Produced by Robert J. Hall
HUMAN TRAITS
AND THEIR
SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE
BY
IRWIN EDMAN, Ph.D.
INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE
FOREWORD
This book was written, originally and primarily, for use in
a course entitled "Introduction to Contemporary Civilization,"
required of all Freshmen in Columbia College. It is
an attempt to give a bird's-eye view of the processes of human
nature, from man's simple inborn impulses and needs to the
most complete fulfillment of these in the deliberate activities
of religion, art, science, and morals. It is hoped that the
book may give to the student and general reader a knowledge
of the fundamentals of human nature and a sense of the possibilities
and limits these give to human enterprise.
Part I consists of an 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
organization. In consequence, there has been a deliberate
exclusion of purely technical or controversial material, however
interesting. The psychological analysis is in general based
upon the results of the objective inquiries into human behavior
which have been so fruitfully conducted in the last twenty-five
years by Thorndike and Woodworth. To the work of
the first-mentioned, the author is particularly indebted.
Part II is a brief 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
impulses and needs. Thus descriptively to treat these spiritual
enterprises implies on the part of the author a naturalistic
viewpoint whose main outlines have been fixed for this generation
by James, Santayana, and Dewey. To the last-named
the writer wishes to express the very special obligation
that a pupil owes to a great teacher.
The book as a whole, so far as can be judged from the experience
the author and others have had in using it during
the past year as a text at Columbia, should fit well into any
general course in social psychology. It has been increasingly
realized that the student's understanding of contemporary
problems of government and industry is immensely clarified
by a knowledge of the human factors which they involve.
This volume supplies a brief account of the essential facts of
human behavior with especial emphasis on their social
consequences. Part I may be independently used, as it has been
with success, in a general course in social psychology. Part II,
the "Career of Reason," presents material which many
instructors find it highly desirable to use in introductory
philosophy courses, but for which no elementary texts are
available. The usual textbooks deal with the more metaphysical
problems to the exclusion of religion, art, morals, and science,
humanly the most interesting and significant of philosophical
problems. Where, as in many colleges, the introductory
philosophy course is preceded by a course in psychology, the
arrangement of the volume should prove particularly well
suited.
The 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 scientific
method, to discuss in the abstract.
The book follows more or less closely that part of the syllabus
for the course in Contemporary Civilization, which is
called "The World of Human Nature," which section of the
outline was chiefly the joint product of collaboration by
Professor John J. Coss and the author. To the former the author
wishes to express his large indebtedness. Also to Miss Edith
G. Taber, for her careful and valuable editing of the manuscript
in preparation for the printer, he desires to convey his
deep appreciation.
I. E.
_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 instincts--Learning
in animals 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 OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE--INSTINCT,
HABIT, AND EMOTION
Instinctive behavior--The necessity for the control of
instinct--Habitual behavior--The mechanism of habit--The
acquisition of new modes of response--Trial and error
and deliberate learning--Some conditions of habit-formation--Drill
_versus_ attentive repetition in learning--Learning
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
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
importance of reflective behavior--Reflection removed from
immediate application: science--The practical aspect of
science--The creation of beautiful objects and the expression
of ideas and feelings in beautiful form.
CHAPTER IV
THE BASIC HUMAN ACTIVITIES
Food, shelter, and sex--Physical activity--Mental
activity--Quiescence: fatigue--Nervous and mental fatigue.
CHAPTER V
THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN
Man as a social being--Gregariousness--Gregariousness
important for social solidarity--Gregariousness may hinder the
solidarity of large groups--Gregariousness in belief--Gregariousness
in habits of action--The effect of gregariousness
on innovation--Sympathy (a specialization of gregariousness)--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--Importance
of relating praise and blame to socially important
conduct--Education as the agency of social control--Social
activity and the social motive.
CHAPTER VI
CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE
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
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"
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
dissatisfaction--The contrast between the self and others--Types
of self--Self-display or boldness--Self-sufficient modesty--The
positive and flexible self--Dogmatism and self-assertion--Enthusiasm--The
negative self--Eccentrics--The
active and the contemplative--Emotions aroused in the
maintenance of the self--The individuality of groups.
CHAPTER IX
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
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 influence
of the environment--Individual differences--Democracy
and education.
CHAPTER X
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
Language as a social habit--Language and mental life--The
instability of language--Changes in meaning--Uniformities
in language--Standardization of language--Counter-tendencies
toward differentiation--Language as emotional and
logical--Language and logic.
CHAPTER XI
RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY
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 disparagement--Critical
examination of the past--Limitations of the
past--Education as the transmitter of the past.
PART II--THE CAREER OF REASON
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER XII
RELIGION AND THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The religious experience--"The reality of the unseen"--Experiences
which frequently find religious expression--Need and
impotence--Fear and awe--Regret, remorse: repentance
and penance--Joy and enthusiasm: festivals and thanksgivings--Theology--The
description of the divine--The divine
as the human ideal--The religious experience, theology and
science--Mechanistic science and theology--Religion and
science--The church as a social institution--The social
consequences of institutionalized religion--Intolerance and
inquisition--Quietism and consolation: other-worldliness.
CHAPTER XIII
ART AND THE ÆSTHETIC EXPERIENCE
Art _versus_ nature--The emergence of the fine arts--The æsthetic
experience--Appreciation _versus_ action--Sense
satisfaction--Form--Expression--Art as vicarious experience--Art
and æsthetic experience in the social order--Art as an
industry--Art and morals.
CHAPTER XIV
SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD
What science is--Science as explanation--Science and a
world view--The æsthetic value of science--The danger of
"pure science"--Practical or applied science--Analysis of
scientific procedure--Science and common sense--Curiosity
and scientific inquiry--Thinking begins with a problem--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 instrument
of human progress.
CHAPTER XV
MORALS AND MORAL VALUATION
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 morality--Reflective
reconstruction of moral standards--The
values of reflective morality--Reflection transforms customs
into principles--Reflective action genuinely moral--Reflection
sets up ideal standards--The defects of reflective morality--The
inadequacy of theory in moral life--The danger of
intellectualism in morals--Types of moral theory--Absolutism--Relativistic
or teleological morality--Utilitarianism--Moral
knowledge--Intuitionalism--Empiricism--Ethics
and life--Morality and human nature--Morals, law, and
education.
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
HUMAN TRAITS AND CIVILIZATION. Throughout the long
enterprise of civilization in which mankind have more or less
consciously changed the world they found into one more in
conformity with their desires, two factors have remained
constant: (1) the physical order of the universe, which we
commonly call Nature, and (2) the native biological equipment
of man, commonly known as human nature. Both of
these, we are almost unanimously 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 controlled
in man's own interests. The railroad, the wireless,
and the aeroplane are striking and familiar testimonies to the
efficacy of man's informed mastery of the world into which
he is born. In the field of physical science, man has, in the
short period of three centuries since Francis Bacon sounded
the trumpet call to the study of Nature and Newton discovered
the laws of motion, magnificently attained and appreciated
the power to know exactly what the facts of Nature
are, what consequences follow from them, and how they may
be applied to enlarge the boundaries of the "empire of man."
In his control of human nature, which is in its outlines as
fixed and constant as the laws that govern the movements of
the stars, man has been much less conscious and deliberate,
and more frequently moved by passion and ignorance than
by reason and knowledge. Nevertheless, custom and law,
the court, the school, and the market have similarly been man's
ways of utilizing the original equipment of impulse and desire
which Nature has given him. It is hard to believe, but as
certain as it is incredible, that the modern professional and
businessman, moving freely amid the diverse contacts and
complexities pictured in any casual newspaper, in a world of factories
and parliaments and aeroplanes, is by nature no different from
the 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 succeeded
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 coöperation, for the most
part, have not been deliberately developed, since men lived
and had to live together long before a science of human relations
could have been dreamed of. Only to-day are we beginning
to have an inkling of the fundamental facts of human
nature. But it has become increasingly plain that progress
depends not merely on increasing our knowledge and application
of the laws which govern man's physical environment.
Machinery, factories, and automatic reapers are, after all,
only instruments for man's welfare. If man is ever to attain
the happiness and rationality of which philosophers and
reformers have continually been dreaming, there must also
be an understanding of the laws which govern man himself,
laws quite as constant as those of physics and chemistry.
Education and political organization, the college and the
legislature, however remote they may seem from the random
impulses to cry and clutch at random objects with which a
baby comes into the world, must start from just such materials
as these. The same impulse which prompts a five-year-old
to put blocks into a symmetrical arrangement is the stuff
out of which architects or great executives are made.
Patriotism and public spirit find their roots back in the same
unlearned impulses which make a baby smile back when
smiled at, and makes it, when a little older, cry if left too
long alone or in a strange place. All the native biological
impulses, which are almost literally our birthright, may, when
understood, be modified through education, public opinion,
and law, and directed in the interests of human ideals.
It is the aim of this book to indicate some of these more
outstanding human traits, and the factors which must be
taken into account if they are to be controlled in the interests
of human welfare. It is too often forgotten that the problems
which are to be dealt with in the world of politics, of
business, of law, and education, are much complicated
by the fact that human beings are so constituted that given
certain situations, they will do certain things in certain inevitable
ways. These problems are much clarified by knowing what
these fundamental ways of men are.
HUMAN TRAITS AND THEIR
SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE
PART I
CHAPTER I
TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
THE HUMAN ANIMAL. Any attempt to understand what the
nature of man is, apart from its training and education during
the life of the individual, must start with the realization that
man is a human animal. As a human being he is strikingly
set off by his upright posture and his large and flexible hand.
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 problems
in calculus--which constitute man's outstanding and
exclusive characteristic.[1]
[Footnote 1: The thinking process is discussed in detail in
chapters III and XIV.]
But in 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 duplicated
as far down in the animal scale as birds and chickens.[2]
Man's whole physical apparatus and mode of life, save in
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 animals,
especially of the most highly developed vertebrates, such as the
monkey. They have, up to a certain point, precisely the
same equipment for adjusting themselves to the conditions of
life. Apart from education, both man and animal are endowed
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 organism,
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:
[Footnote 2: With certain modifications accounted for in their historical
"descent" with modification from a common ancestor. See Scott:
_Theory of Evolution_.]
[Footnote 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.]
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-preservation.
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
separately, 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.[2]
[Footnote 2: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 384.]
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 automatic
as the number of sounds omitted by the cuckoo clock at
midnight.
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 billion,
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]
[Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 386.]
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 larvæ will be able to
attach themselves as parasites to some host in a way that is
necessary to their survival."[3] In many instances these complicated
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.
[Footnote 2: Bergson: _Creative Evolution_, p. 172.]
[Footnote 3: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 24. (Except
where otherwise noted, all references are to the fourth edition.)]
THE NUMBER AND VARIETY OF MAN'S INSTINCTS. Various attempts
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,
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 classifications
were inclined to speak of instincts as very general and as
half consciously purposeful in character. Thus it is still
popularly customary to speak of the "instinct of self-preservation,"
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 in
just that way whenever such a phenomenon occurs. It is no
deliberate intent to inhale the oxygen necessary to the sustenance
of life that causes us to breathe. No more is it a conscious
plan to provide the organism with nourishment that
prompts us to eat our breakfast in 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 in turn."
[Footnote 1: Watson: _Behavior_. H. S. Jennings: _Behavior of
the Lower Organisms_.]
In the last few years, as a result of the observation of
animals under laboratory conditions, there has been increasing
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 animal organism is ever in
exactly the same physico-chemical condition at two different
times, 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 aim of the
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
modifications 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
attention 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
susceptible 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.
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 in the shop windows, blink one's eyes in the glare of
the sun, feel a satisfaction in the presence of other people and
a loneliness for a particular friend, dodge before a passing
automobile, be envious of its occupant, and smile benevolently
at a passing child. It would be difficult in so complex
and so characteristically familiar a situation to pick out
completely and precisely the original human tendencies at work,
and trace out all the modifications to which they have been
subjected in the course of individual experience. For even
single responses in 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
situation 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 original
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 tendencies
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
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
positively 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 bitter
tastes, being looked at with scorn by others, etc., which
are natural annoyers. The first type the animal will try various
means of attaining; the second, various means of avoiding.
Through "trial and error," through going through every response
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 in 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 in 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 experiences
in the same situation. Once this effective response becomes
habitual it is just as automatic in character as if it had
been made immediately the first time, and it is almost impossible
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 Thorndike and
Watson, when chickens, rats, and cats were placed in situations
where the first response failed to bring satisfaction,
their behavior was in each case marked by the following features.
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 Thorndike'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 association
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 finding
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]
[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, Briefer Course. p. 129.]
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 organism.
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, intellect,
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 perform
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 consciously
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 nervous
system has been mechanically directed.
A large part of the education of humans as well as of animals
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 times performed
a certain act that brings satisfaction, tend, on the recurrence
of a similar situation, to repeat that action immediately
and to eliminate with successive repetitions almost all
the other responses which are possible, but which are ineffective
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 original
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 reach 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 their 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
significant 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
importance 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 tendencies
to act which, within a week, or, as in the case of chickens,
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 infant, 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
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 human
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]
[Footnote 1: Dewey; _Democracy and Education_, p. 53.]
The more complex the environment is in which the individual
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 in 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, moving
about, and communicating with others is concerned. But
so complex are the habits to which it must become accustomed
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 civilization
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
experience.
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 relations,
is, as it were, fortunately born ignorant. He has instincts
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 acquisition
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
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
surrounding 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 VIII) becomes
more acute as the individual grows older. It has consequences
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 whatever
truth there is in the familiarly spoken-of conflict
between "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;
beyond 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]
[Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 17.]
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, elements,
which are universally associated with certain consequences.
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 differences
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
instrument 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 language
habits, develop a system of sounds associated with definite
actions and capable of controlling actions. Only human
beings can produce even the simplest system of written symbols,
by which visual stimuli become symbols of actions, objects,
emotions, or ideas. Biologists--in particular the experimentalist,
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
development of adequate language habits. And human beings
have perfected a language sufficiently complicated to
communicate in precise and permanent form their 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
enables him to foresee the consequences of the things he does.
[Footnote 1: Mills: _The Realities of Modern Science_, p. 1.]
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:
As regards human intelligence, it has not been sufficiently noted
that mechanical invention has been from the first its essential
feature, that even to-day our social life gravitates around the
manufacture 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 industry
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
present 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
constant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should not say
_Homo sapiens_, but _Homo faber_.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bergson: _Creative Evolution_, pp. 138-39.]
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, meaning
thereby to indicate what progress man had made in the
utilization of the natural resources about him. We date the
remote periods of mankind chiefly by the mementos we have
of the kinds of tools they used and the methods they had
developed in the control of their environment. The knowledge
of how to start and maintain a fire has been set down
as the practical beginning of civilization. Certainly next in
importance was the invention of the simplest tools. There
came in succession, though æons apart, the use of chipped
stone implements, bronze or copper instruments, and instruments
made of iron. In the ancient world we find the invention
of such simple machines as the pulley, the use of rope,
and the inclined plane.
Without tracing the history of invention, it will suffice for
our purpose to point out that agriculture and industry, men's
modes of exploiting Nature, are dependent intimately on the
effectiveness of the tools at their disposal. It is a far cry
from the flint hatchet to the McCormick reaper and the modern
steel works, but these are two ends of the same process,
that process which distinguishes man from all other animals,
and makes human civilization possible: that is, the use and
the manufacture of tools.