature allows, be fulfilled. Man's reason, then, which has its roots in his instincts, is the means of their harmonious fulfillment. It attempts, in the various fields of experience, to effect an adjustment be- tween man's competing desires, and between man and his en- vironment. If instincts were left each to its own free course, they would all be frustrated; if man did not learn reflectively to control his environment, and to make it subserve his own ends, he would be a helpless pygmy soon obliterated by the incomparably more powerful forces of Nature. These various attempts of man to effect an adjustment of his passions with one another, and his life to his environment, may be described as the "Career of Reason." In this career man has formulated many ideals, not a small number of which have led him into error, disillusion, and unhappiness. Some- times they have misled him by promising him fulfillments that were in the nature of things unattainable. They have THE CAREER OF REASON 277 added to the real evils of life a longing after impossible goods, goods which an informed intelligence would early have dis- missed as unattainable. Man has disappointed himself by counting on joys which, had he been less incorrigibly addicted to imaginative illusions, he should never have expected. Sometimes he has framed ideals which could be fulfilled, but only at the expense of a large proportion of natural and irre- pressible human desires. Such, for example, have been the one-sided ascetic ideals of Stoicism or Puritanism, which in their attempt to give order and form to life, crush and distort a considerable portion of it. The same is true of mysticism which seeks frequently to attain lif e by altogether denying its instinctive animal basis. Yet though reason has led men astray, it is the only and ultimate hope of man's happiness. It is responsible for whatever success man has had hi master- ing the turmoil of his own passions and the obstacles of an environment "which was not made for him but in which he grew." It has given point and justice to Swinburne's exult- ant boast: "Glory to man in the highest! For man is the master of things!" This Career of Reason has taken various parallel fulfill- ments, and in each of them man has in varying degrees at- tained mastery. Religion arose as one of the earliest ways by which man attempted to win for himself a secure place in the cosmic order. Science, in its earliest forms hardly distinguish- able from religion, is man's persistent attempt to discover the nature of things, and to exploit that discovery for his own good. Art is again an instance of man's march toward mas- tery. Beginning, in the broadest sense, in the industrial arts, in agriculture and handicrafts, it passes, as it were by acci- dent, from the necessary to the beautiful. Having in his needful business fortuitously created beautiful objects, man comes to create them intentionally, both for their own sake and for the sheer pleasure of creation. Finally in morals men have endeavored to construct for 278 THE CAREER OF REASON themselves codes of conduct, ideals of life, in which no possible good should be needlessly or recklessly sacrificed, and in which men might live together as happily as is permitted by the nature which is at once their life and their habitation. The Career of Reason in these various fields we shall briefly trace and describe. We must expect to find, as in any career, how- ever successful, failures along with the triumphs, and, as in any notable career still unfinished, possibility and great promise. Man's reason and imagination have a long past; they have also an indefinite future. Man has in the name of reason made many errors; but to reason he owes his chief success, and with increasing experience he may be expected to attain continually to a more certain and effective wisdom. With these provisos, let us address ourselves to the Career of Reason, beginning with religion. CHAPTER XH RELIGION AND THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE The religious experience. Since human nature remains constant hi its essential traits, despite the variations it exhib- its among different individuals, it is to be expected that cer- tain experiences should be fairly common and recurrent among all human beings. Joy and sorrow, love and hate, jubilance and despair, disillusion and rapture, triumph and frustration, these occur often, and to every man. They are, as it were, the sparks generated by the friction of human desires with the natural world in which they must, if anywhere, find fulfill- ment. Just such a normal, inevitable consequence of human nature in a natural world is the religious experience. It is common in more or less intense degree to almost all men, and may be studied objectively just as may any of the other uni- versal experiences of mankind. There are, however, certain peculiar difficulties in the study of the religious experience. Most men are by training emo- tionally committed to one particular religious creed which it is very difficult for them impartially to examine or to compare with others. In the second place, there is a confusion hi the minds of most people between the personal religious experi- ence, and the formal and external institution we commonly have in mind when we speak of "religion." When we ordi- narily use the term, we imply a set of dogmas, an institution, a reasoned theology, a ritual, a priesthood, all the apparatus and earmarks of institutionalized religion. We think of Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism, the whole welter of churches and creeds that have appeared in the history of mankind. But these are rather the outward vehicles and vestments of the religious experience than the experience itself. They are the social expressions and external instru- 280 THE CAREER OF REASON ments of the inner spiritual occurrence. But the latter is primary. If man had not first been religious, these would never have arisen. In the words of William James: In one sense at least, the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism. Churches when once established live at second hand upon tradition, but the founders of every Church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine. Not only the superhuman founders, the Christ, the Buddha, Mahomet, but all the originators of Christian sects have been in this case; so personal religion should still seem the primordial thing, even to those who esteem it incomplete. 1 Before we examine the social institutions and fixed appara- tus of ritual and of reasoned theology in which the religious Experience has become variously embodied, we must pause to analyze the experience itself. To be religious, as a personal experience, is, like being philosophical, to take a total attitude toward the universe. But the religious attitude is one of a somewhat specific kind. It is, one may arbitrarily but also somewhat f airly say, to sense or comprehend one's relation to the divine, however the divine be conceived. It is to have this sense and comprehension not only deeply, as one might hi a poetic or a philosophical mood, but to have it suffused with reverence. We shall presently see that the objects of venera- tion have had a different meaning for different individuals, groups, and generations. But whatever be the conception of the divine object, the religious attitude seems to 'have this stable feature. It is always an awed awareness on the part of the individual of his relation to that "something not him- self," and larger than himself, with whom the destinies of the universe seem to rest. This somehow sensed relation to the divine appears throughout all the varieties of religion that have appeared in the world, and among many individuals not popularly accounted religious. It is just such an experience, for example, that Wordsworth > James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 30. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 281 expresses when he says in the "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey": "... And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." It is the same sense that comes over so-called worldly peo- ple when oppressed suddenly by a great sorrow, or uplifted by a sudden great joy, an awareness of a divine power that moves masterfully and mysteriously through the events of life, provoking on the part of finite creatures a strange and compelling reverence. This " divinity that shapes our ends" may be variously conceived. It may be an intimately real- ized personal God, "Our Father which art in Heaven." It may be such an abstract conception as the Laws of Nature or Scientific Law, such a religion as is expounded by the Tran- scendentalists, in particular by Emerson: These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance: thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. ... If a man is at heart just, then, in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immor- tality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with jus- tice. . . . For all things proceed out of the same spirit, which is differ- ently named, love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several snores which it washes. . . . The perception of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. 1 It may be conceived as Nature itself, as it was by Spinoza, 1 Emerson: Miacellaniet, quoted by James in Varietiet, pp. 32-33. 282 THE CAREER OF REASON for whom Natwe was identical with God. It may be the World-Soul which Shelley sings with such rapture: "That Light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining love, Which through the web of being, blindly wove, By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality." l In all these conceptions it still seems to be a hushed sense of reverential relationship to the divine power that most spe- cifically constitutes the religious experience. The latter ex- hibits certain recurrent elements, any of which may be present in a more intense degree in some individuals than in others, but all of which appear in some degree in most of the phenom- ena of personal life that we call religious. " The reality of the unseen." In the first place may be noted the sense of the actuality and nearness of the divine power, what James calls the "reality of the unseen," and what is frequently spoken of by religious men as "the pres- ence of God." .James quotes in this connection an interesting letter of James Russell Lowell's: I had a revelation last Friday evening. . . . Happening to say something of the presence of spirits of whom, as I said, I was often dimly aware, Mr. Putnam entered into an argument with me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking, the whole system seemed to rise up before me, like a vague'destiny looming from the abyss. I never before felt the spirit of God so keenly in me, and around me. The whole room seemed to me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with the presence of something I knew not what. I spoke with the calmness and clearness of a prophet. 2 The archives of the psychology of religion are crowded with instances of men who have felt deeply, intimately, and irrefutably the near and actual presence of God. This sense of the reality of an unseen Thing or Power is not always iden- 1 From Adonaia. * Lowell: Letters, l, p. 70. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 283 tified with God. There come moments in the lives of normal men and women when the world of experience seems alive with something that is apprehended through none of the five senses. There are times when things unseen, unheard, and untouched seem to have, nay, for those concerned, do have, a clearer and more unmistakable reality than the things we can touch, hear, and see. Sometimes, in the hearing of beautiful music, we sense a transcendent beauty which is something other than, something more real than, the specific harmonies which we physically hear. In rare moments of rapture, when the imagination or the affections are intensely stirred, we become intensely aware of this reality which is made known to us through none of the ordinary avenues of experience. The Unseen is not only vividly felt, but is deeply felt and regarded as a thing of deep significance, and is experi- enced in most cases with great inexplicable joy. And, not infrequently, this significant and beautiful Unseen Somewhat is identified with God. The sense of the reality of the divine, is, however, as it were, only the prerequisite of the religious experience. When an individual does have this sense, what interests the student of the psychology of religion is the attitude it provokes and the satisfactions it gives. These we can the better understand if we examine the conditions in an individual's experience which make this longing for the divine presence acute, and the general circumstances of human life which make it a continu- ous desire in many people. There are, to begin with, constant facts of experience which make the realization of the divine presence not only a satis- faction, but the indispensable "staff of life" for certain human beings. In their unfaltering faith in God's enduring and prox- imate actuality lies then: sole source of security and trust. For such persons a lapse or a lack of faith is the prelude to utter collapse. A vague general assurance of the depend- ability of the future is, for most people, a prerequisite for a sane and untroubled existence. Even those who live in un- 284 THE CAREER OF REASON reflective satisfaction with the fruits of the moment would find these moments less satisfactory were they not set in a background of reasonably fair promise. The exuberant opti- mist, when he stops to reflect, has a buoyant and inclusive faith in the essential goodness of man and the universe. Whitman stands out in this connection as the classic type. Evil and good were to him indifferently beautiful. He main- tained an incredibly large-hearted and magnanimous recep- tivity to all things great or small, charming or ugly, that lightened or blackened the face of the planet. While the average man accepts the universe with a less wholesale and indiscriminate appreciation, yet he does feel vaguely assured that the nature of things is ordered, har- monious, dependable, and regular, that affairs are, cosmically speaking, in a sound state. He feels a vast and comfortable solidity about the frame of things in which his life is set; he can depend on the familiar risings and settings of the sun, the recurrent and assured movement of the seasons. Were this trust suddenly removed, were the cosmic guarantee with- drawn, to live would be one long mortal terror. That this is precisely what does happen under such circumstances, the voluminous literature of melancholia sufficiently proves. The sense of insecurity takes various forms. Sometimes the patient experiences a profound and intimate conviction of the unreality of the world about him. His whole physical environment comes to seem a mere phantasy and a delusion. In some cases he finds himself unmoved by the normal inter- ests and excitements of men, unable to find any stimulus, value, or significance in the world. Esquirol observed the case of a very intelligent magistrate. . . . Every emotion appeared dead within him. He manifested neither perversion nor violence, but a complete absence of emotional reaction. If he went to the theater, which he did out of habit, he could find no pleasure there. The thought of his house, of his home, of his wife, and of his absent children, moved him as little, he said, as a theo- rem of Euclid. 1 1 Ribot: Psychology of the Emotions, p. 54. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 285 The sense of futility, of the flatness, staleness, and unprofit- ableness of the world, which is felt in such extreme forms by pronounced melancholiacs, is experienced sometimes, though to a lesser degree, by every sensitive mind that reflects much upon life. Such an attitude, it is true, arises principally dur- ing moments of fatigue and low vitality, and is undoubtedly organic in its origins, as for that matter is optimism. Again such a sense of world-weariness comes often in moments of personal disappointment and disillusion, when friends have proved false, ambitions empty, efforts wasted. At such times even the normal man echoes Swinburne's beautiful melan- choly: ; "We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure, To-day will die to-morrow, Time stoops to no man's lure; And love grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful, Sighs, and with eyes forgetful, Weeps that no loves endure. "From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving, Whatever gods may be, That no life lives, forever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river, Winds somewhere safe to sea." * Even the eager and exuberant, if sufficiently philosophical and generous-minded, may come, despite their own success, to a deep realization of the utter futility, meaninglessness, and stupidity of life, of the essential blindnesses, cruelties, and insecurities which seem to characterize the nature of things. Unless against this dark insight some reassuring faith arises, life may become almost unbearable. In extreme cases it has driven men to suicide. Take, for example, the picture of the universe as modern materialism presents it: 1 From A Garden of Proserpine. 286 THE CAREER OF REASON Purposeless . . . and void of meaning is the world which science reveals for our belief. . . . That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving, that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no in- tensity of thought or feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievements must inevitably be buried be- neath the de'bris of a universe in ruins all these things if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. 1 Such a prospect to the serious-minded and sensitive-spirited cannot but provoke the profoundest melancholy. There is, even for the most healthy-minded of us, sufficient ground for pessimism, bitterness, insecurity. Even if we personally largely through the accidents of circumstance happen to be successful, "our joy is a vulgar glee, not unlike the snicker of any rogue at his success." The utter futility and evanes- cence of earthly goods, beauties, and achievements is sensed at least sometimes by normally complacent souls. And so patent and'ubiquitous are the evidences of decay, disease, and death at our disposal, that they may easily be erected into a thoroughgoing philosophy of life: Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? . . . All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good so is the sinner; and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath. . . . For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. 1 Bertrand Russell: Philosophical Eeaays, pp. 60-61 ("The Free Man's Worship"). their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun. 1 Religion offers solace to those perturbed and passionate souls, among others, to whom these futilities have become a rankling, continuous torment and depression. When life on earth appears fragmentary and disordered, not only nonsense but terrifying nonsense, full of hideous injustices, sickening uncertainties, and cruel destructions, men have not infre- quently found a refuge in the divine. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." In the religious experience man finds life to be made clear, complete, and beautiful. What seems a contradictory frag- ment finds its precise niche in the divine scheme, what seems dark and cruel shines out in a setting of eternal beneficence and wisdom. The experience of the individual, even the hap- piest, is always partial, broken, and disordered. No ideal is ever completely realized, or if realized leaves some perfection to be desired. Men living in a natural existence imagine values and ideals which can never be realized there. In reli- gion, if anywhere, men have found perfection, and ultimate sufficiency. This perfection, completion, and clarification of life has been attained in various ways. The religious experience itself, when intense, may give to the individual apart from a rea- soned judgment, or from any actual change in his physical surroundings, a translucent insight during which he sees deeply, calmly, joyously into the beautiful eternal order of things. This mystic insight has been experienced on occasion by quite normal and prosaic men and women. While it lasts, reality seems to take on new colors and dimensions. It be- comes vivid, luminous, and intense. The mystic seems to rise to a higher level of consciousness, in which he experiences a universe more significant, ordered, and unified than any commonly experienced through the senses. One may take, 1 Ecckaiatta. 288 THE CAREER OF REASON as an example, such an instance autobiographically and anony- mously reported a few years ago, and well documented : It was not that for a few keyed-up moments I imagined all exist- ence as beautiful, but that my inner vision was cleared to the truth so that I saw the actual loveliness which is always there, but which we so rarely perceive; and I knew that every man, woman, bird, and tree, every living thing before me, was extravagantly beautiful, and extravagantly important. And as I beheld, my heart melted out of me in a rapture of love and delight. A nurse was walking past; the wind caught a strand of her hair and blew it out in a momentary gleam of sunshine, and never in my life before had I seen how beau- tiful beyond all belief is a woman's hair. Nor had I ever guessed how marvelous it is for a human being to walk. As for the internes in their white suits, I had never realized before the whiteness of white linen; but much more than that, I had never so much as dreamed of the beauty of young mannood. A little sparrow chirped and flew to a near-by branch, and I honestly believe that only "the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy" can in the least express the ecstasy of a bird's flight. I cannot express it, but I have seen it. Once out of all the gray days of my life I have looked into the heart of reality; I have witnessed the truth; I have seen life as it really is ravishingly, ecstatically, madly beautiful, and filled to overflowing with a wild joy, and a value unspeakable. For those glorified moments I was in love with every living thing before me the trees in the wind, the little birds flying, the nurses, the internes, the people who came and went. There was nothing that was alive that was not a miracle. Just to be alive was in itself a miracle. My very soul flowed out of me in a great joy. 1 The mystic experience is important in the study of religion because it has so frequently given those who have had it a very real feeling of "cosmic consciousness." The individual feels "for one luminously transparent conscious moment," at one with the universe; he has a realization at once rapturous and tranquil of the passionate and wonderful significance of things. He has moved "from the chill periphery to the radi- ant core." All the discrepancies which bestrew ordinary life are absent. All the negations of disappointment, all conflicts "Twenty Minutes of Reality," The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 117, p. 592. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 289 of desire disappear. The mystic lives perfection at first hand: "The One remains, tlie many change and pass, Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly, Life, like a dome of many colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity." This sense of splendid unity in which all the divisive and corroding elements of selfhood are obliterated has "to those who have been there " no refutation. " It is," writes William James, "an open question whether mystic states may not be superior points of view, windows through which the mind looks out on a more extensive and inclusive world." Whatever be the logical validity of the intense mystical insight, of his singular gift for a vivid and intimate union with eternity which has been known by so many mystics, the fruits of this insight are undeniable. During such a vision the world ts perfect. There is no fever or confusion, but rapture and rest. And to some degree, at a religious service, a momentous crisis, joy at deliverance or resignation at calamity, during beatific interludes of friendship or of love, men have felt a clear enveloping oneness with divinity. Such states of intense religious experience, however, are as transient as they are ineffable. Though they recur, they are not continuous, and something more than occasional vivid unions with the divine enter into the constant perfection with which the world, as it appears to the religious man, is endowed. He feels himself, in the first place, to be part of a world scheme in which ultimate perfection is secured. It has already been pointed out that any individual human life is characterized by negation, conflict, and disappointment. Our lives seem largely to be at the mercy of circumstance. Our inheritance is fixed for us without our connivance in the matter; accident determines in which social environment we happen to be born. And these two facts are the chief determinants of our careers. Even when successful we realize either the emptiness of the prize we had desired, or the distance we are in reality from 290 THE CAREER OF REASON the goal we had set ourselves. * Generalizing thus from his own experience, the individual notes the similar disheartening discrepancies throughout human life. He sees the good suffer, and the wicked prosper; the innocent die, and the guilty escape. Disease is no respecter of persons, and death comes to the just and the unjust alike. Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth and faileth not; their cow calveth and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God; depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit should we have if we pray unto him? l In contrast, in the religious experience man feels himself to be a part of a world scheme in which justice and righteousness are assured by an incontestable and invulnerable power"; "God 's in his Heaven; all's right with the world." Despite the grounds he has for doubt, Job robustly avers: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Calamities are but tem- porary; God will bring all things to a beautiful fruition. Or a man may feel that the evils he or others experience here are not real evils, that, seen sub specie ceternitatis, they would cease to be regarded as such. He may feel that God moves hi a mysterious way his wonders to perform, that "somehow good may come of ill." He may feel, as does the Christian believer, that all the evils and pains unjustly experi- enced in this world will be adjusted in the next. Whatever be my privations from earthly good, "in my Father's house 1 Job, chap. xxi. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 291 are many mansions." Immortality is, indeed, the religious man's faith in a second chance. The surety of a world to come, in which the blessed shall live in eternal bliss, is a com- pensation and a redress for the ills and frustrations of life in this world. Whatever be the seeming ills or injustices of life, there is eventual retribution, both to the just and the unjust. Once more to quote Emerson: And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutila- tion, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but pri- vation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaint- ances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods of men. 1 On a larger scale, from the cosmic rather than from the personal point of view, an individual, gifted with a large and charitable interest in the future of mankind, is secured and sustained by the feeling that he is a part of that procession headed to the "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." The lugubrious picture of an utterly mean- ingless world, blind, purposeless, and heartless, which mate- rialistic science reveals, is sufficient to wreck the equanimity of a sensitive and thoughtful mind. That is the sting of it, that in the vast drifting of the cosmic weather, though many a jewelled shore appears, and many an en- chanted cloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved i Emerson: Eiuay on Compensation. 292 THE CAREER OF REASON even as our world now lingers for our joy yet when these transient products are gone, nothing, absolutely nothing remains. Dead and gone are they, gone utterly from the very sphere and room of being. Without an echo, without a memory; without an influence on aught that may come after, to make it care for similar ideals. This utter wreck and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism, as at present understood. 1 A belief that a divine power governs the universe, that all these miscellaneous and inexplicable happenings will be gathered up into a smooth and ultimate perfection, gives faith, comfort, and solace. We are on the side of the angels, or rather the angels are on our side. Human passion, purpose, and endeavor are not wasted. They are small but not alto- gether negligible contributions to eventual cosmic good. And good is eventual. Perfection may be long delayed, but God's presence assures it. " Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." A world with a God in it to say the last word may indeed burn up or freeze, but we then think of Him as still mindful of the old ideals, and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that where He is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolu- tion not the absolutely final things.* Amid tragic errors and pitiful disillusions, men have yearned for "a benediction perfect and complete where they might cease to suffer and desire." This perfection religion has, as we have seen, accorded them in various ways. Some have found it in the immediate vision, the ecstatic union with the divine that, in intense degree, is peculiarly the mystic's. Some have found it in the assured belief that evil is itself an illu- sion, and, if rightly conceived, a beautiful dark shadow to set off by contrast the high lights of a divinely ordered cosmos, a minor note giving lyric and lovely poignancy to the celestial music. Some have rested their faith in a perfect world not here, but hereafter, "where the blessed would enter eternal bliss with God their master." Thus man has in religion found i James: Pragmatism, p. 105. * Ibid., p. 106. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 293 the fulfillment of his ideals, which always outrun the actual- ities amid which he lives. In the religious experience, in all of its forms throughout the ages, man has had the experience of perfection at first hand, in the immediate and rich in- tensity of the mystic ecstasy, in the serene faith of a life- long intuition or of a reasoned belief in the ultimate di- vinely assured lightness of things. Besides experiencing perfection, man has, in the sense of security and trust afforded by the religious experience, found release from the fret, the fever, the compulsion, and constric- tion under which so much of life must be lived. Whatever happens, the truly devout man has no fears or qualms. He has attained equanimity; the Lord is his shepherd; he shall not want. There is a serenity experienced by the genuinely faithful that the faithless may well envy. God is the believ- er's eternal watcher; a wise and merciful Providence, his in- finite guarantee. Whoever not only says but feels, "God's will be done" is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic array of martyrs, missionaries and religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil- mindedness, under naturally agitating or distressing circumstances, which self -surrender brings. 1 But peace is attained not only through faith in the fulfill- ment of desire, but hi a marked lessening in the tension of desire itself, in a large and spacious freedom attained through release from the confinement of self. We saw in the chapter on the Consciousness of Self how much exertion and energy may be devoted to the enhancement of Self through fame, achievement, social distinction, power, or possession. We saw how, in the frustration of self, the germ of great tragedy lay. From the tragedy and bitterness of such frustration men have often been reassured by a genuine conversion to the religious life. Through the negation of self rather than through its fulfillment men have found solace and rest. And 1 James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 286. 294 THE CAREER OF REASON this negation, when it takes religious form, has consisted in a rapturous submission to the will of God. "Outside, the world is wild and passionate. Man's weary laughter and his sick despair Entreat at their impenetrable gate, They heed no voices in their dream of prayer. "Calm, sad, secure, with faces worn and mild, Surely their choice of vigil is the best. Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild; But there beside the altar there is rest." * Experiences which frequently find religious expression. The religious experience, as pointed out in the beginning of this discussion, has its roots in the same impulses which cause men to love and to hate, to be jubilant and sorrowful, exalted and depressed. All these human experiences sometimes take a religious form, that is, their expressions have some reference to the supernatural and the divine. We find, in surveying the history of religion, that certain experiences more than others tend to find religious expression. We shall examine a few of the chief of these. Need and impotence. An awed, almost frightened sense of dependence overcomes even the most robust and healthy- minded man when he sees the forces of Nature suddenly un- loosed on a magnificent scale. A terrific peal of thunder, an earthquake or a cyclone will send thrills of terror through the normally calm and self-sufiicient. Even apart from such vivid and terrifying examples of the range and scale of non- human power, there comes to the reflective a sense of the frailty of human life, of the utter dependability of all human purposes and plans on conditions beyond human control. In our most fundamental industry, agriculture, an untimely frost can undo the work of the most ingenious industry and thrift. A tornado or a snowstorm can disorganize the cunning and subtle, swift mechanisms of communication which men have invented. In the field of humanly built-up relations, again, a 1 Ernest Dowson: Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 295 fortune or a friendship may depend on some chance meeting; a man's profession and ideals are fixed by a single fortuitous conversation, by a chance encouragement, opportunity or frustration. There is thus a psychological though perhaps not literal truth in the figure of Fate, or in the metaphor that speaks of human destiny as lying on the knees of the gods. Action so often wanders from intent, so much in the best-laid plans is at the mercy of external circumstance! A creature whose being can be snuffed out in a moment, whose life is less than an instant in the magnificent perspective of eternity, comes not unnaturally to be aware of his own insignificance as compared with those vast forces, some auspicious and some terrible, which are patently afoot in the world. But as patent a fact as man's impotence is his desire. The individual realizes how powerless is a human being to fulfill, independently of external forces, those impulses with which these same inexplicable forces have launched him into the world. Thus do we feel even to-day when we have learned that the forces of Nature, obdurate to the ignorant, yet be- come flexible and fruitful under the knowing manipulation of science. We realize that despite our cunning and contriv- ance, our successes are, as it were, largely matters of grace; the changes we can make in Nature are as nothing to the slow, gradual processes by which Nature makes mountains into molehills, builds and destroys continents, develops man out of the lower animals, and, by varying climates and topogra- phies, affects the destinies of nations. To primitive man the sense of impotence and need were not derived from any general reflections upon the insecurity of man's place in the cosmos, but rather from the sharp pressure of practical necessity. The helplessness of primitive man set down in the midst of a uni- verse of which he knew not the laws, may perhaps be brought home to the mind of modern man, if we compare the universe to a vast workshop full of the most various and highly-complicated machinery 296 THE CAREER OF REASON working at full speed. The machinery, if properly handled, is ca- pable of producing everything that the heart of primitive man can wish for, but also, if he sets hand to the wrong part of the machin- ery, is capable of whirling him off between its wheels, and crushing and killing him in its inexorable and ruthless movement. Further, primitive man cannot decline to submit himself to the perilous test: he must make his experiments or perish, and even so his survival is conditional on his selecting the right part of the machine to handle. Nor can he take his own time and study the dangerous mechanism long and carefully before setting his hand to it: his needs are pressing and his action must be immediate. 1 The very food of primitive man was to him as precarious as it was essential. His lif e was practically at the mercy of wind and rain and sun. His food and shelter were desperately lucky chances. Not having attained as yet to a conception of the impersonality of Nature, he regarded these forces which helped and hindered him as friendly and alien powers which it was in the imperative interests of his own welfare to placate and propitiate. It was in this urgent sense of helplessness and need that there were developed the two outstanding modes of communication with the supernatural, sacrifice and prayer. Primitive man conceived his universe to be governed by essentially human powers; powers, of course, on a grand scale, but human none the less, with the same weaknesses, moods, and humors as human beings themselves. They could be flattered and cajoled; they could be bribed and paid; they could be moved to tenderness, generosity, and pity. " Holi- ness," says Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues, " is an art hi which gods and men do business with each other. . . . Sacri- fice is giving to the gods, prayer is asking of them." 2 In Frazer's Golden Bough one finds the remarkably diverse sacri- ficial rites by which men have sought to win the favor of the divine. Primitive man believed literally that the universe was governed by superhuman personal powers; he believed literally that these are human in their motives. He believed 1 Jevons: An Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 17. * See Plato's Euthyphro. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 297 in consequence that sacrifices to the gods would help him to control the controlling powers of Nature for his own good, just as modern man believes that an application of the laws of electricity and mechanics will help him to control the natural world for his own purposes. The sacrifices of primitive man were immensely practical hi character; they were made at the crucial moments and pivotal crises of life, at sowing and at harvest time, at the initiation of the young into the responsi- bilities of maturity, at times of pestilence, famine, or danger. The gods were given the choice part of a meal; the prize calf ; in some cases, human sacrifices; the sacrifice, moreover, of the beautiful and best. The chief sacrificial rites of almost all primitive peoples are connected with food, the sustainer, and procreation or birth, the perpetuator, of life. As Jane Harrison puts it: If man the individual is to live, he must have food; if his race is to persist, he must have children. To live and to cause to live, to eat food and beget children, these were the primary wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of man in the future, so long as the world lasts. Other things may be added to enrich and beautify life, but unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, therefore, were what men chiefly sought to procure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. . . . What he realizes first and fore- most is that at certain times the animals, and still more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others they disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the focusses of his inter- est, and the dates of his religious festivals. 1 Sacrifice is only one way primitive man contrives of winning the favor of the gods toward the satisfaction of his desires Another common method is prayer. In its crudest form prayer is a direct petition from the individual to divinity for the grant of a specific favor. The individual seeks a kindness from a supernatural power whose motives are human, and who may, therefore, be moved by human appeals; whose power is superhuman and can therefore fulfill requests. 1 Jane Harrison: Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 31. 298 THE CAREER OF REASON Prayer may become profoundly spiritualized, but in its primi- tive form it is, like sacrifice, a certain way of getting things done. They are both to primitive man largely what our science is to us. Both prayer and sacrifice arise in primitive man's need and helplessness and terror before mysterious supernatural pow- ers, but they may rise, hi the higher form of religion, to genuine nobility, from this crass commerce with divinity, this religion of bargaining and quid pro quo. Sacrifice may change from a desperate reluctant offering made to please a jealous god, to a thanksgiving and a jubilation, an overflowing of happiness, gratitude, and good-will. Greek writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of an attitude toward religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joy and confidence, a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival for man. In Homer, sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, cleansing, and atonement. This we might explain as part of the general splendid unreality of the Greek saga, but sober historians of the fifth century B.C. express the same spirit. Thucydides is by nature no reveller, yet religion is to him, in the main, a rest from toil. He makes Pericles say of the Athenians: Moreover we have provided for our spirit very many opportunities of recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the year. 1 Sacrifice may become spiritualized, as it is in Christianity, "instead of he-goats and she-goats, there are substituted offer- ings of the heart for all these vain oblations." The sacrificial heart has at all times been accounted germane to nobility. There is something akin to religion in the laying down of a life for a cause or a country or a friend, hi surrendering one's self for others. It is this power and beauty of renunciation that is the spiritual value behind all the rituals of sacrifice that still persist, as in the sacraments of Christianity. It is the tragic necessity of self-negation that haloes, even in secu- lar life, the sacrificial attitude: 1 Jane Harrison: Prolegomena to Greek Religion, p. 1. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 299 But there is in resignation a further good element. Even real goods when they are attainable ought not to be fretfully desired. To every man comes sooner or later the great renunciation. For the young there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet unattainable, is to them not credible. Yet by death, by illness, by poverty, or, by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, that the world was not made for us, and that, however beautiful may be the things we crave, Fate may nevertheless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. This degree of sub- mission to power is not only just and right; it is the very gate of wis- dom. 1 The spiritual meaning and value of sacrifice is thus seen to lie in self-surrender. The human being, born into a world where choices must be made, must make continual abnega- tion. And when the temporary good is surrendered in the maintenance of an ideal, sacrifice becomes genuinely spiritual in character. Prayer, also, becomes genuinely spiritual in its values when one ceases to believe in its practical efficacy and comes to think it shameful to traffic with the divine. Prayer beauti- fully illustrates a point previously noted, how speech oscillates between the expression of feeling and the conveyance of ideas. Beginning in primitive religion as a crude and cheap petition for favors, it becomes in more spiritual religious experience, a lyric cry of emotion, a tranquil and serene expression of the soul's desire. Prayer is, moreover, "religion in act." That deep sense of an awed relationship to divine power which was, in the beginning of this discussion, noted as constituting cer- tainly one of the outstanding characteristics of the religious experience, finds its most adequate emotional expression in prayer. Religion is nothing [writes Auguste SabatierJ if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws life. This act is prayer, by which I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain 1 Bcrtrand Russell: Philosophical Essays, p. 65. 300 THE CAREER OF REASON sacred formulas, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence it may be even before it has a name by which to call it. Wherever this ulterior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or doctrines, we have religion. 1 In prayer, furthermore, we may hope to find not the ful- fillment of our desires, but what our desires really are. We are released temporarily from tension of temporal and selfish longings. We hold a tranquil and reverential speech with a power not ourselves, and in communion with the infinite purge ourselves of the dross of immediate personal needs. In such a peaceful interlude we may find at once clarity and rest. Prayer, at its highest, might be defined as audible medi- tation, controlled by the sense of the divinity of the power we are addressing. So that the truly spiritual man prays not for the fulfillment of his own accidental longings, but pleads rather: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer." Fear and awe. Man's attitude toward the divine was noted to have arisen partly in his feeling of dependence on personal forces incomparably superior to himself, and in his urgent need for winning their favor. In primitive man this sense of dependence was certainly bound up with a feeling of fear. It must be borne in mind that uncivilized peoples had pathetically little understanding or control of the forces of Nature. In consequence on being afflicted with some sudden catastrophe of famine or disease, on experiencing a sudden revelation in storm, wind, or volcanic eruption, of the terrible magnificence of elemental forces, he must have been struck with dread. He was living in a world that appeared to him much less ordered and regular than ours appears to us. His 1 A. Sabatier: Eaguiaae d'une Philosophic de la Religion (ed. 1897), pp. 24-26. LIBRARY 0TATV TBACHERB COLLWt ANTA BARBARA. CAL.IFQRNI RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPJEBIENCE^BOl- prayers and sacrifices were not always friendly and confidential intercourse with the gods; they were as often ways of averting the evils of malicious and terrifying demons. The enemies of religion have been fond of pointing out how much of it has been a quaking fear of the supernatural. It is in this spirit that Lucretius's bitter attack is conceived. When the life of man lay foul to see and grovelling upon the earth, crushed by the weight of religion, which showed her face from the realms of heaven, lowering upon mortals with dreadful mien, 't was a man of Greece who dared first to raise his mortal eyes to meet her, and first to stand forth to meet her; him neither the stories of the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor the sky with its revengeful roar, but all the more spurred the eager daring of his mind to yearn to be the first to burst through the close-set bolts upon the doors of nature. 1 Primitive man feared the gods as much as he needed them. Jane Harrison points out, for example, that as great a part of Greek religion was given over to the exorcising of the evil and jealous spirits of the underworld, as in friendly communion with the beautiful and gracious Olympians. But what appears in the ignorant and harassed savage as fear may be transformed in civilized man into awe. Long after man's crouching physical terror of the divine has passed away, he may still live awed by the ultimate power that orders the universe. He may, " at twilight, or in a mountain gorge," at a cafion or waterfall, experience an involuntary thrill and breathlessness, a deepened sense of the divinity which so orders these things. He may have the same feeling at the crises of We, at birth, disease, and death. He may sense on occasion that overwhelming and infinite power of which Job becomes aware, as he listens to the voice out of the whirlwind: Who hath divided a water course for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder? To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; 1 Lucretius: De Rerun Natura, book I, lines 28-38. 302 THE CAREER OF REASON To satisfy the desolate and waste ground ; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? . . . Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? . . . Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? . . . Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are? Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the heart? Where man experiences such awe, he will become reveren- tial, and, if articulate, will express his reverence in prayer, again not the prayer of practical requests for favors from God, but a hushed meditation upon the assured eternity in which the precarious and finite lives of men are set. Regret, remorse Repentance and penance. Regret is a sufficiently common human experience. There are for most men wistful backward glances in which they realize what might have been, what might have been done, what might have been accomplished. For many this never rises above pique and bitterness over personal failure, a chagrin^ as it were, over having made the wrong move. But to some regret may take on a deeply spiritual quality. Instead of regretting merely the successes which he hoped, as it proved vainly, to attain, a man may become passionately aware of his own moral and spiritual shortcomings. This sense of dereliction and delinquency may take extreme forms. James quotes a reminiscence of Father Gratry, a Catholic philosopher: . . . All day long without respite I suffered an incurable and intol- erable desolation, verging on despair. I thought myself, in fact, rejected by God, lost, damned! I felt something like the suffering of hell. Before that I had never even thought of hell. . . . Now, and all at once, I suffered hi a measure what is suffered there. 1 Normal individuals may come to a deep consciousness of having left undone the things they ought to have done, of having done the things they ought not to have done. This 1 Quoted by James in his Varieties, p. 146. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 303 wt realization may be at once a "consciousness of sin," and a desire for a new life. If it is the consciousness of sin which becomes predominant, then a desolate and tormenting re- morse engulfs the individual. But the consciousness of sin for the religious becomes simply a prelude to entrance upon a better life. The awareness of past sins is combined in the religious, especially in devout Christians, with faith in God's mercy, and in his welcoming of the penitent sinner: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, God, thou wilt not despise. Have mercy upon me, O God; according to thy loving kindness, blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Again the New Testament call to repentance is symbolic of the experience of millions of religious people. " Repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." There is a terrible intensity and immediate imperativeness about this call. But to all there comes at one time or another an urgent sense of spiritual shortcoming and the desire to lead a better life. The lamenting of sins becomes the least part; what is impor- tant is the immense new impetus toward a better life. The records of religious conversion are full of instances where men by this sudden penitential revulsion from their past life and a startled realization of new spiritual possibilities, have broken away permanently from lifelong habitual vices. James cites a case of an exceedingly belligerent and pugilistic collier named Richard Weaver, who was by a sudden conversion to religion not only made averse to fighting, but persistently meek and gentle under provocation. Similar cases, genuine and well documented, fill the archives of religious psychology. The religious man in repenting knows that God will, if his repentance is sincere, forgive him, and sustain and support him in his new life. 804 THE CAREER OF REASON I say unto you that likewise joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance. I say unto you there is joy hi the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. 1 While regret over sin, alienation from a past life of evil, and a persistent dedication to a purified and righteous existence constitute, spiritually, the phenomena of repentance and con- version, repentance has had in religion certain fixed outward forms. If sin had been committed, merely inward spiritual realization was not sufficient, penance must be done. Pen- ance in the early days of the Christian Church was public. Later penance became a private matter (public penance was suppressed by an ordinance of Pope Leo I in 461 A.D.). Private penance took various familiar forms, such as scourg- ings, fastings on bread and water, reciting a given number of psalms, prayers, and the like. Later penalties could be redeemed by alms. A penitent would be excused from the prescribed works of penance at the cost, e. g., of equipping a soldier for the crusade, of building a bridge or road. Grad- ually in the history of the Christian religion, penances have been lightened. In the Protestant Church, with the enun- ciation of the principle of justification through faith alone there could be no sacrament of penance. One form in which the penitential mood receives expression is in confession in which the penitent acknowledges his sins. There is no space here to trace the development of this prac- tice in religion. It must suffice to point out that psychologi- cally it is a cleansing or purgation. It clears the moral at- mosphere. It is a relief to the tormented and remorseful soul to say "Peccavi," and to confide either directly or in- directly to the divine the burden of his sins. It is for many people the necessary pre-condition, as it is in the Catholic Church, to penitence and the actual performance of penance. The psychological value of confession varies with individual > Luke, 16: 7,10. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 305 temperaments ; for many it is high. There are few so self-con- tained and self-sufficient that they do not seek to express their emotions to others. It is not surprising that the gregarious human creature should find confession a restorative and a solace. Human beings are not only natively responsive to the emotions of others, but by nature tend to express their own emotions and to be gratified by a sympathetic response. Emotions of any sort, joyous or sorrowful, find some articula- tion. The oppressive consciousness of sin particularly must find an outlet in expression. And the expression of sin must somewhere be received. The wrong done rankles heavily in the private bosom. The crucified soul demands a sympa- thetic spirit to receive its painful and personal revelation. He that would confess his sins requires a listener of a large and understanding heart. Just such a merciful, forgiving, and understanding friend is the God whom Christianity pictures. God waits with infinite patience for the confessions and the surrender of the contrite heart. The normal human desire to rid one's self of a tormenting secret, to "exteriorize one's rottenness," finds satisfaction on an exalted plane in confes- sion to God, or to his appointed ministers. Joy and enthusiasm Festivals and thanksgivings. So far our account has been confined to experiences in which man felt the need or fear of the divine, because of his own desires, weaknesses, or sins. But humans find religious expression for more joyous emotions. Even primitive man lives not always in terror or in tribulation. There are occasions, such as plentiful harvests, successful hunting, the birth of children, which stir him to expressions of enthusiastic appreciation and gratitude toward the divine. Some of the so-called Dionysiac festivals in ancient Greece are examples of the enthusiasm, joy, and abounding vitality to which religion has, among so many other human experiences, given expression. In the religion of the Old Testament, again, we find that the Psalmist is time and again filled with rejoicing: 806 THE CAREER OF REASON O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, and his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy. And he gathered them out of the lands from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses. And he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a city of habitation. O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men. For he satisfieth the longing soul and filleth the hungry heart with goodness. Nor need this rejoicing be always an explicit thanksgiving for favors received. It may be, as were the dithyrambic festivals of Greece, the riotous overflow of enthusiasm, a joyous, sympathetic exuberance with the vital processes of Nature. Dionysos stood for fertility, life, gladness, all the positive, passionate, and jubilant aspects of Nature. And the well-known satyr choruses, the wine and dance and song of the Greek spring festivals, are classic and beautiful illustra- tions of the religion of enthusiasm. Euripides gives voice to this spirit in the song of the Maenads in the Bacchx : "Will they ever come to me, ever again, The long, long dances, On through the dark till the dim stars wane? Shall 1 feel the dew on my throat and the stream Of wind in my hair? Shall our white feet gleam In the dim expanses? O feet of a fawn to the greenward fled, Alone in the grass and the loveliness?" l Every religion has its festival as well as its fast days. Sac- rifices come to be held less as offerings to jealous gods than as sacrificial feasts, in which the worshipers themselves partake, 1 Euripides: Bacchce (Gilbert Murray translation). RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 307 as opportunities for communal rejoicings and for friendly fellowship with divinity. At sacrificial feasts it is as if the gods themselves were at table. Dance and song are a regular accompaniment of primitive religion. Students of Greek drama, such as Jane Harrison and Gilbert Murray, trace Greek tragedy back to the choruses and dances of early Dionysiac festivals. Throughout the history of religion not only have man's sorrow and need been expressed, but also his sympathetic gladness with vitality, fertility, and growth, his rejoicings over the fruitions and glad eventualities of experience. Man has felt the decay and evanescence of human goods. He has felt also the exuber- ance of natural processes, the triumph of life over death when a child is born, the renewal of life by food, the recurrence of growth and fertility in the processes of the seasons, of sowing and of harvest. And for all these enrichments and enlarge- ments of life, he has rejoiced, and found rituals to express his rejoicings. He has had the impulse and the energy to sing unto the Lord a new song. Theology. Thus far we have discussed the religious expe- rience as an experience, as normal, natural, and inevitable as are love and hate, melancholy and exaltation, joy and sorrow. Like these latter, the religious experience is subjected to rationalization. Like all other emotions, that of religion finds for itself a logic and a justification. But so profoundly influential is "cosmic emotion" on men's lives that when it is reasoned upon, the results are nothing less than an attitude taken toward the whole of reality. Theology arises as a world view formulated in accordance with a reasoned inter- pretation of the religious experience. It must be noted again that the experience is primary. If men had not first had the experience of religion, they would not have reflected about it. Every contact of the individual with the world to some degree arouses emotion and provokes thought. It is not different with religion. That theologies should differ and conflict is not surprising. No two individuals, no two groups or ages have 308 THE CAREER OF REASON precisely the same experiences of the world, and their reason- ings upon their religious feelings are bound to differ, overlap, and at times to conflict. The variety of world views are testimony to the genuineness of the religious experience as it fulfills the different needs, emotions, and desires of different ages, groups, and generations of men. The description of the divine. Reasonings upon religion exhibit, like the religious emotions, certain recurrent features. There is, in the first place, a certain universality in the de- scription of the objects of veneration. These are nearly al- ways regarded as self-sufficient in contrast with man. Man seeks, strives, desires, has partial triumphs and pitiful fail- ures, is always in travail after some ideal. His life is incom- plete; at best it is a high aspiration; it is never really fulfilled. But divinity has nearly always been regarded as seeking nothing, asking nothing, needing nothing. This is what infinity in practical terms means. And, with certain ex- ceptions presently to be noted, the divine power has always been regarded as infinite. Thus Aristotle says that in man's best moments, when he lives in reflection a life of self-suffi- ciency, he lives just such a life as God lives continually. And Plato describes the philosopher as a man who because he can live, at least temporarily, amid eternal, changeless beauty and truth, "lives in recollection among those things among which God always abides, and in beholding which God is what he is." Lucretius also gives a simple picture of the even calmness and still, even security of the life of the gods as he and all the Epicureans conceived it. Tennyson para- phrases the picture: "... The Gods, who haunt The lucid interspace of world and world, Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar Their sacred everlasting calm!" 1 1 Tennyson: Lucretius. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 309 Divinity has, again, quite universally been recognized as exerting over the individual a compelling power, and of in- sistently arousing his veneration. The psychological origins of this phenomenon have already been noted. Men fear, need, feel themselves dependent on the gods. But further than this many religious thinkers hold that man cannot even be aware of the divine power without wishing to adjust him- self harmoniously to it. And they hold, as did Immanuel Kant, that man is born with an awareness of the divine. The attributes of divinity have been differently assigned at different times in the history of religion. In general two qualities have been regarded as characteristic: power and goodness. In primitive belief, the first received the predomi- nant emphasis; the higher religions have emphasized the second. For savage man, as we have seen, the divine person- ages were conceived in effect as human beings with superhu- man powers. They were feared and flattered, needed and praised. Adjustment to them was a practical, imperative necessity. They combined infinite capacity with human and finite caprice. The attention they received from humans was distinctly utilitarian in character. These forces of wind and sun and rain might be brutal or benignant. Primitive man established, therefore, a system of magic, sacrifice, and prayer, whereby he might minimize the precariousness of existence, and keep the gods on his side. In the more spiritualistic monotheistic religions, while the power of God has been insistently reiterated, there has been an increasing emphasis upon the divine goodness. The Psalmist is continually referring to both: Praise ye the Lord. give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder. 310 THE CAREER OF REASON Wrath and terror gradually give place to mercy and benevo- lence as the primary attributes of the divine. The power of God, in Christianity, for example, is still regarded as unlimited, but it is completely expended in the loving salvation of man- kind. Where the divinity has ceased to be a willful power and has become instead the God of mercy and lovingkindness, it is no longer necessary to placate him by material sacrifice, to win his favor by trivial earthly gifts. Divine favor is sought rather by aspiration after and the practice of a better life. The mighty but capricious deity gives place to the God of unfailing charity and love. One earns God's mercies by walk- ing in the ways of the Lord. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. . . . Blessed are they which do hun- ger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." In both Christianity and Judaism, God's grace and mercies go always to the pure in heart, and the righteous in spirit. " What doth the Lord require of thee," proclaims Micah," but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" The divine as the human ideal. There has been in certain latter-day philosophies, a tendency to interpret the divine as the objectification of human ideals. That is, according to this theory, men have found hi their imagined divinities the ful- fillment of ideals that they could never have realized on earth. Men, says this theory, long to be immortal, so they imagine gods who are. Finite man has infinite desires. In God is infinite fulfillment through eternity. No men are all good; some desire to be. Such fulfillment they find in the divine. Our conception of God is an index of our own ideals. When men were savages, then* divinity was a jealous monster. In the refinement and spiritualization of the human imagination, divinity becomes all-beautiful and all-benevolent as well as the wielder of infinite power. John Stuart Mill gives possibly the clearest expression to this attitude which is, if not in the strictest sense religious, at least deeply spiritual: RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 811 Religion and poetry address themselves, at least in one of their aspects, to the same part of the human constitution; they both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the prose of human life. Religion, as distinguished from poetry, is the product of the craving to know whether these imaginative conceptions have realities, answering to them in some other world than ours. The mind, in this state, eagerly catches at any rumors respecting other worlds, especially when deliv- ered by persons whom it deems wiser than itself. To the poetry of the supernatural, comes to be thus added a positive belief and expec- tation, which unpoetical minds can share with the poetical. Belief in a God or gods, and in a life after death, becomes the canvas which every mind, according to its capacity, covers with such ideal pictures as it can either invent or copy. In that other life each hopes to find the good which he has failed to find on earth, or the better which is suggested to him by the good which on earth he has partially seen and known. More especially this belief supplies the finer minds with material for conceptions of beings more awful than they can have known on earth, and more excellent than they probably have known. 1 In his religion, Mill maintains, man thus finds the fulfillment of unfulfilled desire. Religion is thus conceived as an im- aginative enterprise of a very high and satisfying kind. It peoples the world with perfections, not true perhaps to actual experience, but true to man's highest aspirations. It gives man companionship with divinity at least in imagination. It enables him to live, at least spiritually, in such a universe as his highest hopes and desires would have him live in, in fact. It must be pointed out, however, that the devoutly religious do not regard their God as a beautiful fiction, but as a dear reality whom they can serenely trust and love, and whose existence is the certain faith by which they live. The religious experience, theology, and science. It has already been pointed out that theology is the reasoned formu- lation of the religious experience which comes to men with varying degrees of intensity, or the revelation by which some man, a Moses or a Mohammed, has been inspired. Such a formulation has a dual importance. For the individual it brings clarity, order, and stability into his religious experience. 1 Mill: Three Euayt on Religion (Henry Holt & Co.), pp. 103-04. 312 THE CAREER OF REASON For the group, it makes possible the social transmission of religious conceptions and ideals. Reason in a man's religion, as in any other experience, in- troduces stability, consistency, and order. It makes distinc- tions; it resolves doubts, confusions, and uncertainties. It is true that there have been in religion, as in politics and morals, rebels against reason. There have been mystics who preferred their warm ecstatic visions to the cold formulations and abstractions of theology. But there have been, on the other hand, those gifted or handicapped, according to one's point of view, by an insistence on reason as well as rapture in their religion. These have not been satisfied with an intui- tion of God. They have wished to know God, as the highest possible object of knowledge. Thus in the Middle Ages philosophy and science were regarded as the Handmaids of Theology. All was dedicated to, as nothing could be more important than, a knowledge of God. So we have, in contrast with ecstatic visions of God, the plodding analysis of the scholastics, the subtle and clean-cut logic by which such men as Saint Anselm sought to give form, clarity, and ultimacy to their sense of the reality of God. There has possibly no- where in the history of thought been subtler and more thor- oughgoing analysis than some of the mediaeval schoolmen lavished upon the clarification and demonstration of the concept of God. The necessity for reasoning upon one's sense of the reality of the divine, as it was felt by many mediaeval schoolmen, is thus stated by one historian: Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury ... is the true type of the schoolman; firmly convinced of the truth of the dogmas and yet possessed of a strong philosophical impulse, he seeks to prove to reason what has to be accepted on authority. He bravely includes in his attempt to rationalize the faith not only such general proposi- tions as the existence of God, but the entire church scheme of salva- tion, the Trinity, and Incarnation, and the Redemption of man. We must believe the Catholic doctrine that is beyond cavil but we should also try to understand what we believe, understand why it is true. 1 1 Thilly: History of Philosophy, p. 169. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 313 But theology has public as well as purely private impor- tance. It must not be forgotten that religion is a social habit as well as a personal activity. From primitive life down to our own day, religion has been intimately associated with the other social activities of a people, and has indeed been one of the chief institutions of moral and social control. Ethical standards have been until very recent times in the history of Christian Europe almost exclusively derived from religion. Where the religious experience is of such crucial importance, it has been necessary to give it a fixed form and content which might be used to initiate the young and the outsider. Theology, though essentially a product of reflection upon the religious experience itself, tends to incorporate extra- religious material into its system. In its demonstration of the divine order and of man's relationship to the divine, it incor- porates both science and history. Science becomes for it the manifestation of the divine arrangements of the universe; history becomes a revelation of the divine purpose and its realization. In primitive belief science and religion are prac- tically indistinguishable from each other. The way of the gods is the way of the universe. The attribution of personal motives to the gods was primitive man's literal and serious way of conceiving the government of the cosmos. He believed himself actually to be living in a world governed by living and personal powers, an animistic world. The myths which describe the birth and life of the gods, the creation of man, the bestowing of the gift of fire are conceived as the literal and natural history of creation. Christianity affords a striking example of how theology incorporates science and natural history into its world view. For the early Christian Fathers, natural science was interest- ing and useful in so far as it illustrated, which it did, the ways of God upon earth. "The sole interest [of the Fathers] in natural fact," writes Henry Osborn Taylor, "lay in its confirmatory evidence of Scriptural truth. They were constantly impelled to understand facts in conformity 314 THE CAREER OF REASON with their understanding of Scripture, and to accept or deny accord- ingly. Thus Augustine denies the existence of Antipodes, men on the opposite side of the earth, who walk with their feet opposite to our own. That did not harmonize with his general conception of spiritual cosmogony." l All the natural science current, as represented, for example, in the compilation called the Physailogus, is used as sym- bolical of the ways of the Lord to man. The Pelican is distinguished by its love for its young. As these begin to grow they strike at their parents' faces, and the parents strike back and kill them. Then the parents take pity, and on the third day the mother comes and opens her side and lets the blood flow on the dead young ones, and they become alive again. Thus God cast off mankind after the Fall, and delivered them over to death; but he took pity on us, as a mother, for by the Crucifixion He awoke us with His blood to eternal life. 1 History is treated in the same way. Nearly all the histories written by the early Christian Fathers were written in deliber- ate advocacy of the Faith. It was to silence the heresies of those who attributed to the Church the entrance of Alaric into Rome that Augustine wrote his famous City of God. The whole of history is a revelation of the divine purpose which is eventually to be fulfilled. Orosius, again, a disciple of Augus- tine, wrote his Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans to prove the abundance of calamities which had afflicted man- kind before the birth of Christ. He gathers together all the evidence he can to exhibit at once the patience and the power of God. "Straitened and anxious minds " might not be able to see the purpose always, but all was ordained for one end. Thus he writes at the beginning of his seventh book: The human race from the beginning was so created and appointed that living under religion with peace without labor, by the fruit of obedience it might merit eternity; but it abused the Creator's good- ness, turned liberty into wilful license, and through disdain fell into forgetf ulness; now the patience of God is just and doubly just, oper- H. O. Taylor: The Mediaeval Mind, vol. I, pp. 76-76. Thilly: loc. dt., p. 76. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 815 ating that this disdain might not wholly ruin those whom He wished to spare . . . and also so that He might always hold out guidance although to an ignorant creature, to whom if penitent He would mercifully restore the means to grace. 1 History thus comes to reveal the fulfillment of the divine purpose, as science reveals the divine arrangements of the universe. It has already been noted that theology, certainly Christian theology, maintains that God is all-good. In consequence the natural world which scientific inquiry reveals must be all- good in its operations and its fruits. The history of the uni- verse must be a steady and unfaltering fulfillment of the divine, of the beneficent eternal purpose. The ways of the Almighty, so theology tells us, are just ways, and the uni- verse in which we live, so theology tells us, is a revelation of that justice. The eighteenth century "natural theologians" spent much energy in demonstrating how perfectly adapted to his needs are man's natural environment and his organic struc- ture. They pointed to the eye with its delicate membranes so subtly adapted to the function of sight. All Nature was a continuous and magnificent revelation of God's designs, which were good. Christian Wolff, for example, a rational- istic theologian of the late eighteenth century, writes: God has created the sun to keep the changeable conditions on the earth in such an order that living creatures, men and beasts, may inhabit its surface. . . . The sun makes daylight not only on our earth, but also on the other planets; and daylight is of the utmost utility to us; for by its means we can commodiously carry on those occupations which in the night-time would either be quite impossible, or at any rate impossible without our going to the expense of artificial light. 1 Mechanistic science and theology. With the rise of mech- anistic science there has come about a sharp collision between 1 Orosius: Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans, n, 3. 1 Christian Wolff: Vtrn&nftige Gedanken von den Absichten der natftrliehen Dinge, 1782, pp. 74 ff.f quoted by James in Varieties of Keliffious Experience, p. 492. 316 THE CAREER OF REASON the conception of the goodness of the universe as theology de- clares it, and of its blindnesses and indifference as science seems to unfold it to us. Contrast the picture of a cosmos which was deliberately and considerately made by God to serve every exigency of man's welfare, with the picture earlier quoted from Bertrand Russell as the natural scientist gives it to us. It is no longer easy to say the Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. As far as we can see natural processes go on without the slightest reference to the welfare of man, who is but an accidental product of their indifferent forces. The universe is a system of blind regularities. " Omnipotent matter rolls on its relent- less way." Nature is thoroughly impersonal, and indeed, were it to be judged by personal or human standards, it could with more accuracy be maintained that it is evil than that it is good. As Mill puts it in a famous passage: In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or im- prisoned for doing to one another, are Nature's everyday perform- ances. Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives, and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow- creatures. . . . Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations. ... A single hurricane destroys the hopes of a season; a flight of locusts or an inundation desolates a district; a trifling chemical change in an edible root starves a million of people. 1 The theology which insists on the patent and ubiquitous evidences of God's beneficent purpose, attempts, as already pointed out, to demonstrate that purpose in the history of mankind. Orthodox Christian doctrine, for example, insists that man has been especially created by God, as were the other animals each after their kind, and that man's ultimate > Mill: Three Eaaaya on Religion (Holt), pp. 28-30. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 817 and unique destiny is salvation through God's grace. Man was created in perfection in the Garden of Eden, sinned, and will, through God's mercy, find eventual redemption. Following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, in 1859, the rapid spread of evolutionary doctrine aroused vio- lent opposition on the part of Christian thinkers and devout Christians generally. In the first place it conflicted sharply with the orthodox version of special creation. Secondly, it made more difficult the insistence on marks of design or pur- pose in Nature. These two points will be clearer after a brief consideration of the nature of Darwinian evolution, with whose thoroughgoing mechanical principles nineteenth-cen- tury theology came most bitterly in conflict. The theory explains the origins of species, somewhat as follows: The variety of species now current developed out of simpler forms of animal life, from which they are lineally descended. Their present forms and structures are modifications from the common forms possessed by their remote ancestors. These modifications are, in the stricter forms of Darwinian evolu- tion, explained in mechanical terms by the theory of the "sur- vival of the fittest." That is, those animals with variations adapted to their environment survive; those without, perish. In consequence when any individual in a species happens to be born with a variation specially adapted to its environment, in the sharp "struggle for existence" that characterizes animal life in a state of nature, it alone will be able to survive and re- produce its kind. All the variations of species current are, therefore, examples of this continuous process of descent with adaptive modifications. The origin of the human species came about through just such a variation or mutation from one of the higher mammals (we have reason to believe, a species similar to that of the anthrapoid ape). Man's an- cestry, it seems, from the scientific evidence which has been marshaled, may be traced back biologically, in an almost un- broken chain to unicellular animals. 1 > For detailed discussion see Scott: Theory of Evolution. 318 THE CAREER OF REASON This theory profoundly affected theological thinking. In the first place, the evolutionary account not only of the origin of man, but of the origin of all species, as a descent with modi- fication from simpler animal forms, conflicts with the account of special creation, certainly in the literal form of the Biblical story. Secondly, the arguments from design which had been drawn from the adaptation of organic life to environment were, if not disproved, at least rendered dubious. Although evo- lution did not account for the first appearance of life on earth, it did account for the processes of adaptation, and without invoking design or purpose. The eye, for example, as explained by the theory of evo- lution, came to its present perfection through a series of for- tunate and cumulative variations through successive genera- tions. Even in its imperfect form, it was a variation with high "survival value." Even when it was no more than a pigmented spot peculiarly sensitive to light, so the theory holds, it was a variation that enabled a species to survive and perpetuate its kind. Those not possessing these fortunate variations were wiped out. The process of Nature, certainly, in the development of biological life thus appears to be no economical convergence of means upon an end. Nature has been recklessly prodigal. Millions more seeds of life are pro- duced than ever come to fruition. And only animals perfectly adapted to their environment survive, while an incomparably greater number perish. Theology, when it incorporates science and sets itself up as a direct and factual description of the universe, thus comes sharply in rivalry with modern mechanistic science. The conflict is crucial with regard to the purpose which theology holds to be evident in the universe, and the lack of purpose, the purely blind regularity, which science seems to reveal. The mechanical laws by which natural processes take place exhibit a fixed and changeless regularity, in which man's good or ill counts absolutely nothing. The earth instead of being the center of the solar system, is a cosmic accident thrown RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 819 out into space. Man instead of being a little lower than the angels is revealed by science as a little higher than the ape. There is no space in these pages to trace the various recon- ciliations that have been made between theology and science. It must be pointed out, however, that Christian theology has increasingly accepted modern mechanistic doctrines, includ- ing the doctrine of evolution. But it has attempted to show that, granting all the facts of physical science, the universe does still exhibit the divine purpose and its essential benefi- cence. The very order and symmetry of physical law have been taken as testimony of divine instigation. Mechanism was set in motion by God. In answer to this, it is pointed out by the non-theologian that then God's goodness cannot be maintained. Mechanical processes are indiscriminate in. their distribution of goods and evils to the just and the unjust: All this Nature 'does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest, indifferently with the meanest and worst; upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consequence of the noblest acts; and it might almost be imag- ined as a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people; perhaps the pros- pects of the human race for generations to come, with as little com- punction as those whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence. 1 Modern theology sometimes grants the apparent reality of the evils which are current in a mechanistic world, but insists that they are making for goods which we with our finite understanding cannot comprehend. Were our intelligence infinite, as is God's, we should see how "somehow good will be the final goal of ill." Evolution has also been explained as God's method of accomplishing his ends. By some evolutionists, Driesch and Bergson for example, evolution itself, in its steady production of higher types, has been held to be too purposive in character Mill: Three Etaayf on Religion (Holt), p. 29. 320 THE CAREER OF REASON to permit of a purely mechanical explanation. The process of evolution has itself thus come to be taken by some theologians as a clear manifestation of God's beneficent power at work in the universe. But theology, in the more spiritualistic religions, has al- ways insisted on the primacy of God's goodness. There has been, therefore, in certain theological quarters the tendency to surrender the conception of divine omnipotence in the face of the genuine human evils that are among the fruits of blind mechanical forces. The idea of a finite God who is infinitely good in his intentions, but limited in his powers, has been advocated by such various types of mind as John Stuart Mill, William James, and H. G. Wells. The first mentioned of these writes: One only form of belief in the supernatural one theory respect- ing the origin and government of the universe stands wholly clear both of intellectual contradiction and of moral obliquity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the idea of an omnipotent creator, re- gards Nature and Life not as the expression throughout of the moral character and purpose of the Deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving goodness and an intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or a principle of evil as was believed by the Mani- cheans. A creed like this . . . allows it to be believed that all the mass of evils which exists was undesigned by, and exists not by the appointment of, but in spite of the Being whom we are called upon to worship. 1 Religion and science. While there have thus been genuine points of conflict between theology and science, these are essentially irrelevant to the religious experience itself. Man is still moved by the same emotions, sensations, needs, and desires which have, from the dawn of history, provoked in him a sense of his relationship with the divine. There comes to nearly all individuals at some time, not without rapture, a sudden awareness of divinity. It is the terror and beauty of phenomena, the "promise" of the dawn and of the rainbow, the "voice" of the thunder, the "gentle- 1 Mill: loe. cit., p. 116. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 321 ness" of the summer rain, the "sublimity" of the stars, and not the physical laws which these things follow, by which the religious mind continues to be most impressed; and just as of yore, the devout man tells you that in the solitude of his room or of the fields he still feels the divine presence, that inflowing of help come in reply to his prayers, and that sacrifices to this unseen reality fill him with se- curity and peace. 1 Modern man, just as his savage ancestor cowering before forces he did not understand, realizes sometimes some persons realize it always how comparatively helpless is man amid the magnificent and eternal forces in which his own life is infinitesimally set. Even when one has been educated to the sober prose of science, one feels still the ancient emo- tions of joy, sorrow, and regret. Birth and death, sowing and harvest, conquest or calamity, as of old, evoke a sympathetic feeling with the movement of cosmic processes. All of these emotions to-day, as in less sophisticated times, may take religious form. Nor does the universe because we understand it better seem, to many, less worthy of worship. The most thorough- going scientific geniuses have felt most deeply the nobility and grandeur of that infinite harmony and order which their own genius has helped to discover. It has been well said the "undevout astronomer is mad." And it is not only the stu- dent of the stars who has intimations of divinity. As Pro- fessor Keyser puts it: "The cosmic times and spaces of mod- ern science are more impressive and more mysterious than a Mosaic cosmogony or Plato's crystal spheres. Day is just as mysterious as night, the mystery of knowledge is more wonderful and awesome than the darkness of the unknown." a It is significant that such men as Newton, Pasteur, and Fara- day, giants of modern physical inquiry, were devoutly reli- gious. It would appear indeed that the objects which men revere are not the subject-matter of science. Physics and chemistry 1 James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 498. * Keyser: Science and Religion, p. 30. THE CAREER OF REASON can tell us what Nature is like; they cannot tell us to what iiK Nature we shall give our faith and our allegiance. Religion remains, as ever, "loyalty to the highest values of hie." Sci- ence instead of making the world less awesome has made it more mysterious than ever. Origins and destinies are still unknown. Science tells how; it describes. It does not tell why things occur as they do; or what is the significance of their occurrence. Worship can never be reduced to molecules or atoms. While man lives and wonders, hopes and fears, feels the clear beauty, the infinite mystery, and the eternal significance of things, the religious experience will remain, and men will find objects worthy of their worship. The church as a social institution. Religion being so cru- cial a set of social habits, institutions arise for the perpetua- tion of its traditions, and for the social expression of the reli- gious life. The churches perpetuate the religious tradition in a number of ways. Fixed ecclesiastical systems, recitals and definitions of creeds, the regular and meticulous performance of rites and ceremonies, become powerful instruments for the transmission of religious ideas and standards. Rites fre- quently performed by men in mass have a deep and moving influence. They have at once all the pressure and prestige of custom, confirmed by the mystery and awe that attends any expression of man's relationship to the divine. The church, moreover, by the mere fact of being an institution, having a hierarchy, an ordered procedure, a definite assignment and division of ecclesiastical labor, becomes thereby an incom- parable preserver and transmitter of traditional values. Churches, ecclesiastical organizations in general, may be said to arise because of the necessity felt by men for inter- mediaries between themselves and the divine. We have already seen of what vast practical moment in savage life was communication with the gods. Upon the success of such ad- dresses to deity, depended not only the salvation of the soul, but the Actual welfare of the body shelter, harvest, an(J, victory. The gods among many tribes were held to be RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 323 meticulous about the forms and ceremonies which men ad- dressed to them. In consequence it became important to have, as it were, experts in the supernatural, men who knew how to win the favor of these watchful powers. The priests were originally identical with medicine men and magicians. They knew the workings of the providential forces. In their hands lay, at least indirectly, the welfare of the tribe. Their princi- pal duties were to administer and give advice as to the worship of the gods. Often it was necessary for them to point out to the lay members of the tribe which gods to worship on special occasions. The priests being accredited with a superior knowledge of the ways of the gods, they were required to in- fluence the wind and rain, to cause good growth, to ensure success hi hunting and fishing, to cure illness, to foretell the future, to work harm upon enemies. 1 There is more than one criterion by which men may be set apart as priests. Sometimes they are those who in a mystic state of ecstasy are supposed to be inspired by the gods. During their trance such men are questioned as to the will of the divine. Sometimes they become renowned through their reputed performance of an occasional miracle. Again, as magical and religious ceremonies become more complicated, there is a deliberate training of an expert class to perform these essential acts. And, whatever be the source of the selection of the priestly class, the immense influence which their functions are regarded as having on the welfare of the tribe causes them to be particularly revered and often feared by the lay members of the tribe. In more civilized and spiritual religions, the priestly or professional ecclesiastical class is no longer regarded as possessed of magical powers by which it can coerce divinity. It is the official administrator of the ceremonies of religion, is especially trained, versed and certificated in doctrine, is empowered to receive confession, fix penance, and the like. It is still an intermediary between 1 For a detailed discussion see Hastings: Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. ii, pp. 278-336. 324 THE CAREER OF REASON man and the divine, although itself not possessing any super- natural powers. Where ecclesiastical organization is highly developed and has become controlling in the life of a people, it may be one of the most powerful forces in social life. Such, for example, might be said of the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages: A life in the Church, for the Church, through the Church; a life which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recur- ring stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation and worship this was the life which they of the Middle Ages conceived as the rightful life of Man; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all. 1 Churches may also come to acquire political functions. The history of the Church is for many centuries the leading factor in the political history of Europe, nor is it only in Christendom that political institutions have been inextricably associated with religion. Religious institutions may, as pointed out in the case of primitive tribes, acquire educational functions. The initia^ tion ceremonies hi Australian tribes have a markedly religious character. In the higher and more modern religions educa- tional functions still persist. The Catholic Church has been regarded as the educator of Europe. Charlemagne's endow- ment and encouragement of education was largely made effectual through the Church. The grammarians and didac- tic writers, the poets, the encyclopaedists, the teachers whom Charlemagne endowed and gathered about him, the heads of the schools which he founded, were all churchmen. Until very recently in the history of Europe the universities and education in general were nearly all under the domination of the Church. The secularization of primary education in England took place only late in the nineteenth century, and it 1 Bryce: Holy Roman Empire, p. 423. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 325 is not yet a generation since the battle over the seculariza- tion of education was waged in France. All religious sects maintain on a smaller or larger scale educational functions. Parochial and convent schools and denominational colleges are contemporary examples. The social consequences of institutionalized religion. The consequences of institutionalized religion in social develop- ment have been very marked. The mere association of large groups in a common faith and a common religious interest has been a considerable factor in their integration. There is to be noted hi the first place the common emotional sympathies aroused by the participation of great numbers in identical rites and ceremonies. Any widespread social habit becomes weighted with emotional values for its members. Particu- larly is this true of religious habits, the mystery and magnifi- cence associated with which deeply intensify their emotional influence. Again religious habits are given a unanimous and high social approval, especially where the prohibitions and commands enforced by religion are conceived ultimately to affect the welfare of the tribe. The prophets reiterated to the people of Israel that their calamities were the result of their having ceased to follow in the ways of the Lord. The posses- sion of a common religious history and tradition may also give a people a deepened sense of group solidarity. The national development of the ancient Hebrews was undoubtedly pro- moted by their sense of being the chosen people, of possessing exclusively the law of Jehovah. Again religious sanction is given to codes of belief , modes of conduct, and to institutions, thus at once strengthening them and making change difficult. It is not merely customs that are obeyed and disobeyed, but the sacred commands. A premium is put upon the regular and traditional because of the divine sanction associated with them. To violate a prohibition, even a slight one, becomes thus the most terrible sacrilege. Customs that, like the hygienic rules of the Mosaic code, may have started as genuine social utilities are main- 326 THE CAREER OF REASON tained because they have become fixed in the religious tradi- tions as enjoined by the Lord. In consequence there may be a Pharisaical insistence on the performance of the letter of the law, long after its practical utility or spiritual significance is forgotten. It is this persistence in the literal fulfillments of religious commands at the expense of the spirit, that the Hebrew prophets so vehemently condemned. Thus pro- claims Isaiah: To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the b>urnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts. . . . Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me. . . . Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. . . . Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. 1 Institutions and modes of life, even when they are not, strictly speaking, part of the religious tradition proper, are given tremendous sanction and confirmation when they be- come embodied in the religious tradition. The institution of the family, for example, through the strong religious sanctions and values implied in the marriage ceremony and relationship (especially the marriage sacrament of the Catholic Church), comes to be strongly fortified and entrenched. Change in the form of an institution so hallowed by religion is something more than change; it is sacrilege. Governments and dynas- ties, again, when they have a religious sanction, when the King rules by "divine right," acquire a strong additional source of persistence and power. The imperial character of the Japanese government to-day, for example, is said to be greatly enhanced in prestige by the widespread popular belief that the Emperor is lineally descended from divinity. Sometimes religious sanctions have inspired and promoted 1 Isaiah i : 11-17. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 327 zeal for social enterprise. The Crusades stand out as classic instances, but in the name of religion men have done more than build cathedrals and go on pilgrimages. In the Middle Ages, bridges and roads were constructed, alms were given, pictures were painted, books illuminated, encyclopaedias made, education conducted, all under the auspices and in- spiration of the Church. The mediaeval universities started as church schools. In our own day, the expansion of the churches in the direction of welfare work and social reform, the use of the church as a community center, are examples of this development. Men have found justification by good works as well as faith. Intolerance and inquisition. The influence of religious tradition over the minds of its followers has had, among many noble and beautiful consequences, the dark fruits of intoler- ance, persecution, inquisition, and torture. Part of the bitter narrow-mindedness which has characterized the history of ecclesiastical institutions is not to be attributed specifically to religion. It is rather to be explained by the general un- easiness which the gregarious human creature feels at any deviation from the accustomed. In addition men have felt frequently that any divergence from the divinely ordained would bring destruction upon the whole group. In the Chris- tian tradition there was an additional reason for intolerance: the heretic was willfully losing his own soul, and it was only humane to compel him to come "into the fold, to rescue him from the pains he would otherwise suffer in Hell." The profound conviction that those who did not believe in its doc- trines would be damned eternally, and that God punishes theological error as if it were the most heinous of crimes, led naturally to perse- cution. It was a duty to impose on men the only true doctrine, see- ing that their own eternal interests were at stake, and to hinder errors from spreading. Heretics were more than ordinary criminals, and the pains that man could inflict on them were as nothing to the tor- tures awaiting them in hell. 1 1 Bury: History of Freedom of ThougJit, pp. 52-53. 828 THE CAREER OF REASON In fevered zeal for the Faith began that long hunting and punishment of heresy, which has done so much to darken the history of religion in Western Europe. There were, as in the Albigcnsian Crusade, wholesale burnings and hangings of men, women, and children. 1 Heresy was hunted out in secret re- treats. "It was the foulest of crimes; to prevail against it was to prevail against the legions of Hell." The culmination of intolerance was, of course, the Inquisition. One need not pause to recall its espionage system, its search for the spreaders of false doctrine, its use of any and every witness against the suspect, its granting of indulgences to any one who should bear witness against him, its "relaxing of the criminal to the secular arm, " which unfailingly punished him with death. It must be pointed out that in the instance of the Inquisition, just as hi the case of all religious persecution, the motives were most frequently of the noblest. "In the Middle Ages and after, men of kindly temper and the purest zeal were absolutely devoid of mercy when heresy was suspected." Nor are intolerance and persecution to be laid exclusively at the door of any one religion. In Protestant countries, in England and Scotland, the persecution and torture of alleged witches is one of the most painful instances of the cruelties into which men can be led by loyalty to then* religious convictions. And Mohammedanism vividly taught men how a faith might be spread by fire and sword. Quietism and consolation Other-worldliness. Many religions, including Christianity, have emphasized "other- worldliness." This has most frequently taken the form of emphasis on the life to come. This world has been conceived, as it were, as a prelude to eternity. In the Christian world scheme, as most clearly expounded and universally accepted during the Middle Ages, man's chief imperative business was salvation. All else was trivial in comparison with that in- comparable eternal bliss which would be the reward of the virtuous, and that unending agony which would be the penalty 1 Ibid., pp. 56-57. RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 329 for the damned. "Salvation was the master Christian mo- tive. The Gospel of Christ was a gospel of salvation unto eternal life. It presented itself in the self-sacrifice of divine love, not without warnings touching its rejection." 1 Where interest is centered on a world to come, there not infrequently results a loss of interest and discrimination in the goods of earthly life. "For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" The beauties, goods, and distinctions of this world coalesce into an indiscriminate triviality hi comparison with that infinite glory hereafter to be attained. One does not trouble one's self about the furniture of earthly life any more than one would take pains with the beautification of a room in which one hap- pens to be lodged for a night. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. Though on earth you may live in squalor, poverty, and dis- ease, yet "in my Father's house are many mansions." Poverty, indeed, became in the Middle Ages one of the vows of monastic orders. In the New Testament it is prescribed, "Blessed are the poor in spirit " and the doctrine was in many cases literally accepted. If any one of you will know whether he is really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordinary consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, and the denuda- tion of all conveniences. See if you are glad to wear a worn-out habit full of patches. See if you are glad when something is lacking to your meal, when you are passed by in serving it, when what you receive is distasteful to you, when your cell is out of repair. If you are not glad of these things, if instead of loving them you avoid them, then there is proof that you have not attained the perfection of poverty of spirit.* 1 H. O. Taylor: Mediemal Mind, vol. I, p. 61. 1 Alfonso Rodriguez : Pratique de la Perfection Chretienne, part in, treatise xii, chap, vi ; quoted in James's Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 315. 830 THE CAREER OF REASON Contempt for this world's goods, when generalized, pro- motes an attitude of indifference to the social conditions in which men live. The history of the saints is filled with refer- ences to their endurance of pain, ill health, poverty, and disease. And the "world, the flesh, and the devil" are for some types of religious mind all one. For such, to be en- gaged in social betterment is an irrelevant business, it is to be lost hi the world. People's souls must be saved; not their bodies. Religions, on the other hand, have frequently emphasized man's social duty. In Christianity this is largely a derivative of the highly regarded virtue of Charity. Interest in one's own well-being was a prerequisite for the devout, but interest in the welfare of others was equally enjoined. To help the poor and the needy, the widowed and the fatherless, to bring succor to the oppressed and justice to the downtrodden, have been part of the religion whose Founder taught that all men were the children of their Father in Heaven. The mendicant orders of the Middle Ages were devoted to philanthropic works; and with religious institutions, throughout their history, have been associated works of philanthropy and social welfare. Very recently urban churches in this country have been show- ing a tendency to reorganize with emphasis on the church as an instrument of social cooperation rather than as an aloof ex- ponent of dogmatic theology. It is the ideal of some liberal theologians to use the churches chiefly as instruments for giving social effectiveness to the religious impulse and at the same time for making social betterment a spiritual enterprise. CHAPTER XIII ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE Art versus nature. In the Career of Reason man has grad- ually learned to control the world in which he lives in the in- terests of his own welfare as he imaginatively contemplated it. Deliberate control has been made necessary because of the fact that man is born into a world which was not made for him, but in which he must, if anywhere, grow; in a world which was not designed to fulfill his desires, but where alone his desires can find fulfillment. Art may thus, in the broadest sense, be set over against Nature. It is the activity by which man realizes ideals. He may realize them practically, as when he builds a house which he has first imagined, or reaps a har- vest in anticipation of which he has first sown the seeds. He may realize them imaginatively, as when hi color, form, or sound he creates some desiderated beauty out of the crude miscellaneous materials of experience. Art, in the broad sense of control or direction of Nature, arises hi the double fact of man's instinctive activities and desires and the inade- quacy of the environment as it stands to afford them satis- faction. Because nature is not considerate of his needs, man must himself take forethought, and devise means by which the forces and the materials of Nature may be exploited to his own good. And the realization of this forethought is made possible through the fact that natural conditions do lend them- selves to modification. Nature, though indifferent to man's welfare, is yet partly congruous with it. While the wind blows careless of the good or ill it does to him, yet man may learn by means of windmills or sailboats to turn the wind to his own interest. Though the river may flow on forever, oblivious to the men that come and go along its shores, yet the passing generations may transform this undetiberate 832 THE CAREER OF REASON flowing into the power that yields them clothing, machinery, and transportation. All civilization is, as Mill says, an exhibi- tion of Art or Contrivance; it is illustrated by the junction by bridges of shores which Nature had made separate, the draining of Nature's marshes, the excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at immense depths in the earth; the turning away of her thunderbolts by lightning rods; of her inundations by embankments, of her oceans by breakwaters. 1 By irrigation man has learned to make the "wilderness blos- som as the rose." By railways, telegraphs, and telephones, he has learned to minimize the obstacles that time and space offer to the fulfillment of his desires. By controlling, by means of education and social organization, his own instincts in the light of the purposes he would attain, by studying "the secret processes of Nature," man has learned to make the world a fit habitation for himself. To dig, to plough, to sow, to reap, are instances of the means whereby man has applied intelligent control to his half-friendly, half-hostile environment. Man's deliberate control of Nature arises thus under the sharp pressure of practical necessity. Man is inherently active, but, as pointed out in an earlier connection, his activity takes coherent and consecutive form primarily under the com- pulsion of satisfying his physical wants, of finding food, cloth- ing, and shelter. The greater part of human energy, cer- tainly under primitive conditions, is devoted to maintaining a precarious equilibrium among the mysterious and terrifying forces of a half-understood environment. There is not much time for leisure, play, or art, where food is a continuously urgent problem, where one's shelter is likely to be destroyed by storm or wind, where one is threatened incessantly by beasts of prey, and, as primitive man supposed, by capricious super- natural powers. Under such circumstances, Me is largely spent in instrumental or imperative pursuits. Action is fixed by necessity. It is controlled with immediate and urgent 1 Mill: Three Essays on Religion, p. 19 (essay on "Nature"). ART AND THE /ESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 333 reference to the business of keeping alive. There is scarcely time for the activity of art, which is spontaneous and free. In civilized life, also, the greater part of human energy must be spent in necessary or instrumental business. Men must, as always, be fed, clothed, and housed, and the fulfill- ment of these primary human demands absorbs the greater part of the waking hours of the majority of mankind. Our civilization is predominantly industrial; it is devoted almost entirely to the transforming of the world of nature into prod- ucts for the gratification of the physical wants of men. These wants have, of course, become much complicated and refined : men wish not only to live, but to live commodiously and well. They want not merely a roof over their heads, but a pleasant and comfortable house in which to live. They want not merely something to stave off starvation, but palatable foods. In the satisfaction of these increasingly complicated demands a great diversity of industries arises. With every new want to be fulfilled, there is a new occupation, pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake of the good which it produces. There are industrial leaders, of course, who find in the development and control of the productive energies of thousands of men, in the manipulation of immense natural resources, satisfac- tions analogous to that of the fine artist. But for most men engaged in the routine operations of industry, the work they do is clearly not pursued on its own account. Industry, viewed in the total context of the activities of civilization, is a practical rather than a fine art. Its ideal is efficiency, which means economy of effort. Its interest is primarily in producing many goods cheaply. The emergence of the fine arts. In the sharp struggle of man with his environment, those instincts survived which were of practical use. The natural impulses with which a human being is at birth endowed, are chiefly those which enable him to cope successfully and efficiently with his envi- ronment. But even in primitive life, so exuberant and resilient is human energy that it is not exhausted by necessary labors. 334 THE CAREER OF REASON The plastic arts, for example, began in the practical business of pottery and weaving. The weaver and the potter who have acquired skill and who have a little more vitality than is required for turning out something that is merely useful, turn out something that is also beautiful. The decorations which are made upon primitive pottery exhibit the excess vi- tality and skill of the virtuoso. Similarly, religious ritual, which, as we have seen, arises in practical commerce with the gods, comes to be in itself cherished and beautiful. The chants which are prescribed invocations of divinity, become songs intrinsically interesting to singer and listener alike; the dance ceases to be merely a necessary religious form and be- comes an occasion of beauty and delight. Jane Harrison has shown in detail how ritual arises out of practical need, and art out of ritual. 1 Thus the Greek drama had its beginnings in Greek religion; the incidental beauty of the choruses of the Greek festivals developed into the eventual tragic art of JEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Ceasing to be a prac- tical invocation to the gods it became an artistic enterprise in and for itself. Repeatedly we find in primitive lif e that activity is not exhausted in agriculture, hunting, and handi- craft, or in a desperate commerce with divinity. Harvest becomes a festival, pottery becomes an opportunity for deco- ration, and prayer, for poetry. Even in primitive life men find the leisure to let their imaginations loiter over these intrinsically lovely episodes hi their experience. The potter may be more interested in making a beautifully moulded and decorated vessel than merely hi turning out a thing of use; the maker of baskets may come to "play with his materials," to make baskets not so much for their useful- ness as for the possible beauty of their patterns. When this interest in beauty becomes highly developed, and when cir- cumstances permit, the fine arts arise. The crafts come to be practiced as intrinsically interesting employments of the creative imagination. The moulding of miscellaneous mate- 1 See Jane Harrison: Ancient Art and Ritual, especially chap. i. ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 335 rials into beautiful forms becomes a beloved habitual practice. The context in which art appears in primitive life is paral- leled in civilized society. The energies of men are still largely consumed in necessary pursuits. Men must, as of old, by the inadequacy of the natural order in which they find them- selves, find means by which to live; and, being by nature con- stituted so that they must live together, they must find ways of living together justly and harmoniously. "Industry," writes Santayana, " merely gives to Nature that form which, if more thoroughly humane, she might already have possessed for our benefit." It is creative in so far as it transforms matter from its crude indifferent state to forms better adapted to human ideals. It makes cotton into cloth, wool into clothing, wheat into flour, leather into shoes, coal into light and power, iron into skyscrapers. It is devoted to annulling the dis- crepancies between nature and human nature. It turns refrac- tory materials and obdurate forces into commodious goods and useful powers. But, hi the broadest sense, industry is a means to an end. Interesting and attractive it may well become, as when a bookbinder or a printer takes a craftsman's proud delight in the manner in which he performs his work, and in the quality of its product. But the industrial arts, for the most part, Berve more ultimate purposes. It is imaginable that Nature might have provided clothing, food, and shelter ready to our hand. It is questionable whether under such circumstances men would out of deliberate choice continue industries which are now made imperative through necessity. The mines and the stockyards are necessary rather than beautiful or intrinsi- cally attractive occupations. But in the world of fact, those things which are necessary to us are not ready to our hand. Our civilization is predominantly industrial, and must be so, if the billion and a half inhabitants of our world are to be maintained by the resources at our command. Nevertheless despite the absorption of a large proportion of contemporary society in activities pursued not for their own 836 THE CAREER OF REASON sakes, but for the goods which are their fruits, there is still, as it were, energy left over. This excess vitality may, as it does for most men, take the form of mere unorganized play or recreation. But not so for those born with a singular gift for realizing in color or form or sound the ideal values which they have imagined. For these "play" is creative production. The fine arts are, in a sense, the play of the race. They are the fruits of such energy as is, through some fortunate acci- dent of temperament or circumstance, not caught up in the routine and mechanics of industry or the trivialities of sport or pleasure. They are human activities, freed from the limita- tions imposed by the exigencies of practical lif e, and controlled only by the artist's imagined visions. Creative activity is most explicit and most successful in the fine arts, because in these there are fewer obstacles to the material realization of imagined perfections. "The liberal arts bring to spiritual fruition the matter which either nature or industry has pre- pared and rendered propitious." The industrial arts are, as already pointed out, man's transformation of natural resources to ideal uses. In the same way political and social organization are human arts, enter- prises, at their best, hi the moulding of men's natures to their highest possible realization. But in the world, of action, whether political or industrial, there are incomparably greater hindrances to the realization in practice of imagined goods than there are, at least to the gifted, in the fine arts. Every ideal for which men attempt to find fulfillment in the world of action is subject to a thousand accidental deflections of cir- cumstance. Every enterprise involves conflicting wills; the larger the enterprise, the more various and probably the more conflicting the interests involved. Social movements have their courses determined by factors altogether beyond the con- trol of their originators. Statesmen can start wars, but can- not define their eventual fruits. A man may found a political party, and live to see it wander far from the ideal which he had framed. But in the fine arts, to the imaginatively and ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 837 technically endowed, the materials are prepared and con- trollable. In the hands of a master, action does not wander from intent. Language to the poet, for example, is an im- mediate and responsive instrument; he can mould it precisely to his ideal intention. The enterprise of poetry is less de- pendent almost than any other undertaking on the accidents of circumstance, outside the poet's initial imaginative re- sources. In music, even so simple an instrument as a flute can yield perfection of sound. The composer of a symphony can invent a perpetual uncorroded beauty; the sculptor an immortality of irrefutably persuasive form. This explains in part why so many artists, of a reflective turn of mind, are pessimists in practical affairs. The world of action with its perpetual and pitiful frustrations, failures, and compromises, seems incomparably poor, paltry, and sordid, in comparison with the perfection that is attainable in art. Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures and disenchantment of the world of fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touchstone to judge the world about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever is capable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple. 1 The creative artist gives such form to the miscellaneous materials at his disposal that they give satisfaction not only to the senses or the intellect, but to the imagination. What constitute some of the chief elements in the aesthetic experi- ence, we shall presently examine. It must first be pointed out that in general in the fine arts creative genius has found ways of imaginatively attaining perfections not usually ac- corded in the experiences of the senses, in the life of society, or in the life of the mind. The region called imagination has pleasures more airy and lum> 1 Bertrand Russell: Philosophical Essays, pp. 6&-66. 338 THE CAREER OF REASON nous than those of sense, more massive and rapturous than those of intelligence. The values inherent in imagination, in instant intui- tion, in sense endowed with form, are called aesthetic values; they are found mainly in nature and in living beings, but also in man's arti- ficial works, in images evoked by language, and in the realm of sound. 1 The painter imagines and seeks to realize hues and intensi- ties of color more satisfying and more suggestive than those commonly experienced in nature, save in the occasional grace of sunset on a mountain lake, or the miracle of moonlight on the ocean. The artist takes his hints from nature, but clothes the suggestions of sense with the values and motives which exist only in his own mind and imagination. A Turner sunset is, as Oscar Wilde points out, in a sense incomparably superior to one provided by nature. It not only gives the beautiful sensations to be had in a landscape suffused with the sunset glow; it infuses into this experience the passionate and penetrating insight of a genius. The artist, to an extent, imitates nature. But, if that were all he did, he would be no more than a photographer. He pictures nature, but gives it "tint and melody and breath"; he gives it a value and signi- ficance derived from his own imaginative vision. The musi- cian combines sounds more significant, ordered, and rhyth- mical than those miscellaneous noises which, in ordinary experience, beat indifferently or painfully upon our ears. The poet selects words whose specific music, rhythmical combinations, and lyrical context produce a something more evocative, compelling, and euphonic than the casual and raucous instrument of communication which constitutes ordinary speech. Not only do poets give imaginative and ideal extensions to sense experience; they do as much with and for social life. In the dreaming of Utopias, in the building of the Perfect City, men have found compensations for the imperfect cities which have been their experiences on earth. They build 1 Santayaiia: Reason in Art, p. 15. ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 339 themselves in imagination a world where all injustices are erased, where beauty is perennial, where truth, courage, kindliness, and merriment are the pervasive colors of life. In the activity of creative art, man's imagination has reached out beyond the confines of nature and of history, and built itself, in marble and in music, in lyrics and in legends, hints of that enchanting possible, of which the impoverished actual gives tentative and tenuous hints. In some men sensitivity to the imaginative possibilities of the materials of Nature is so high, that they can find satis- factory activity nowhere else than in one or another of the fine arts. These are the poets, the musicians, and the sculp- tors, who seek to give realization hi the arts in the technique of which they are especially gifted, to that imagined beauty by the ultimate experience of which they live. In one way or another the creative artist seeks to give form and dimension to "The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream." This creative impulse may find its realization, as already pointed out, in industry, though, with the highly routine character of most men's occupations in present-day industrial life, there is not much opportunity for imaginative activity. That both work and happiness would be promoted by the encouragement of the craftsman ideal goes without saying. Whether or not it is possible to utilize the creative impulses in the processes of industry as now organized, there are in- stances where the joy of craftsmanship may be exploited both for the happiness of the worker and the good of the work. The William Morris ideal of the artist-worker may be hard to attain, but it is none the less desirable, both for the sake of the worker and his work. In science the uses of the imagination have been fre- quently commented on, not least by scientists. The pa- tient collection of facts, the digging and measurement and inquiry that characterize so much of scientific investigation 340 THE CAREER OF REASON are not the whole of it. Inference, the forming of a generali- zation, is frequently described "as a leap from the known to the unknown," and this discovery of a binding principle that brings together a wide variety of disconnected facts is not un- like the process of the creative artist. The same unconscious method by which a poet hits upon an appropriate epithet, a musician upon a melody, a painter upon an effect of color or line is displayed in that sudden vivid flash of insight by which a scientist sees a mass of facts that have long seemed bafflingly contradictory, gathered up under a single luminous law. In his famous essay on "The Scientific Uses of the Imagination," Tyndall writes: We are gifted with the power of Imagination, . . . and by this power we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses. There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed. They had observed its action in weak vessels and were unduly impressed by its disasters. But they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers as an argument against the use of steam. Bounded and con- ditioned by cooperant Reason, imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer. Newton's passage from a falling apple to a falling moon was, at the outset, a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between his compass points, and to apply to them a scale of millimetres, he is powerfully aided by this faculty. And in much that has been recently said about protoplasm and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination guided and controlled by the known analogies of science. In fact, without this power, our knowl- edge of Nature would be a mere tabulation of coexistences and sequences. We should still believe in the succession of day and night, of summer and winter; but the soul of Force would be dis- lodged from our universe; causal ^relations would disappear, and with them that science which is now binding the parts of nature into an organic whole. 1 As we shall presently see, this imaginative leap is guarded and controlled, so that no flash of insight, however attractive, is uncritically accepted. But the origin of every eventually 1 Tyndall: Fragments of Science, pp. 130-31. ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 341 accepted hypothesis lies in the upshoot of irresponsible fancy, differing not at all from the images in the mind of a poet or painter or the melodies that unpredictably occur to a musi- cian. The aesthetic experience. Art is, on its creative side, as we have seen, the control of Nature in the practical or imagina- tive realization of ideals. The industrial arts are pursued out of necessity, because man must find himself ways of living in a world which he must inhabit, though it is not a prior arranged for his habitation. The fine arts are pursued as ends in themselves. 1 The genuinely gifted sing, paint, write poetry, apart from fame and reward, for the sheer pleasure of creation. But the products of these creative activities them- selves become satisfactions on a par with other natural goods. The objects of art poems, paintings, statues, symphonies are themselves prized and sought after. They afford sat- isfaction to that large number of persons who are sensitive to the beautiful without having a gift for its creation. Esthetic appreciation is indeed shared by all men, 'and is called out by other objects than paintings or poems. There is hardly anything men do which is not affected by what has been called " an irrelevant access of aesthetic feeling." We saw in another connection how our estimates of persons and situa- tions are qualified by love and hate, sympathy and revulsion. In the same way all our experiences have an aesthetic coloring. 1 Many industrial processes exhibit elements of the fine arts. This is the case whenever there is opportunity for'the worker to feel, and to have some ground for the feeling, tfiat he is not merely turning out a product, but turn- ing out a well-made or a beautiful one, to which his own skill is contributing. The makers of fine books or bindings or furniture, of fine embroidery and the like, are examples. But such conditions occur chiefly in the so-called luxury trades. There is very little opportunity for the display of creative talent in quantity manufacture. On the other hand, every fine art involves some elements of merely tech- nical skill or craftsmanship, which is important in achieving an imaginative result, but is the skill of the mechanic rather than the vision of the artist. In surveying the finished product of art as it appears in a painting by a Turner or a Cezanne, we may forget the "dust and ointment of the calling," but it is none the less there. The drudgery of art, the practicing of scales, the mixing of colors, the rehearsing of plays, are, as it were, the necessary preliminary industry in art. 342 THE CAREER OF REASON It may be nothing more than the curious jubilance and vivacity, the thrill and tingle of the blood that comes upon a crisp autumn day. It may be, as Mill pointed out, the large- ness of thought and vision promoted by habitually working in a spacious and dignified room. ^Esthetic influences are always playing upon us; they determine not only our tastes in the decoration of our houses, our choices of places to walk and to eat, but even such seemingly remote and abstract matters as a scientific theory or a philosophy of life. Even the indus- trial ideal of efficiency has, "with its suggestion of Dutch neatness and cleanliness," order and symmetry, an aesthetic flavor. Similarly is there an appeal to our aesthetic sensibili- ties in the grouping of a wide variety of facts under sweeping inclusive and simple generalizations. There is, as has often been pointed out, scarcely anything to choose from as regards the relative plausibility of the Copernican over the Ptolemaic system. The former we choose largely because of its greater symmetry and simplicity in accounting for the facts. Even a world view may be chosen on account of its artistic appeal. One feels moved imaginatively, even if one disagrees with the logic of those philosophies which see reality as one luminously transparent conscious whole, in which every experience is delicately reticulated with every other, where discord and division are obliterated, and the multiple variety of mundane facts are gathered up into the symmetrical unity of the eter- nal. Appreciation versus action. Every human experience has thus its particular and curious aesthetic flavor, as an inevitable though undetected obligate. ^Esthetic values enter into and qualify our estimates of persons and situations, and help to determine that general sympathy or revulsion, that love or hate for people, institutions, or ideas, which make the per- vasive atmosphere of all human action. But in the world of action, we cannot emphasize these irrelevant aesthetic feelings. The appreciative and the practical moods are sharply con- trasted. In the latter we are interested hi results, and insist ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 343 on the exclusion of all considerations that do not bear on their accomplishment. The appreciative or esthetic mood is detached; it is interested not to act, but to pause and consider; it does not want to use the present as a point of departure. It wants to bask in the present perfection of color, word, or sound. The practical man is interested in a present situation for what can be done with it; he wants to know, in the ver- nacular, " What comes next? " " Where do we go from here? " The appreciator wishes to remain in the lovely interlude of perfection which he experiences in music, poetry, or painting. The aesthetic mood is obviously at a discount in the world of action. To bask in the charm of a present situation, to linger and loiter, as it were, in the sun of beauty, is to accom- plish nothing, to interrupt action. It is precisely for this reason that persons with extremely high aesthetic sensibilities are at such a discount in practical life. They are too easily dissolved in appreciation. They are too much absorbed, for practical efficiency, in the tragic, the whimsical, the beautiful, or the comic aspects of men and affairs. The same sensi- tivity to the innuendoes and colors of life that enable some of such men to give an exquisite and various portraiture of ex- perience, incapacitates them for action. The practical man must not observe anything irrelevant to his immediate busi- ness. He must not be dissolved, at every random provoca- tion, into ecstacy, laughter, or sorrow. There is too much to be done in business, government, mechanics, and the labora- tory, to allow one's attention to wander dreamingly over the tragic, the beautiful, the pathetic, the comic, and the gro- tesque qualities of the day's work. To take an extreme case, it would, as Jane Harrison observes, be a monstrosity, when our friend was drowning, to note with lingering appreciation the fluent white curve of his arm in the glimmering waters of the late afternoon. The man to whom every event is flooded with imaginative possibilities and emotional suggestions is a ,/useless or a dangerous character in situations where it ia. essential to discriminate the immediate and important bear- 344 THE CAREER OF REASON ings of facts. We cannot select an expert accountant on tha basis of a pleasant smile, nor a chauffeur for his sense of humor. But while, in the larger part of the lives of most men, ob- servation of facts is controlled with reference to their practical bearings, observation may sometimes take place for its own sake. The glory of a sunset is not commonly prized for any good that may come of it; nobody but a general on a cam- paign or a fire warden looks out from a mountain peak upon the valley below for reasons other than the pleasure of the beholding. In the case of persons, also, we are not always interested in them for their uses; we are sometimes delighted with them hi themselves. We pause to watch merry or quaint children, experts at tennis, beautiful faces, for their own sakes. While even in nature and hi social experience, we thus some- times note specifically aesthetic values, the objects of fine art have no other justification than the immediate satisfactions they produce hi their beholder. Those intrinsic pleasures which go by the general name of beauty are various and com- plicated. Our joy may be in the sheer delight of the senses, as in the' hearing of a singularly lucid and sustained note of a clarinet, a flute, a voice, or a violin. It may be in the appre- ciation of form, as hi the case of the symmetry of a temple, an arch, or an altar. It may be in the simultaneous stirring of the senses, the imagination, and the intellect, by the presenta- tion of an idea suffused with music and emotion, as in the case of an ode by Wordsworth or a sonnet by Milton. In all these instances we are not interested hi anything be- yond the experience itself. The objects of the fine arts are not drafts on the future, anticipations of future satisfactions eventually to be cashed in. They are immediate and intrinsic goods, absolute fulfillments. They are not signals to action; they are releases from it. A painting, a poem, a symphony, do not precipitate movement or change. They invite a restful absorption. It was this that made Schopenhauer regard art ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 345 68 a rest from reality. During these interludes, at least, we live amid perfections, and are content there to move and have our being. Sense satisfaction. Appreciation of the arts begins in the senses. Sight and sound, these are unquestionably the chief avenues by which the imagination is stirred. 1 In the words of Santayana: For if nothing not once in sense is to be found in the intellect, much less is such a thing to be found in the imagination. If the cedars of Lebanon did not spread a grateful shade, or the winds rustle through the maze of their branches, if Lebanon had never been beautiful to sense, it would not now be a fit or poetic subject of allusion. . . . Nor would Samarcand be anything but for the mystery of the desert, and the picturesqueness of caravans, nor would an argosy be poetic if the sea had no voices and no foam, the winds and oars no resistance, and the rudder and taut sheets no pull. From these real sensations imagination draws its hie, and suggestion its power.* Satisfaction in sounds arises from the regular intervals of the vibrations of the air by which it is produced. The rapidity of these regular beats determines the pitch. But sounds also differ in timbre or quality, depending on the number of over- tones which occur in different modes of production. This ex- plains why a note on the scale played on the piano, differs from the same note played on the 'cello or the organ. From these fundamental sensuous elements of sound, elaborate symphonic compositions may be built up, but they remain primary nevertheless. Unless the sensuous elements of sound were themselvespleasing it is difficult to imagine that a musical composition could be. Music would then be like an orchestra whose members played in unison, but whose violins were raucous and whose trumpets hoarse. Color again illustrates the aesthetic satisfactions that are found hi certain kinds of sense stimulation, apart from the 1 The so-called lower senses are not regarded as yielding aesthetic values. Smell, taste, and touch are not generally, certainly in Occidental art, made much of. 1 Santayana: Sense of Beauty, p. 68. 846 THE CAREER OF REASON form they are given or the emotions or ideas they express. The elements of color, as color, may be reduced to three simple elements: First may be noted hue, as yellow or blue; second, value (or notari) dark or light red; and third intensity (or brightness to grayness), as vivid blue or dull blue. Specific vivid aesthetic combinations and variations are made possible by variations or combinations of these three elements of color. If a color scheme is displeasing, the fault may be in the wrong selection of hues, in weak values, in ill-matched inten- sities or all three. Dutch tiles, Japanese prints and blue towels, Abruzzi towels, American blue quilts, etc., are examples of harmony built up with several values of one hue. With two hues innumerable variations are possible. Japanese prints of the "red and green" period are compositions in light yellow-red, middle green, black, and white. . . . Color varies not only in hue and value [notan] but in intensity ranging from bright to gray. Every painter knows that a brilliant bit of color, set in grayer tones of the same or neighboring hues, will illuminate the whole group a distinguished and elusive harmony. The fire opal has a single point of intense scarlet, melting into pearl; the clear evening sky is like this when from the sunken sun the red- orange light grades away through yellow and green to steel gray. 1 These variations hi hue, value, and intensity of color afford specific aesthetic satisfactions. The blueness of the sky is its specific beauty; the greenness of foliage in springtime is its characteristic and quite essential charm. Apart from any- thing else, sensations themselves afford satisfaction or the reverse. A loud color, a strident or a shrill sound may cause a genuine revulsion of feeling. A soft hue or a pellucid note may be an intrinsic pleasure, though a formless one, and one expressive of no meaning at all. Form. While the imagination is stirred most directly by the immediate material beauty, by the satisfaction of the senses, beauty of form is an important element in the en- hancement of appreciation. In the plastic arts and in music, 1 Dow: Composition, p. 109. ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 847 it is, next to the immediate appeal of the sensuous elements involved, the chief ingredient in the effects produced. And even in those arts which are notable for their expressive val- ues, poetry, fiction, drama and painting, the appeal of form, as in the plot of a drama, or the structure of an ode or a sonnet is still very high. Certain dispositions of line and color in painting; of harmony and counterpoint in music; rhythm, refrain, and recurrence in poetry; symmetry and balance in sculpture; all have their specific appeal, apart from the mate- rials used or the emotions or ideas expressed. Certain har- monic relations are interesting in music apart from the par- ticular range of notes employed, or the particular melody upon which variations are made. The pattern of a tapestry may be interesting, apart from the color combinations involved. The structure of a ballade or a sonnet may be beautiful, apart from the melody of the words or the persuasiveness of the emotion or idea. Out of the factors which enter into the appreciation of form certain elements stand out. There is, in the first place, symmetry, the charm of which lies partly in recognition and rhythm. " When the eye runs over a facade, and finds the objects that attract it at equal intervals, an expectation, like the anticipation of an inevi- table note or requisite word, arises in the mind, and its non- satisfaction involves a shock." * Similarly, form given to material brings a variety of details under a comprehensive unity, enabling us to have at once the stimulation of diversity and the clarification of a guiding principle. We cherish sensations in themselves, when they consist of elements like limpidness of color and lucidity of sound. But too much miscellany of sensation is disquieting; it has an effect analogous to noise. A baby or a barbarian may delight in loud heterogeneity and vivid confusion, but extravagance of sensation does not constitute an aesthetic experience. The discovery of the one in the many, the immediate appre- 1 Santayana: The Sense of Beauty, p. 02. 348 THE CAREER OF REASON hension of the fluent tracing of a pattern, a form, or a struc- ture, is intrinsically delightful. The pattern of a tapestry design is as striking and suggestive as the colors themselves. When musical taste has passed from a sentimental intoxica- tion with the sensuous beauty of the sounds themselves, the beauty we admire is primarily beauty of form or structure. The musical connoisseur likes to trace the recurrence of a theme in a symphony, its deviations and disappearances, its distribution in the various choirs of wood-wind, brass, and strings, its interweaving with other themes, its resilient, sur- prising, and apposite emergences, its pervasive penetration of the total scheme. The aesthetic experience, indeed, as specifically aesthetic, rather than merely sensuous or intellectual, is, it might be said, almost wholly a matter of form. It is the artist's func- tion, as it is occasionally his achievement, to give satisfying, determinate forms to the indeterminate and miscellaneous materials at his command. Formlessness is for the creator of beauty the unpardonable sin. To give clarity and coherence to the vague ambiguous scintillations of sound, to chisel a specific perfection out of the indefinite inviting possibilities of marble, to form precise and consecutive suggestions out of the random and uncertain music of words, is to achieve, in so far, success in art. Nor does form mean formality. Experi- ence is so various and fertile, and so far outruns the types un- der which human invention and imagination can apprehend it, that inexhaustible novelty is possible. Novelty, on the other hand, does not mean formlessness. The artist must, if he is to be successful, always remain something of an artisan. However beautiful his vision, he must have sufficient com- mand of the technical resources to his craft to give a specific and determinate embodiment to his ideal. Every one has haunting premonitions of beauty; it is the business of the artist to give realization in form to the hints of the beautiful which are present in matter as we meet it in ex- perience, and to the imaginative longings which they provoke. ART AND THE ESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 349 In which forms different individuals will find satisfaction depends on all the circumstances which go to make one indi- vidual different from another. There cannot be in the case of art, any more than in any other experience, absolute stand- ards. We can be pleased only with those arrangements of sound or color to which our sensibilities have early been educated. Even the most catholic of tastes becomes restricted in the course of education. To Western ears, there is at first no music at all in Chinese music, and Beethoven would appear to the Chinese as barbarous as their compositions appear to us. But while in a wide sense, conformity to the average deter- mines or limits our possible appreciation of the beautiful, within these limits certain elements are intrinsically more pleasing than others. Those elements of experience, in the first place, more readily acquire aesthetic values, which in themselves strikingly impress the senses. Thus tallness in a man, because it is in the first place striking, becomes readily incorporated into our standard of the beautiful. And all ele- ments in themselves beautiful, the human eye, the curve of the arm, the wave of the hair, come to be emphasized. These outstanding elements may themselves become convention- alized and standardized, so that objects of art which conform to them are insured thereby of a certain degree of recognition as beautiful. Too close a conformity produces monotonous formalities, cloying classicisms. Too wide a divergence re- sults in shock and unpleasantness. The history of all the arts, however, is full of instances of how the taste of a people can be educated to new forms. Ruskin had to educate the English people to an appreciation of Turner. The poets of the Ro- mantic period were condemned by the critics brought up on the rigid classic models. The so-called Romantic movements in the arts are, at their best, departures from old forms, not into formlessness, but into new, various, and more fruitful forms. Romanticism at its worst dissolves into mere form- lessness and inarticulate ecstacies. Infinite variety of forms the world of experience may be made to wear, but sensations, 850 THE CAREER OF REASON emotions, and ideas must be given some form, if they are to pass from a fruitless yearning after beauty into its positive incarnation in objects of art. All forms have their characteristic emotional effects, as have all materials, even apart from the emotions or ideas they ex- press. The glitter of gold and the sparkle of diamonds, the strength of marble, the sturdiness of oak we hardly can think of these materials without thinking of the associations which go with them. Similarly the symmetry of the colon- nades of a temple, the multiplicity and variety of Gothic architecture, even so simple a form as a circle, provoke a great or slight characteristic emotional reaction. Likewise, a staccato or a fluent rhythm in music, a march, or a dance movement, have, even apart from their unconscious or in- tentional expressiveness, specific emotional values. In lit- erature, also, where the value of the words themselves might be expected to give place entirely to the emotions or ideas of which they are the expressive instruments, poems may them- selves, by their form and music, be provocative of specific emotional effects. "... And over them the sea wind sang, Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake. Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves, And barren chasms, and all to left and right, The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang, Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels And on a sudden, lo! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon." l Here the effect lies partly in the form, but more especially in the timbre and reverberation of the words themselves. In other cases, it is the form that is the chief ingredient hi the effect produced. In Alfred Noyes's " The Barrel Organ," apart from the meaning, it is the rhythmic form that is of chief aesthetic value: 1 Fix>m Tennyson's Marie