From the time any one of us is born into the world he is subject
to the influences of forces that reach backwards to the earliest
days of the race. The "dead hand" rules,--yes, and the dead
thought, belief and custom continue to shape the lives and
character of the living. The invention and development of speech
and writing have brought into every man's career the mental life
and character of all his own ancestors and the ancestors of every
other man.
A child is not born merely to a father and a mother. He is born
to a group, fiercely and definitely prejudiced in custom, belief
and ideal, with ways of doing, feeling and thinking which it
seeks to impose on each of its new members. Family, tribe, race
and nation all demand of each accession that he accept their
ideals, habits and beliefs on peril of disapproval and even of
punishment. And man is so constituted that the approval and
disapproval of his group mean more to him even than his life.
The social setting into which each one is born is his social
heredity. "The heredity with which civilization is most
supremely concerned," says Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, "is not that
which is inborn in the individual. It is the SOCIAL inheritance
which constitutes the dominant factor in human progress."[1] It
is this social inheritance which shapes our characters,
rough-hewn by nature. It is by the light of each person's social
inheritance that we must also judge his character.
[1] The Eugenists fiercely contest this statement, and rightly,
for it is extreme. Society is threatened at its roots by the
present high birth rate of the low grade and the low birth rate
of the high grade. Environment, culture, can do much, but they
cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Neither can heredity
make a silk purse out of silk; without culture and the
environmental influences, without social heredity, the silk
remains crude and with no special value. The aims of a rational
society, which we are born a thousand years too soon to see would
be twofold: to control marriage and birth so that the number of
the unfit would be kept as low as possible, and then to bring
fostering influences to bear on the fit.
"Education," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "is only second to
nature. Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and
Timbuctoo to change places!" And education is merely social
inheritance organized by parents and teachers for the sake of
molding the scholar into usefulness and conformity to the group
into which he is born. There may be in each individual an innate
capacity for this ability or that, for expressing and controlling
this or that emotion, for developing this or that purpose. Which
ability will be developed, which emotion or purpose will be
expressed, is a matter of the age in which a man is born, the
country in which he lives, the family which claims him as its
own. In a warrior age the fighting spirit chooses war as its
vocation and develops a warlike character; in a peaceful time
that same fighting spirit may seek to bring about such reforms as
will do away with war.[1] When the world said that a man might
and really ought now and then to beat his wife and rule her by
force, the really conformable man did so, while his descendant,
living in a time and country where woman is the domestic "boss,"
submits, humorously and otherwise, to a good-natured henpecking.
And in the times where a woman had no vocation but that of
housewife, the wife of larger ability merely became a
discontented, futile woman; whereas in an age which opens up
politics to her, the same type of person expands into a vigorous,
dominating political leader. Though the force of the water remain
the same, the nature of the land determines whether the water
shall collect as a river, carrying the produce of the land to the
sea, or as a stagnant lake in which idlers fish. Time, social
circumstances, education and a thousand and one factors determine
whether one shall be a "Village Hampden," quarreling in a petty
way with a petty autocrat over some petty thing, or a national
Hampden, whose defiance of a tyrannical king stirs a nation into
revolt.
[1] Indeed, a reformer is to-day called a crusader, though the
knight of the twelfth century armed cap-a-pie for a joust with
the Saracen would hardly recognize as his spiritual descendant a
sedentary person preaching against rum. Yet to the student of
character there is nothing anomalous in the transformation.
How conceptions of right and wrong, of proper and improper
conduct, ideals and thoughts arise, it is not my function to
treat in detail. That intelligence primarily uses the method of
trial and error to learn is as true of groups as of individuals;
and established methods of doing things--customs--are often
enough temporary conclusions, though they last a thousand years.
The feeling that such group customs are right and that to depart
from them is wrong, is perhaps based on a specific instinct, the
moral instinct; but much more likely, in my opinion, is it
obedience to leadership, fear of social disapproval and
punishment, conscience, imitation, suggestibility and sympathy,
all of which are parts of that social cement substance, the
social instinct. No child ever learns "what is right and wrong"
except through teaching, but no child would ever conform, except
through gross fear, unless he found himself urged by deep-seated
instincts to be in conformity, in harmony and in sympathy with
his group,--to be one with that group. Perhaps it is true, as
Bergson suggests, as Galton[1] hints and as Samuel Butler boldly
states, that there are no real individuals in life but we are
merely different aspects of reality or, to phrase it
materialistically, corpuscles in the blood stream of an organism
too vast and complicated to be encompassed by our imagination.
Just as a white blood cell obeys laws of which it can have no
conception, fulfills purposes whose meaning transcends its own
welfare, so we, with all our self-consciousness and all the
paraphernalia of individuality, are perhaps parts of a life we
cannot understand.
[1] For example, read what the hard-headed Galton says
("Hereditary Genius," p. 376):
"There is decidedly a solidarity as well as a separateness in all
human and probably in all lives whatsoever, and this
consideration goes far, I think, to establish an opinion that the
constitution of the living universe is a pure theism and that its
form of activity is what may he described as cooperative. It
points to the conclusion that all life is single in its essence,
but various, ever-varying and interactive in its manifestations,
and that men and all other living animals are active workers and
sharers in a vastly more extended system of cosmic action than
any of ourselves, much less of them, can possibly comprehend. It
also suggests that they may contribute, more or less
unconsciously, to the manifestation of a far higher life than our
own, somewhat as . . . the individual cells of one of the more
complex animals contribute to the manifestations of its higher
order of personality." Perhaps such a unity is the basis of
instinct, of knowledge without teaching, of desire and wish that
has not the individual welfare as its basis. No man can reject
such phenomena as telepathy or thought transference merely
because he cannot understand them on a basis of strict human
individuality. To reject because one cannot understand is the
arrogance of the "clerico-academic" type of William James.
No one can read the stories of travelers or the writings of
anthropologists without concluding that codes of belief and
action arise out of the efforts of groups to understand and to
influence nature and that out of this practical effort AND
seeking of a harmonious reality arises morality. "Man seeks the
truth, a world that does not contradict itself, that does not
deceive, that does not change; a real world,--a world in which
there is no suffering. Contradiction, deception and variability
are the causes of suffering. He does not doubt there is such a
thing as, a world as it might be, and he would fain find a road
to it."[1] But alas, intelligence and knowledge both are
imperfect, and one group seeking a truth that will bring them
good crops, fine families, victory over enemies, riches, power
and fellowship, as well as a harmonious universe, finds it in
idol worship and polygamy; another group seeking the same truth
finds it in Christianity and monogamy. And the members of some
groups are born to ideals, customs and habits that make it right
for a member to sing obscene songs and to be obscene at certain
periods, to kill and destroy the enemy, to sacrifice the
unbeliever, to worship a clay image, to have as many wives as
possible, and that make it WRONG to do otherwise. Indeed, he who
wishes a child to believe absolutely in a code of morals would
better postpone teaching him the customs and beliefs of other
people until habit has made him adamant to new ideas.
[1] Nietzsche.
It is with pleasure that I turn the attention of the reader to
the work of Frazier in the growth of human belief, custom and
institutions that he has incorporated into the stupendous series
of books called "The Golden Bough." The things that influence us
most in our lives are heritages, not much changed, from the
beliefs of primitive societies. Believing that the forces of the
world were animate, like himself, and that they might be moved,
persuaded, cajoled and frightened into favorable action,
undeveloped man based most of his customs on efforts to obtain
some desired result from the gods. Out of these customs grew the
majority of our institutions; out of these queer beliefs and
superstitions, out of witchcraft, sympathetic magic, the "Old
Man" idea, the primitive reaction to sleep, epilepsy and death
grew medicine, science, religion, festivals, the kingship, the
idea of soul and most of the other governing and directing ideas
of our lives. It is true that the noble beliefs and sciences also
grew from these rude seeds, but with them and permeating our
social structure are crops of atrophied ideas, hampering customs,
cramping ideals. Further, in every race in every country, in
every family, there are somewhat different assortments of these
directing traditional forces; and it is these social inheritances
which are more responsible for difference in people than a native
difference in stock.
Consider the difference that being born and brought up in Turkey
and being born, let us say, in New York City, would make in two
children of exactly the same disposition, mental caliber and
physical structure. One would grow up a Turk and the other a New
Yorker, and the mere fact that they had the same original
capacity for thought, feeling and action would not alter the
result that in character the two men would stand almost at
opposite poles. One need not judge between them and say that one
was superior to the other, for while I feel that the New Yorker
might stand OUR inspection better, I am certain that the Turk
would be more pleasing to Turkish ideas. The point is that they
would be different and that the differences would result solely
from the environmental forces of natural conditions and social
inheritance.
Study the immigrant to the United States and his descendant,
American born and bred. Compare Irishman and Irish-American,
Russian Jew and his American-born descendant; compare Englishman
and the Anglo-Saxon New England descendant. Here is a race, the
Jew, which in the Ghetto and under circumstances that built up a
tremendously powerful set of traditions and customs developed a
very distinctive type of human being. Poor in physique, with
little physical pugnacity, but worshiping, learning and reaching
out for wealth and power in an unusually successful manner, the
crucible of an adverse and hostile environment rendered him
totally different in manners from his Gentile neighbors. With a
high birth rate and an intensely close and pure family life, the
Ghetto Jew lived and died shut off by the restrictions placed
upon him and his own social heredity from the life of the country
of his birth. Then came immigration to the United States through
one cause or another,--and note the results.
With the old social heredity still at work, another set of
customs, traditions and beliefs comes into open competition with
it in the bosom of the American Jew. Nowhere is the struggle
between the old and the new generations so intense as in the home
of the Orthodox Jew. His descendant is clean-shaven and no longer
observes (or observes only perfunctorily or with many a gross
inconsistency) the dietary and household laws. He is a free
spender and luxurious in his habits as compared with his
economical, ascetic forefathers. He marries late and the birth
rate drops with most astonishing rapidity, so that in one
generation the children of parents who had eight or ten children
have families of one or two or three children. He becomes a
follower of sports, and with his love for scholarship still
strong, as witness his production of scholars and scientists, the
remarkable rise of the Jewish prize fighter stands out as a
divergence from tradition that mocks at theories of inborn racial
characters. And a third generation differs in customs, manners,
ideals, purposes and physique but little from the social class of
Americans in which the individual members move. The names become
Anglicized; gone are the Abrahams and Isaacs and Jacobs, the
Rachels and Leahs and Rebeccas, and in their place are Vernon,
Mortimer, Winthrop, Alice, Helen and Elizabeth. And this change
in name symbolizes the revolution in essential characters.
Has the racial stock changed in one generation or two? No. A new
social heredity has overcome--or at least in part supplanted--an
older social heredity and released and developed characters
hitherto held in check. In every human being--and this is a theme
we shall enlarge upon later--there are potential lines of
development far outnumbering those that can be manifested, and
each environment and tradition calls forth some and suppresses
others. Every man is a garden planted with all kinds of seeds;
tradition and teaching are the gardeners that allow only certain
ones to come to bloom. In each age, each country and each family
there is a different gardener at work, repressing certain trends
in the individual, favoring and bringing to an exaggerated growth
other trends.
That each family, or type of family, acts in this way is
recognized in the value given to the home life. The home, because
of its sequestration, allows for the growth of individual types
better than would a community house where the same traditions and
ideals governed the life of each child. In the home the parents
seek to cultivate the specific type of character they favor. The
home is par excellence the place where prejudice and social
attitude are fostered. Though the mother and father seek to give
broadmindedness and wide culture to the child, their efforts must
largely be governed by their own attitudes and reactions,--in
short, by their own character and the resultant examples and
teaching. It is true that the native character of the child may
make him resistant to the teachings of the parents or may even
develop counter-prejudices, to react violently against the
gardening. This is the case when the child is of an opposing
temperament or when in the course of time he falls under the
influence of ideals and traditions that are opposed to those of
his home. Unless the home combines interest and freedom, together
with teaching, certain children become violent rebels, and,
seeking freedom and interest outside of the home, find themselves
in a conflict, both with their home teaching and the home
teachers, that shakes the unity and the happiness of parent and
child. Like all civil wars this war between new and old
generations reaches great bitterness.
In studying the cases of several hundred delinquent girls, as a
consultant to the Parole Department of Massachusetts, it was
found that the family life of the girls could be classified in
two ways. The majority of the girls that reached the Reformatory
came from bad homes,--homes in which drunkenness, prostitution,
feeble-mindedness, and insanity were common traits of the
parents. Or else the girls were orphans brought up by a
stepmother or some careless foster mother. In any case, through
either example, cruelty or neglect, they drifted into the
streets.
And the streets! Only the poor child (or the child brought up
over strictly) can know the lure of the streets. THERE is
excitement, THERE is freedom from prohibitions and inhibitions.
So the boy or girl finds a world without discipline, is without
the restraints imposed on the sex instincts and comes under the
influence of derelicts, sex-adventurers, thieves, vagabonds and
the aimless of all sorts. Into this university of the vices most
of the girls I am speaking of drifted, largely because the home
influence either was of the street type or had no advantages to
offer in competition with the street.
But the child on the streets is no more a solitary individual
than the savage is, or for that matter the civilized man. He
quickly forms part of a group, a roving group, called "The Gang."
In the large cities gangs are usually composed of boys of one age
or nearly so; in the small towns the gangs will consist of the
boys of a neighborhood. In fact, regardless of whether they are
street children or home children, boys form gangs spontaneously.
The gang is the first voluntary organization of society, for the
home, in so far as the child is concerned, is an involuntary
organization. The gang has its leader or leaders, usually the
strongest or the best fighter. At any rate, the best fighter is
the nominal leader, though a shrewder lad may assume the real
power. The gang has rules, it plays according to regulations, its
quarrels are settled according to a code, property has a definite
status and distribution.[1] The members of the gang are always
quarreling with each other, but here, as in the larger
aggregations of older human beings, "politics ends at the
border," and the gang is a unit against foreign aggression.
Indeed, gangs of a neighborhood may league against a group of
other gangs, as did the quarreling cities of Greece against
Persia.
[1] In the gang of which I was a member there was a ritual in the
formation of partnership, an association within the association.
Two boys, fond of each other and desiring to become partners,
would link little fingers, while a third boy acting as a sort of
priest--an elder of the gang--would raise his hand and strike the
link, shouting, "Partners, partners, never break!" This ritual
was a symbol of the unity of the pair, so that they fought for
each other, shared all personal goods (such as candy, pocket
money, etc.,) and were to be loyal and sympathetic throughout
life. Alas, dear partner of my boyhood, most gallant of fighters
and most generous of souls, where are you, and where is our
friendship, now?
For the student of mankind the gang is one of the most
fascinating phenomena. Here the power of tradition, without the
aid of records, is seen. Throughout America, in a mysterious way,
all the boys start spinning tops at a certain season and then
suddenly cease and begin, to play marbles. Without any
standardization of a central type they have the same rules for
their games, call them by the same names and use in their songs
the same rhymes and airs. Every generation of children has the
same jokes and trick games: "Eight and eight are sixteen, stick
your nose in kerosene"--"A dead cat, I one it, you two it, I
three it, you four it, I five it, you six it, I seven it, you
eight it!" The fact is, of course, that there are no generations
as distinct entities; there are always individuals of one age,
and there is a mutual teaching and learning going on at all
times, which is the basis of transmission of tradition. Children
are usually more conservative and greater sticklers for form and
propriety than even men are; only now and then a freer mind
arises whose courage and pertinacity change things.
Therefore, in the understanding of character the influence of the
environment becomes of as fundamental importance as the
consideration of the organic make-up of the individual. The
environment in the form of tradition, social ideal, social
status, economic situation, race, religion, family, education is
thus on the one hand the directing, guiding, eliciting factor in
character and on the other is the repressing, inhibiting,
limiting factor.
Putting the whole thing in another way: the organism is the
Microcosmos, or little world, in which the potentialities of
character are elaborated in the germ plasm we inherit from our
ancestors, in the healthy interaction of brain with the rest of
the body, especially the internal glands. The outside world is
the Macrocosmos, or large world, and includes the physical
conditions of existence (climate, altitude, plentiness of food,
access to the sea) as well as the social conditions of existence
(state of culture of times and race and family). The social
conditions of existence are of especial interest in that they
reach back ages before the individual was born so that the lives,
thoughts, ideals of the dead may dominate the character of the
living.
This macrocosmos both brings to light and stifles the character
peculiarities of the microcosmos and the character of no man, as
we see or know it, ever expresses in any complete manner his
innate possibilities.
The question arises: What is the basis of the influence of the
social heredity, of the forces, in the character of the person
born in a social group? Certain aspects of this we must deal with
later, in order to keep to a unified presentation of the subject.
Other aspects are pertinently to be discussed now.
The link that binds man to man is called the social instinct,
though perhaps it would be better to call it the group of social
instincts. The link is one of feeling, primarily, though it has
associated with it, in an indissoluble way, purpose and action.
The existence of the social instinct is undisputed; its
explanation is varied and ranges from the mystical to the
evolutionary. For the mystical (which crops out in Bergson,
Butler and even in Galton), the unity of life is its basis, and
there is a sort of recognition of parts formerly united but now
separate individuals. This does not explain hate, racial and
individual. The evolutionary aspect has received its best
handling in recent years in Trotter's "The Herd," where the
social instincts are traced in their relation to human history.
One writer after another has placed as basic in social instinct,
sympathy, imitation, suggestibility and the recognition of
"likeness." These are merely names for a spreading of emotion
from one member of a group to another, for a something that makes
members of the group teachable and makes them wish to teach; that
is back of the wish to conform and help and has two sets of
guiding forces, reward and its derivative praise; punishment and
its derivative blame. Perhaps the term "derivative" is not
correct, and perhaps praise and blame are primary and reward and
punishment secondary.
So eminent a philosopher as the elder Mill declared the
distribution of praise and blame is the greatest problem of
society." This view of the place of praise and blame in the
organization of character and in directing the efforts and
activity of men is hardly exaggerated. From birth to death the
pleasure of reward and praise and the pain of punishment and
blame are immensely powerful human motives. It is true that now
and then individuals seek punishment and blame, but this is
always to win the favor of others or of the most important
observer of men's actions,--God, The child is trained through the
effect of reward and punishment, praise and blame; and these are
used to set up, on the one hand, habits of conduct, and on the
other an inner mentor and guide called Conscience. It may be true
that conscience is innate in its potentialities, but whether that
is so or not, it is the teaching and training of the times or of
some group that gives to conscience its peculiar trend in any
individual case. And before a child has any inward mentor it
depends for its knowledge of right and wrong upon the efforts of
its parents, their use of praise-reward and blame-punishment; it
reacts to these measures in accordance with the strength and
vigor of its social instincts and in accordance with its fear of
punishment and desire for reward. The feelings of duty and the
prickings of conscience serve to consolidate a structure already
formed.
Here we must discuss a matter of fundamental importance in
character analysis. Men are not born equal in any respect. This
inequality extends to every power, possibility and peculiarity
and has its widest range in the mental and character life. A tall
man is perhaps a foot taller than a very short man; a giant is
perhaps twice as tall as a dwarf. A very fleet runner can "do" a
hundred yards in ten seconds, and there are few except the
crippled or aged who cannot run the distance in twenty seconds.
Only in the fables has the hero the strength of a dozen men. But
where dexterity or knowledge enters things become different, and
one man can do what the most of men cannot even prepare to do.
Where abstract thought or talent or genius is involved the
greatest human variability is seen. There we have Pascals who are
mathematicians at five and discoverers at sixteen; there we have
Mozarts, composers at three; there we have our inspired boy
preachers already consecrated to their great ideal of work; and
we have also our Jesse Pomeroys, fiendish murderers before
adolescence. I believe with Carlyle that it is the heroes, the
geniuses of the race, to whom we owe its achievements; and the
hero and the genius are the men and women of "greatest
variability" in powers. The first weapon, the starting of fire,
the song that became "a folk song" were created by the
prehistoric geniuses and became the social heritage of the group
or race. And "common man" did little to develop religions or even
superstitions; he merely accepted the belief of a leader.
This digression is to emphasize that children and the men and
women they grow to be are widely variable in their native social
feeling, in their response to praise, blame, reward and
punishmept. One child eagerly responds to all, is moved by
praise, loves reward, fears punishment and hates blame. Another
child responds mainly to reward, is but little moved by praise,
fears punishment and laughs at blame. Still another only fears
punishment, while there is a type of deeply antisocial nature
which goes his own way, seeking his own egoistic purposes,
uninfluenced by the opinion of others, accepting reward cynically
and fighting against punishment. More than that, each child shows
peculiarities in the types of praise, reward, blame and
punishment that move him. Some children need corporal
punishment[1] and others who are made rebels by it are melted
into conformity by ostracism.
[1] It is a wishy-washy ideal of teaching that regards pain as
equivalent to cruelty. On the contrary, it may be real cruelty to
spare pain,--cruelty to the future of the child. Pain is a great
teacher, whether inflicted by the knife one has been told not to
play with, or by the parent when the injunction not to play with
the knife has been disregarded.
The distribution of praise and blame constitutes the distribution
of public opinion. Wherever public opinion is free to exercise
its power it is a weapon of extraordinary potency before which
almost nothing can stand. One might define a free nation as one
where public opinion has no limits,[1] where no one is prevented
from the expression of belief about the action of others, and no
one is exempted from the pressure of opinion. Conversely an
autocracy is one where there is but little room for the public
use of praise and but little power to blame, especially in regard
to the rulers. But in all societies, whether free or otherwise,
people are constantly praising, constantly blaming one another,
whether over the teacups or the wine glasses, in the sewing
circle or the smoking rooms, in the midst of families, in the
press, in the great halls of the states and nations. These are
"the mallets" by which society beats or attempts to beat
individuals into the accepted shape.
[1] In fact, Oliver Wendell Holmes has defined as the great
object of human society the free growth and expression of human
thought. How far we are from that ideal!
Men and women and children all strive to be praised, if not by
their own group, by some other group or by some generation. It
is, therefore, a high achievement to introduce a new ideal of
character and personality to the group. Men--whose opinion as to
desirability and praiseworthiness has been the prepotent
opinion--love best of all beauty in woman. Therefore, the ideal
of beauty as an achievement is a leading factor in the character
formation of most girls and young women. The first question girls
ask about one another is, "Is she pretty?" and in their criticism
of one another the personal appearance is the first and most,
important subject discussed. A personal beauty ideal has little
value to the character; in fact, it tends to exaggerate vanity
and triviality and selfishness; it leads away from the higher
aspects of reality. If you ask the majority of women which would
they rather be, very beautiful or very intelligent, most will say
without question (in their frank moments) that they would rather
be very beautiful. Those who are attempting to introduce the
ideal of intelligence as a goal to women need of course to
balance it with other ideals, but if successful they will
revolutionize the attitude of women toward life and change the
trend of their character.
Such ideals as beauty and wealth, however, do not acquire their
imperativeness unless at the same time they gratify some
deep-seated group of desires or instincts. Wealth gives too many
things to catalogue here, but fundamentally it gives power, and
so beauty which may lead to wealth is always a source of power,
although this power carries with it danger to the owner. Mankind
has been praising unselfishness for thousands of years, and all
men hate to be called selfish, but selfishness still rules in the
lives of most of the people of the world. Chastity and continence
receive the praise of the religious of the world, as well as of
the ascetic-minded of all types, yet the majority of men, in
theory accepting this ideal, reject it in practice. Selfishness
leads to self-gratification and pleasure; chastity imposes a
burden on desire, and praise and blame are in this instance not
powerful enough to control mankind's acts, though powerful enough
to influence them. Wherever social pressure and education
influence men and women to conduct which is contrary to the
gratification of fundamental desires, it causes an uneasiness, an
unhappiness and discomfort upon which Graham Wallas[1] has laid
great stress as the balked desire. The history of man is made up
of the struggle of normal instincts, emotions and purposes
against the mistaken inhibitions and prohibitions, against
mistaken praise and blame, reward and punishment. Moral and
ethical ideals develop institutions, and these often press too
heavily upon the life and activities of those who accept them as
authoritative.
[1] See his book "The Great Society" for a fine discussion of
this important matter.
We have spoken as if praise and blame invariably had the same
results. On the contrary, though in general they tend to bring
about uniformity and conformity, people vary remarkably from one
another in their reaction and the same person is not uniform in
his reactions. The reaction to praise is on the whole an
increased happiness and vigor, but of course it may, when
undeserved, demoralize the character and lead to a foolish vanity
and to inefficiency. To those whose conscience is highly
developed, undeserved praise is painful in that it leads to a
feeling that one is deceiving others. Speaking broadly, this is a
rare reaction. Most people accept praise as their due, just as
they attribute success to their merits.[1] The reaction to blame
may be anger, if the blame is felt to be undeserved, and there
are people of irritable ego who respond in this way to all blame
or even the hint of adverse criticism. The reaction may be
humiliation and lowered self-valuation, greatly deenergizing the
character and lowering efficiency. There, again, though this
reaction occurs in some degree to all, others are so constituted
that all criticism or blame is extremely painful and needs to be
tempered with praise and encouragement. Where blame is felt to be
deserved, and where the character is one of striving after
betterment, where the ego is neither irritable nor tender, blame
is an aid to growth and efficiency. Many a man flares up under
blame who "cools" down when he sees the justice of the criticism,
and changes accordingly.
[1] A very striking example of this was noticeable during the
Great War. American business men in general, producers,
distributors, wholesalers, retailers and speculators all got
"rich,"--some in extraordinary measure. Did many of them
attribute this to the fact that there was a "sellers' market"
caused by the conditions over which the individual business man
had no control? On the contrary, the overwhelming majority quite
complacently attributed the success (which later proved
ephemeral) to their own ability.
Therefore, in estimating the character of any individual, one
must ask into the nature of his environment, the traits and
teachings of the group from which he comes and among whom he has
lived. To understand any one this inquiry must be detailed and
reach back into his early life. Yet not too much stress must be
laid upon certain influences in regard to certain qualities. For
example, the average child is not influenced greatly by
immorality until near puberty, but dishonesty and bad manners
strike at him from early childhood. The large group, the small
group, family life, gang life influence character, but not
necessarily in a direct way. They may act to develop counter-
prejudices, for there is no one so bitter against alcoholism as
the man whose father was a drunkard and who himself revolts
against it. And there is no one so radical as he whose youth was
cramped by too much conservatism.
One might easily classify people according to their reaction to
reward, praise, punishment and blame. This would lead us too far
afield. But at least it is safe to say that in using these
factors in directing conduct and character the individual must be
studied in a detailed way. The average child, the average man and
woman is found only in statistics. Everywhere, to deal
successfully, one must deal with the individual.
There is a praise-reacting type to whom praise acts as a tonic of
incomparable worth, especially when he who administers the praise
is respected. And there are employers, teachers and parents who
ignore this fact entirely, who use praise too little or not at
all and who rely on adverse criticism. The hunger for
appreciation is a deep, intense need, and many of the problems of
life would melt before the proper use of praise.
"Fine words butter no parsnips" means that reward of other kinds
is needed to give substance to praise. Praise only without reward
losses its value. "I get lots of 'Thank you's' and 'You are a
good fellow'," complained a porter to me once, "but I cannot
bring up my family on them." In their hearts, no matter what they
say, the majority of people place highly him who is just in
compensation and reward and they want substantial goods. Many a
young scientist of my acquaintance has found that election to
learned societies and praise and respect palled on him as
compared to a living salary. Money can be exchanged for
vacations, education, books, good times and the opportunity of
helping others, but praise has no cash exchange value.
Blame and punishment are intensely individual matters. Where they
are used to correct and to better the character, where they are
the tools of the friends and teacher and not the weapons of the
enemy, great care must be used. Character building is an aim, not
a technique, and the end has justified the means. Society has
just about come to the conclusion that merely punishing the
criminal does not reform him, and merely to punish the child has
but part of the effect desired. In character training punishment
and blame must bring PAIN, but that pain must be felt to be
deserved (at least in the older child and adult) and not arouse
lasting anger or humiliation. It must teach the error of the ways
and prepare the recipient for instruction as to the right away.
Often enough the pain of punishment and blame widens the breach
between the teacher and pupil merely because the former has
inflicted pain without recompense.
One might put it thus: The pleasure of praise and reward must
energize, the pain of blame and punishment. must teach, else
teacher and society have misused these social tools.
"Very well," I hear some readers say, "is conscience to be
dismissed so shortly? Have not men dared to do right in the face
of a world that blamed and punished; have they not stood without
praise or reward or the fellowship of others for the actions
their conscience dictated?"
Yes, indeed. What, then, is conscience? For the common thought of
the world it is an inward mentor placed by God within the bosom
of man to guide him, to goad him, even, into choosing right and
avoiding wrong. Where the conception of conscience is not quite
so literal and direct it is held to be an immanent something of
innate origin. Whatever it may be, it surely does not guide us
very accurately or well, for there are opposing consciences on
every side of every question, and opponents find themselves
equally spurred by conscience to action and are equally convinced
of righteousness. In the long run it would be difficult to decide
which did more harm in the world, a conscientious persecutor or
bigot, an Alvarez or James the First, or a dissolute,
conscienceless sensualist like Charles the Second. Certainly
consciences differ as widely as digestions.
Conscience, so it seems to me, arises in early childhood with the
appearance of fixed purposes. It is entirely guided at first by
teaching and by praise and blame, for the infant gives no
evidence of conscience. But the infant (or young child) soon
wants to please, wants the favor and smiles of its parents. Why
does it wish to please? Is there a something irreducible in the
desire? I do not know and cannot pretend to answer.
This, however, may be definitely stated. Conscience arises or
grows in the struggle between opposing desires and purposes in
the course of which one purpose becomes recognized as the proper
guide to conduct. Let us take a simple case from the moral
struggles of the child.
A three-year-old, wandering into the kitchen, with mother in the
back yard hanging out the clothes, makes the startling discovery
that there is a pan of tarts, apple tarts, on the kitchen table,
easily within reach, especially if Master Three-Year-Old pulls up
a chair. Tarts! The child becomes excited, his mouth waters, and
those tarts become the symbol and substance of pleasure,--and
within his reach. But in the back of his mind, urging him to stop
and consider, is the memory of mother's injunction, "You must
always ask for tarts or candy or any goodies before you take
them." And there is the pain of punishment and scolding and the
vision of father, looking stern and not playing with one. These
are distant, faint memories, weak forces,--but they influence
conduct so that the little one takes a tart and eats it hurriedly
before mother returns and then runs into the dining room or
bedroom. Thus, instead of merely obeying an impulse to take the
tart, as an uninstructed child would, he has now become a little
thief and has had his first real moral struggle.
But it is a grim law that sensual pleasures do not last beyond
the period of gratification. If this were not so there could be
no morality in the world, and conscience would never reach any
importance. Whether we gratify sex appetite or gastric hunger,
the pleasure goes at once. True, there may be a short afterglow
of good feeling, but rarely is it strongly affective, and very
often it is replaced by a positive repulsion for the appetite. On
the other hand, to be out of conformity with your group is a
permanent pain, and the fear of being found out is an anxiety
often too great to be endured. And so our child, with the tart
gone, wishes he had not taken it, perhaps not clearly or
verbally; he is regretful, let us say. Out of this regret, out of
this fear of being found out, out of the pain of nonconformity,
arises the conscience feeling which says, "Thou shalt not" or
"Thou shalt," according to social teaching.
It may be objected that "Conscience often arrays itself against
society, against social teaching, against perhaps all men." It is
not my place to trace the growth in mind of the idea of the
Absolute Good, or absolute right and wrong, with which a man must
align himself. I believe it is the strength of the ego feeling
which gives to some the vigor and unyieldingness of their
conscience. "I am right," says such a person, "and the rest of
the world is wrong. God is with me, my conscience and future
times will agree," thus appealing to the distant tribunal as
James pointed out. All the insane hospitals have their sufferers
for conscience's sake, paranoid personalities whose egos have
expanded to infallibility and whose consciences are
correspondingly developed.
Conscience thus represents the power of the permanent purposes
and ideals of the individuals, and it wars on the less permanent
desires and impulses, because there is in memory the uneasiness
and anxiety that resulted from indulgence and the pain of the
feeling of inferiority that results when one is hiding a secret
weakness or undergoing reproof or punishment. This group of
permanent purposes, ideals and aspirations corresponds closely to
the censor of the Freudian concept and here is an example where a
new name successfully disguises an age-old thought.
In other words, conscience is social in its origin, developing
differently in different people according to their teaching,
intelligence, will, ego-feeling, instincts, etc. From the
standpoint of character analysis there are many types of people
in regard to conscience development.
In respect to the reactions to praise and blame the following
types are conspicuous:
1. A "weak" group in whom these act as apparently the sole
motives.
2. A group energized by love of praise.
3. A group energized mainly by fear of blame.
4. A type that scorns anything but material reward.
5. Another, that "takes advantage" of reward; likes praise but is
merely made conceited by it, hates blame but is merely made angry
by it, fears punishment and finds its main goad to good conduct
in this fear.
6. Then there are those in whom all these motives operate in
greater or lesser degree,--the so-called normal person. In
reality he has his special inclinations and dreads.
7. The majority of people are influenced mainly by the group with
which they have cast their positions, the blame of others being
relatively unimportant or arousing anger. For there is this great
difference between our reactions to praise and blame: that while
the praise of almost any one and for almost any quality is
welcome, the blame of only a few is taken "well," and for the
rest there is anger, contempt or defiance. The influence of blame
varies with the respect, love and especially acknowledged
superiority of the blamer. The "boss" has a right to blame and so
has father or mother while we are children, but we resent
bitterly the blame of a fellow employee; "he has no right to
blame," and we rebel against the blame of our parents when we
grow up. In fact, the war of the old and new generations starts
with the criticism of the elder folk and the resentment of the
younger folk.
It will be seen that reaction to praise and blame, etc., will
depend upon the irritability of ego feeling, the love of
superiority and the dislike for inferiority. This basic situation
we must defer discussing, but what is of importance is that the
primitive disciplinary weapons we have discussed never lose their
cardinal value and remain throughout life and in all societies
the prime modes of thought and conduct.
In similar fashion the conscience types might be depicted. From
the over-conscientious who rigidly hold themselves to an ideal,
who watch every departure from perfection with agony and
self-reproach, and who may either reach the highest level or
"break down" and become inefficient to the almost conscienceless
group, doing only what seems more profitable, are many
intermediate types merging one with the other.
There are people whose conscience is localized, as the
self-sacrificing father who is a pirate in business, or as the
policeman who holds rigidly to conscience in courage and loyalty
to his fellows, but who finds no internal reproach when he takes
a bribe or perjures himself about a criminal. What we call a code
is really a localized conscience, and there are many men whose
consciences do not permit seduction of the virgin but who are
quite easy in mind about an intrigue with a married woman. So,
too, you may be as wily as you please in business but find
cheating at cards base and unthinkable. Conscience in the
abstract may be a divine entity, but in the realities of everyday
life it is a medley of motives, purposes and teachings, varying
from the grotesque and mischief-working to the sublime and
splendid.