THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN
MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING. Man has long been defined as the
"social animal," and it is certainly characteristic of human
activity that it takes place largely with reference to other people.
Many of man's native tendencies, such as those of sex,
self-assertiveness, and the like, require the presence and
contact of other people for their operation. Nineteenth-century
philosophers attempted frequently to explain how individuals
who were natively self-seeking ever came to act socially. The
solution to this problem was usually found in the fact that precisely
those self-seeking and self-preservation instincts which
governed man's activity could not find satisfaction except
through coöperation with a group. All man's social activity
was conceived as purely instrumental to the gratification of
his own egoistic desires. Man got on with his fellows simply
because he could not get on without them. We shall see that,
in the light of the specific and natural tendencies toward
social behavior which are part of man's original equipment, this
sharp psychological isolation between the individual and the
group is an altogether unwarranted assumption. For it is
just as native to man to act socially as it is for him to be
hungry, or curious, or afraid. The element of truth in the
nineteenth-century exaggeration of man's individuality lies in the
fact that social activity is partly brought about in the
satisfaction of the more egoistic impulses of the individual. "The
fear motive drives men together in times of insecurity; the
pugnacity motive bands them together for group combat; the
economic motive brings industrial coöperation and organization;
the self-assertive and submissive tendencies bring emulation
as well as obedience; the expansion of the self to cover
one's family, one's clique, one's class, one's country contributes
to loyalty; while the parental instinct, expanding its
scope to cover others besides children who are helpless, leads
to self-sacrifice and altruism."[1]
[Footnote 1: R. S. Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, p. 204.]
The fact is, however, that while social activity is promoted
because individuals find in coöperation the possibility of the
satisfaction of their egoistic desires, social activity is primarily
brought about through the specifically social tendencies
which are part of our native equipment. It is with these
natural bases of social activity that we shall in this chapter be
particularly concerned. We shall have to take note, in the
first place, of a native tendency to be with other people, to
feel an unlearned sense of comfort in their presence, and
uneasiness if too much separated from them, physically, or in
action, feeling, or thought. Human beings tend, furthermore,
to reproduce sympathetically the emotions of others,
especially those of their own social and economic groups.
Thirdly, man's conduct is natively social in that he is by
nature specifically sensitive to praise and blame, that he will
modify his conduct so as to secure the one and avoid the
other. Finally, besides the specific tendencies to respond to
the presence, the feelings, the actions, and the thoughts of
others, man displays a "capacity for social behavior." And,
as is the case with all native capacities, man has, therefore, a
native interest in group or social activity for its own sake.
The predominantly social character of human behavior has
thus a twofold explanation. It is based, in the first place, on
the group of native tendencies of a social character to which
we have already referred. It is based, secondly, on the necessity
for group activity and coöperation which the individual
experiences in the satisfaction of his egoistic impulses and
desires. Man, because of his original tendencies, wants to live,
act, think, and feel with others; for the satisfaction of his
nonsocial impulses he must live with others. And in civilized
society human action from almost earliest childhood is in, and
with reference to, a group. Human behavior is thus seen to
be that of an essentially social nature acting in an essentially
social environment. And, as in the case of other instinctive
and habitual activities, human beings experience in social
activity an immediate satisfaction apart from any satisfactions
toward which it may be the instrument.
GREGARIOUSNESS. The "herd instinct" is manifested by
many animals very low in the scale of animal development.
McDougall quotes in this connection Francis Galton's classical
account of this instinct in its crudest form: "Describing
the South African ox in Damaraland, he says he displays
no affection for his fellows, and hardly seems to notice their
existence, so long as he is among them; but, if he becomes
separated from the herd, he displays an extreme distress that
will not let him rest until he succeeds in rejoining it, when he
hastens to bury himself in the midst of it, seeking the closest
possible contact with the bodies of his fellows."[1]
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 84.]
This original tendency exhibits itself among human beings
in a variety of ways. The tendency of human beings to herd
together, for which there is evidence in the earliest history of
the race, may be observed on any crowded thoroughfare, or
in any amusement park, or city. That group life has expanded
partly through practical necessity, is, of course, true,
but groups of humans tend to become, as in our monster cities,
larger than they need be, or can be for economic efficiency.
The fascination of city life has not infrequently been set
down to the multiplicity of opportunities offered in the way
of companions, amusements, and occupations after one's own
taste. But the fascination has clearly a more instinctive
basis, the desire to be with other people. Many a man, as
has been pointed out, lives in a large city as unsociable and
secluded a life as if he were surrounded by miles of mountain
or prairie, who yet could not be happy elsewhere. Any one
who has failed to be amused by a really good comedy when
the theater was comparatively empty, or in the presence of
thousands of others hugely enjoyed a second-rate baseball
game, or gone down to the crowded shopping district to get
what he could have purchased on a side-street uptown, can
appreciate how instinctive is this undiscriminating desire for
companionship.
The native intensity of this desire is what makes rural
isolation, on the other hand, so unsatisfactory. The bleakness
of New England country life as pictured in Edith
Wharton's _Ethan Frome_, or in some of Robert Frost's _North
of Boston_, is due more than anything else to this privation
from companionship. Perhaps nothing better could be said
for the rural telephone, the interurban trolley, and the cheap
automobile than that they make possible the fulfillment of
this normal human longing to be near and with other people
in body and spirit. The horror which makes it practically
impossible in civilized countries to legalize punishment by
solitary confinement and the nervous collapse which such
confinement brings about are indications of how deep-seated
is this desire.
The "herd instinct," like all the other of man's original
tendencies, is educable. It can be trained to respond to
groups of various sizes and kinds. In its simplest manifestation
it tends to be aroused by the family, but in the history
of civilization the group tends progressively to enlarge. The
family, the town, the nation--the gregarious instinct may be
educated to respond to these ever-widening groups. The
intensity and controlling power of this instinct over our
actions seems to vary with the degree of intimacy and
intercommunication between the individual and the group. In
primitive society it is most intense among the family and
clan, and the family still remains in civilized society, certainly
in rural districts, a very closely knit primary group. But as
intercommunication widens, a sense of attachment to and
solidarity with a larger group begins to make itself felt. That
intercommunication is largely important in extending the
group in response to which the herd instinct may be aroused,
is well illustrated by the utter lack of national group feeling
exhibited during the Great War by recruits drafted from the
backwoods districts where they had been tied by no railroads
or newspapers to the national civilization of which they were
a part.
The devotion of generous-hearted souls to "lost causes,"
whether political or religious, of the individual to his family
or friends in the face of personal privation, are classic
illustrations of the power of men's gregarious instinct even in the
face of the dictates of reason. In the perhaps extreme but
nevertheless suggestive statement of Mr. Trotter:
He [man] is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any
other influence. It can inhibit or stimulate his thought and conduct.
It is the source of his moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and
philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage and endurance,
and can as easily take these away. It can make him acquiesce in his
own punishment, and embrace his executioner, submit to poverty,
bow to tyranny, and sink without complaint under starvation. Not
merely can it make him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly,
but it can make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly
preventable afflictions are sublimely just and gentle. It is
this acme of the power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the most
absolutely incontestable proof of the profoundly gregarious nature
of man.[1]
[Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_,
pp. 114-15.]
To how large a group the individual can respond with spontaneous
and instinctive loyalty is questionable. The small
child throws out his arms and exclaims passionately, "I love
the whole world." Auguste Comte could be imbued with a
fervor for "humanity" in the abstract. The idea of a League
of Nations arouses in some minds a passionate devotion to a
world order that to those themselves habituated to an intense
loyalty to the national group seems incredible. Certainly it is
true that we rapidly outgrow that state of mind common to
enthusiastic adolescence when we can develop a love for the
universe in the abstract. The instinct of gregariousness
seems unquestionably to be most intense where there is intimacy
and vividness of group association. The primary
groups, as Professor Ross calls them, are face-to-face associations,
the family, the play group, the neighborhood group.
If "world patriotism" is a possibility, it is because rapid
communication and the frequency of travel, and the education
of the industrial classes to "the international mind" tend
to break down barriers and to make distant countries and
persons vivid and directly imaginable. But there seems to be
no substitute for direct personal contact. Even devotion to
a country tends to take the form of phrases, places, persons,
and symbols, to which we have been familiarized.
GREGARIOUSNESS IMPORTANT FOR SOCIAL SOLIDARITY. The gregarious
instinct, powerful as it is, is of the greatest significance
for social solidarity, and, if misdirected, for seriously limiting
it. It is, in the first place, the trait without which social
solidarity would be almost impossible. "In early times when
population was scanty, it must have played an important
part in social evolution by keeping men together, and thereby
occasioning the need for social laws and institutions."[1] The
coherence of national, political, or religious groups depends
primarily on the extent to which the gregarious instinct may
be aroused. Allegiance to a group may, of course, be secured
through participation in common ideals. This is illustrated
in the case of the numerous literary and scientific associations
that cut across national boundaries and knit into groups
similarly interested persons all over the world. Groups may,
again, be formed through common economic interests, as in
the case of labor unions, or employers' associations. Groups
may be knit and strengthened through law and custom. And
all these factors play a smaller or larger part in any important
grouping of men in contemporary society. But unless there
is, on the part of the members of the group, a deep-seated
emotional attachment to the group itself, solidarity will be
very precarious. The intensity and solidarity, of feeling
exhibited so markedly during war-time is made possible by
the intense excitability of this instinct when the group is
under conditions of stress or danger. Any scheme for enlisting
a great number of individuals in modern society in a
scheme of social reform or improvement, must and does,
when it is successful, arouse in him a heightened sense of loyalty
to a group more than reasoned approval of a cause.
Effective recruiting posters more often told the passer-by,
"Your country needs you," than they attempted to convince
him in black-and-white logic of the justice of his country's
aims.
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 301.]
GREGARIOUSNESS MAY HINDER THE SOLIDARITY OF LARGE GROUPS.
While gregariousness is the foundation of group solidarity, it
also interferes with the solidarity of large groups, and not
infrequently brings about conflicts between them, and within
groups themselves. Within even so small a community as
a college class, cliques may form; and so in a country,
attachment to the smaller group may inhibit attachment to
the larger. An individual may be vaguely patriotic, but
instinctively aroused more by his own economic or local or
racial group than by the country as a whole. A man may at
heart be more devoted to his town or home than to the United
States. (Not infrequently his town or home is what the
United States means to the citizen.) Even to-day the sectional
feeling that exists in many parts of the country cannot
be completely explained as occurring through separate economic
interests. The division of classes within a country is
largely an economic matter, but even in such a situation a
loyalty develops to the class as a class or group.
Again, the same instinct to herd with his fellows that makes
a man intensely loyal to his own group may operate to make
him indifferent to the difficulties or jealous and suspicious of
the aims of others Gregariousness is the basis not only of
patriotism, but of chauvinism, not only of civic pride, but of
provincialism. The narrowness and parochialism of group
attachments is most pronounced where groups and communities
are rigidly set off one from another. In such circumstances
community of feeling and understanding is largely reduced.
This may be seen even under contemporary conditions in the
comparatively complete inability of different professional,
social, and economic groups within the same society to
understand each other, and the proverbial ignorance and
carelessness of one half of the population as to "how the other half
lives." Narrowness of group feeling tends to grow less
pronounced under the mobile conditions of modern industry,
communication, and education. Trade relations knit the
farthest parts of the globe together; this morning's newspaper
puts us in touch with the whole of mankind. We have outgrown
the days when every stranger was an enemy. But
though the barriers between nations are tending to break
down, within nations individuals tend, as they grow older, to
experience an insulated devotion to their own set or social
group, a callous oblivion to the needs and desires of that great
majority of mankind with whom they have a less keen sense
of "consciousness of kind."
GREGARIOUSNESS IN BELIEF. Man's gregarious character, as
already pointed out, is manifested not only in his desire to be
physically with his fellows, but to be at one with them in their
actions, feelings, and thoughts. Beliefs once established tend
to remain established if for no other reason than that they are
believed in by the majority. That an opinion gains prestige
merely because we know other people believe it, is frequently
illustrated by the facility with which rumor travels. At the
end of the Great War, it will be recalled, the false news of the
armistice report flew from mouth to mouth and was accepted
with the most amazing credulity simply because "everybody
said so." The spread of superstitions and old wives' tales and
their long lingering in the minds even of intelligent people is
testimony that men tend mentally as well as physically to
herd together.
The tendency to find comfort in the presence of one's fellows
and uneasiness if too much separated from them, is as
pronounced in the sphere of moral and intellectual relations
as it is in the case of merely physical proximity. We like to
be one of a crowd in our opinions and beliefs, as well as in our
persons. There is hardly anything more painful than the
sense of being utterly alone in one's opinions. Even the
extreme dissenter from the accustomed ways of thinking and
feeling of the majority is associated with or pictures some
little group which agrees with him. And, if we cannot find
contemporaries to share our extreme opinions, we at least
imagine some ideal group now or in posterity to share it with
us.
GREGARIOUSNESS IN HABITS OF ACTION. But if men tend to
think in groups they tend more emphatically still to act in
groups, to be acutely uncomfortable when acting in a fashion
different from that customary among the majority of their
fellows. Habits of action are more deep-seated physiologically
than habits of thought (which is one reason why our theories
are so often in advance of our practice). People will accede
intellectually to new ideas which they would not and could
not practice, the mind being, as it were, more convertible
than the emotions. Even in minor matters, in dress, speech,
and manners, we like to do the accustomed thing. It is more
painful for most people to use the wrong fork at dinner, or
to be dressed in a business suit where everyone else is in
evening clothes, than to commit a fallacy, or to act upon
prejudices rather than upon logical conclusions.
The individual's instinctive desire to be identical in action
with other members of his group, from the collars and clothes
he wears to the way he brings up his children, is greatly
reinforced by the punishment meted out to those who differ from
the majority. This may vary from ridicule, as in the case of
the laughter that greets the poet's proverbial long hair and
flowing tie, the foreigner's accent, or a straw hat in April, to
the confinement and privation that are the penalties for any
marked infringement of the accepted modes of life. Even
when the punishments are slight, they are effective. A man
who has no moral or religious scruples with reference to
gambling on any day of the week will, to avoid the social ostracism
of his neighbors, refrain from playing cards on his front porch
on Sunday. For no other reason than to avoid being consciously
different, many a man will not wear cool white
clothes on a hot day in his office who will wear them on a cool
evening at the seashore.
THE EFFECT OF GREGARIOUSNESS ON INNOVATION. A strong
instinctive tendency to community of action and thought is in
large part responsible for the comparative absence of innovation
in either of these fields. A premium is put upon the
conventional, the customary, the common, both in the instinctive
satisfaction they give the individual, and in the high
value set upon them by society. In advanced societies, however,
the habit of inquiry and originality may itself come to
be endorsed by the majority, as it is among scientists and
artists. The herd instinct need not always act on the side of
unreason. Among the intellectual classes, it is already enlisted
on the side of free inquiry, which among scholars is the
fundamental common habit.
If rationality were once to become really respectable, if we feared
the entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the warmth with
which we fear using the wrong implement at the dinner table, if the
thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us as does a foul disease,
then the dangers of man's suggestibility would be turned into
advantages.[1]
[Footnote 1: Trotter; _loc. cit._, p. 45.]
SYMPATHY (A SPECIALIZATION OF GREGARIOUSNESS). Sympathy,
in the strict psychological sense of the term, means a
"suffering with, the experiencing of any feeling or emotion
when and because we observe in other persons or creatures
the expression of that feeling of emotion."[2] The behavior
of animals exhibits the external features of sympathetic action
very clearly. "Two dogs begin to growl or fight, and at once
all the dogs within sound and sight stiffen themselves, and
show every symptom of anger. Or one beast in a herd stands
arrested, gazing in curiosity on some unfamiliar object, and
presently his fellows also, to whom the object may be invisible,
display curiosity and come up to join in the examination
of the object."[1]
[Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 92.]
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 93.]
Human beings tend not only sympathetically to reproduce
the instinctive actions of others,[2] but they tend, despite
themselves, to experience directly and immediately, often
involuntarily, the emotions experienced and outwardly manifested
by others. Almost everyone has had his mood heightened
to at least kindly joy by the presence in a crowded street car
of a young child whose inquiring prattle and light-hearted
laughter were subdued by the gray restraints and responsibilities
of maturity. One melancholy face can crush the joy of a
boisterous and cheerful party;[3] the eagerness and enthusiasm
of an orator can, irrespective of the merits of the cause he is
defending, provoke eagerness and enthusiasm for the same
cause among an audience that does not in the least understand
what the orator is talking about.
[Footnote 2:
"In man infectious laughter or yawning, walking in step, imitating the
movements of a ropewalker, while watching him, feeling a shock in one's legs
when one sees a man falling, and a hundred other occurrences of this kind are
cases of physiological sympathy." Ribot: _Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 232.
Reproduction of the actions of others has by a certain school of philosophers
and psychologists, notably Tarde, Le Bon, and Baldwin, been ascribed to
imitation. But no experimental researches have revealed any such specific
instinct to imitate (see Thorndike, p. 73 ff.), and "imitations" of acts can
generally be traced to sympathy, or suggestion--which is sympathy on an
intellectual plane.]
[Footnote 3: Such expressions as "kill joy," "wet blanket," "life of the
party" are instances of the popular appreciation of the fact of social
contagion.]
One brand of cigarettes was recently advertised by the
face of a young soldier, roguishly irresponsible, palpably and
completely given over to joy. One found one's self transported
into something of this same mood before one had a
chance to speculate at all as to whether there was any causal
relation between the specific quality of tobacco the youngster
was smoking, and that contagious, undeniable delight. What
is called personal magnetism is perhaps more than anything
else the ability to provoke in others sympathetic experiences
of pleasant and exhilarating emotions.
Sensibility to the emotions of others, though possessed by
almost all individuals, varies in degree. The complete
absence of it marks a man out as "stolid," "cold," "callous,"
"brutal." Such a type of personality may be efficient and
successful in pursuits requiring nothing besides a direct
analysis of facts, uncolored by any irrelevant access of feeling, as in
the case of mathematics and mechanics. But the geniuses
even in strictly intellectual fields have frequently been men of
sensitiveness, delicacy, and responsiveness to the feelings of
others. That intellectual analysis, however, does frequently
blunt the poignancy of feeling is illustrated in the case of John
Stuart Mill, who writes in his _Autobiography_:
Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations between
causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether to
weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling.
They are, therefore, I thought, favorable to prudence and clear-sightedness,
but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions
and of the virtues; and above all fearfully undermine all desires and
... all except the purely physical and organic; of the entire insufficiency
of which to make life desirable, no one had a stronger conviction
than I had.... All those to whom I looked up were of the opinion
that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the
feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind
on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest
sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to
know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give
me the feeling.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mill: _Autobiography_ (Holt edition), p. 138.]
A generous degree of susceptibility to the emotions of
others makes a man what is variously called "mellow," "humane,"
"large-hearted," "generous-souled." The possession
of such susceptibility is an asset, first, in that it enriches life
for its possessor. It gives him a warm insight into the feelings,
emotions, desires, habits of mind and action of other
people, and gives to his experiences with them a vivid and
personal significance not attainable by any hollow intellectual
analysis. It is an asset, moreover, in the purely utilitarian
business of dealing with men. The statesman or executive
who deals with men as so many animate machines, may
achieve certain mechanical and arbitrary successes. But he
will be missing half the data on which his decisions must be
based if he does not have a live and sensitive appreciation of
how men feel when placed in given situations. The placing of
women in positions of labor management where women chiefly
are to be dealt with is an illustration of the recognition of the
importance of sympathy, fellow-feeling in the management
of human affairs. One of the reasons why many university
scholars make poor teachers is because they cannot place
themselves back at the point where a subject was as live and
fresh and virgin to them as it is to their students.
An extraordinary degree or a decided hypertrophy of emotional
susceptibility is as dangerous a trait as its possession in
a reasonable degree is a utility and an enrichment of life. It
results in the hysteria or sentimentalism which adds to the
real evils and difficulties of life fancied grievances and
disasters. Such temperaments when confronted with any good
or beautiful action dissolve into ecstasy, and when faced with
a problem or a difficulty dissolve into tears. Doctors will
not treat their own children because the overplus of sympathy
is a hindrance to action. Sentimental ladies are not
the most efficient charity workers or prisoner reformers.
While there is a general tendency to experience sympathetically
the feelings of others, this becomes specialized in most
people, and one tends to experience most immediately and
intensely the emotions of one's own kind, physically, socially,
and intellectually. Sympathy is a specialization of man's
general gregariousness, and becomes more specialized as one
becomes habituated exclusively to a small group. Within
this small group, individuals not only experience the emotions
of others, but like to share and communicate their own
emotions.
The nearer people are to us in mode of life, social status, and
intellectual interests, the closer is community of feeling and
"consciousness of kind." Two Americans meeting in a foreign
country have a quick and sympathetic understanding of
each other. Two alumni of the same college meeting in a
distant city have a common basis of interest and feeling.
This easy give-and-take of feeling and emotion makes the
deep attractiveness of intimate companionship. Our companion
has but to mention a name or a place, and we experience
the same associations, the pleasures, or antipathies which
he does. A gesture, a curious glance of the eye, a pause, we
understand as quickly as if he had spoken a sentence. But
not only do we understand his feelings; he (or she) understands
ours. And for most people, all their interests and enjoyments
are heightened by the presence of an intimately
known companion.
Many children manifest very clearly this tendency of active sympathy;
they demand that their every emotion shall be shared at once.
"Oh, come and look!" is their constant cry when out for a walk, and
every object that excites their curiosity or admiration is brought at
once, or pointed out, to their companion.... On the other hand,
another child, brought up, perhaps, under identical conditions, but
in whom this impulse is relatively weak, will explore a garden,
interested and excited for hours together, without once feeling
the need for sympathy, without once calling on others to share
his emotions.[1]
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 172.]
In adult life, few people care to go to theater or concert
alone, and a man at a club will wander half through the dining-room
until he will find some one with whom he will feel like
sitting through a dinner conversation.
The fact that emotions exhibited in one individual are readily
aroused in another makes art possible and makes it interesting.
A poet by a phrase, a musician by a chord or melody,
can suddenly reproduce in us his own feeling of gayety or
exaltation. A painter by disposition of line and color can
suggest the majesty of mountains, or the sadness of a sunset
as he himself has experienced it. In novels and dramas we
can _relive_ the feelings that the writer imagines to have been
experienced by others. It is testimony to the easy excitability
of sympathy as well as to an artist's skill that this can
sometimes be done in a few lines or paragraphs. Witness the
famous opening of Poe's _Fall of the House of Usher:_
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn
of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens,
I had been passing alone on horseback, through a singularly dreary
tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening
drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not
how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic,
sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene
before me--upon the mere house and the simple landscape features
of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows,
upon a few rank sedges, and upon a few white trunks of decayed
trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare
to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
reveller upon opium; the bitter lapse into everyday life, the hideous
dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening
of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading
of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What
was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in
the contemplation of the House of Usher?
To Aristotle tragedy seemed to afford a cleansing or
"katharsis of the soul" through the sympathetic experience
of pity or fear. To Schopenhauer music was the greatest of
the arts because it made us at one with the sorrows and the
strivings of the world. All the representative arts are vivid
ways of making us feel with the passions or emotions that
stir mankind. And those men are poets, painters, or musicians
who, besides having a unique gift of expression, whether
in word, tone, or color, have themselves an unusually high
sensitivity to the moods of other men and to the imagined
moods of the natural scenes among which they move.[1]
[Footnote 1: Poets generally are so susceptible to emotional shades and
nuances that they read them into situations where they are not present,
and then reproduce them sympathetically in their works. The so-called
"pathetic fallacy" is an excellent illustration of this. Poets sympathize
with the emotions of a landscape, emotions which were in the first
place, their own.]
In experience, the presence or absence of genuine sympathy
with the emotions of others determines to no small extent the
character of our dealings with them. Even courts of justice
take motives into account and juries have been known to ask
for clemency for a murderer because of their keen realization
of the provocation which he had undergone. Fellow-feeling
with others may again warp our judgments or soften them;
in our judgment of the work of our friends, it is difficult
altogether to discount our personal interest and affection. On
the other hand, we may have the most sincere admiration and
respect for a man, and yet be seriously hampered in our
dealings with him, socially or professionally, by a total lack
of sympathy with his motives and desires.
PRAISE AND BLAME. An important part of man's social
equipment is his susceptibility to the praise and blame of his
fellows. That is, among the things which instinctively satisfy
men are objective marks of praise or approval on the part
of other people; among the things which annoy them, sometimes
to the point of acute distress, are marks of disapproval,
scorn, or blame. This is illustrated most simply and directly
in the satisfaction felt at "intimate approval as by smiles,
pats," kindly words, or epithets applied by other people to
one's own actions or ideas, and the discomfort, amounting
sometimes to pain, that is felt at frowns, hoots, sneers, and
epithets of scorn or derision. One student of this subject
notes "as early as the fourth month a 'hurt' way of crying
which seemed to indicate a sense of personal slight. It was
quite different from the cry of pain or that of anger, but
seemed about the same as the cry of fright. The slightest
tone of reproof would produce it. On the other hand, if
people took notice and laughed and encouraged, she was
hilarious."[1]
[Footnote 1: Cooley: _Human Nature and the Social Order_, p. 166.]
Man's sensitiveness to praise and blame is paralleled by his
instinctive tendency to express them.
Smiles, respectful stares, and encouraging shouts occur, I think, as
instinctive responses to relief from hunger, rescue from fear, gorgeous
display, instinctive acts of strength and daring, victory, and other
impressive instinctive behavior that is harmless to the onlooker.
Similarly, frowns, hoots, and sneers seem bound as original responses
to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness,
pusillanimity, and defect. As in the case of all original tendencies,
such behavior is early complicated and in the end much distorted,
by training; but the resulting total cannot be explained by
nurture alone.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, Briefer Course,
pp. 32-33.]
Man's instinctive tendency to respond to praise and blame
and to exhibit them is, next to gregariousness--through
which men in the first place are able to live together--the
individual human trait most significant for social life. For
while the desire for praise, the avoidance of blame, and the
expression of both are instinctive, the occasions on which they
are called forth depend on the traditions and group habits to
which the individual has been exposed. He soon learns that
in the society in which he is living, certain acts will bring him
the praise of others; certain other acts will bring him their
disapproval. The whole scope of his activity may thus be
profoundly modified by the penalties and prizes in the way
of praise and blame which society attaches to different modes
of action. And the more explicit and outward signs there are
of the approval or scorn of others, the more will individual
action be subject to social control.
As Plato said so long ago and said so well:
Whenever they [the public] crowd to the popular assembly, the
law courts, the theaters, the camp, or any public gathering of large
bodies, and there sit in a dense and uproarious mass to censure some
of the things said or done, and applaud others, always in excess;
shouting and clapping, until, in addition to their own noise, the rocks
and the places wherein they are echo back redoubled the uproar of
their censure and applause. At such a moment, how is a young man,
think you, to retain his self-possession? Can any private education
that he has received hold out against such a torrent of censure and
applause, and avoid being swept away down the stream, wherever it
may lead, until he is brought to adopt the language of these men as
to what is honorable and dishonorable, and to imitate all their practices,
and to become their very counterpart?[1]
[Footnote 1: Plato: _Republic_ (Davies and Vaughn translation), p. 208.]
We have already had occasion to point out that education is
the method by which society inculcates in its younger members
habits which are regarded as socially beneficial. In its
broadest sense the whole social environment is an individual's
education. And it is an education chiefly through experience
with other people, discovering what they will and will not
tolerate, what they will cherish and what they will condemn.
The elaborate paraphernalia and rites of fashion in clothes exist
chiefly by virtue of their value as means of securing diffuse notice
and approval. The primitive sex display is now a minor cause:
women obviously dress for other women's eyes. Much the same is
true of subservience to fashions in furniture, food, manners, morals,
and religion. The institution of tipping, which began, perhaps, in
kindliness and was fostered by economic self-interest, is now well-nigh
impregnable because no man is brave enough to withstand the scorn
of a line of lackeys whom he heartily despises, or of a few onlookers
whom he will never see again.[2]
[Footnote 2: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, p. 32.]
One of the things we mean when we say a man is worldly-wise,
shrewd, knows human nature, is that he knows what
will win people's admiration, and knows, moreover, to distinguish
between that which they publicly condemn and
secretly approve, and _vice versa_. In the passage quoted above
Plato was trying to show how the young Athenian acquired
not wisdom itself, but "worldly wisdom," the ability to get
along in affairs. This he learned not from the professional
teachers, but from the Athenian public, with whose approvals
and disapprovals he came in daily contact.
PRAISE AND BLAME MODIFY HABIT. In order to avoid censure
and gain the expressed approval of others, people learn, either,
as we say, through bitter experience, or deliberately, to modify
their actions. The well-brought-up child, even when
its mother is not about and its appetite unsatisfied, may be
ashamed to say "Yes" to a second offering of ice cream. The
ten-year-old who likes to be coddled by his mother in private
would be acutely embarrassed to be "babied" in the presence
of other people. Among adults, likewise, actions are checked,
prompted, or modified by the praise and blame that have become
habitually associated with them. Men like to appear
virtuous, even if they do not like to practice virtue. It is not
only the professional politician who does generous acts for
public approval, nor is even the most disinterested and conscientious
work altogether free from being affected by the
expressed attitudes of approval or disapproval of other people.
Even transportation companies have found that they can
increase the efficiency of their employees by expressing in
some form the approval of their employees' courtesy and
loyalty.[1] "A man, again, ... may fail to see any 'reason'
why an elementary-school teacher or a second-division clerk
cannot do his work properly after he has been 'put in his
place' by some official who happens to combine personal callousness
with social superiority. But no statesman who did
so could create an effective educational or clerical service."[2]
[Footnote 1: Many transportation companies maintain a merit system.
Sometimes they award special insignia, as the green flag to the New
York bus-drivers who save gasoline.]
[Footnote 2: Wallas: _Great Society_, p. 197.]
To say that we are moved to action by praise and blame is
not to indicate that actions thus motivated are done in a spirit
of hypocrisy or charlatanism. Even the most sincere acts are
prompted or sustained, especially where their performance
involves serious personal privation or sacrifice, by the imagined
or actual approval of those whom we love, admire, or
respect. Whose praise and blame individuals will care about
depends on their education and temperamental differences.
That there will be some group, however small, is almost sure
to be the case. The poet who curls his lip at popular taste
cherishes the more keenly the applause of those whom he
regards as competent judges. The martyr will be unmoved
by the curses, the jeers, and the hoots of the contemporary
multitude so long as he has the trust of his small band of comrades
or faith that the Lord approves his ways. A man who
is utterly alone in the approval of his actions is regarded as
crazy or is driven so by the perpetual disesteem in which he is
held. There have been cases in literature and life of accused
criminals who could bear up against the belief of the whole
world in their guilt so long as one friend or kinsman had faith
in them. That faith gone, they completely collapsed.
DESIRE FOR PRAISE MAY LEAD TO THE PROFESSION RATHER THAN THE
PRACTICE OF VIRTUE. While the desire for social approval is
strong in most men, so are other desires. It happens, moreover,
that the actions to which men's instincts prompt them
are not always such as would be approved by others.[1] In
order, therefore, to have their cake and eat it, to do what they
please and yet seem to please others, men often conceal the
discrepancy between what they profess and what they practice.
One of the least agreeable features of civilized society
is the extent to which the codes which men and groups profess
differ from those by which they live. Men who have ostensibly
Christian codes of honor, and, indeed, practice them in
their private lives, will have an actual "ethics" for business
that they could not possibly sanction in their dealings as
trustees of a church. There are practices within trades and
professions, the familiar "trade" practices, and "ethics" of
the profession, which, for social as well as for professional
reasons, their practitioners would not want known. "Company"
manners are a trivial illustration of this, but there are
more serious instances. One has but to recall the sensation
created a few years ago when a minister of a fashionable
congregation called upon his congregation to practice Christianity,
or, on a superb scale, Tolstoy's leaving the estates and
mode of life of a rich Russian noble, in order to live the simple
life he regarded as prescribed by the Christian teaching.[2]
[Footnote 1: At least not publicly approved. There is, however,
admiration, often unconcealed, for the man who does even an
unusual act conspicuously well. One need only mention a Raffles
or a Captain Kidd.]
[Footnote 2: See Tolstoy's _Diary_ and _Confessions_.]
Psychologically, therefore, the cause of the discrepancy
between the codes which men preach and profess and those
which they practice, is thus seen to be a desire to secure illicit
(that is, socially unsanctioned) satisfactions without incurring
the penalty of social disapproval. Part of this discrepancy is
not to be set down to the evils men actually do so much as
the irrationality and fanaticism of the codes which they have
been taught to profess. This is the case, for example, where
excessive Puritanism or fanaticism, not possible for most men,
is imposed upon them by an arbitrary and fanatical teaching.
They will then pretend to types of action socially regarded as
virtues in order to avoid the penalties incurred by not practicing
them. The desire for "respectability" is responsible
for no small amount of pretension, illustrated pathetically in
cases where individuals, to satisfy the standards of their associates,
live beyond their means physically, socially, or intellectually.[1]
[Footnote 1: "Many Bostonians, _crede experto_ (and inhabitants
of other cities, too, I fear), would be happier men and women to-day
if they could once for all abandon the notion of keeping up a Musical
Self and without shame let people hear them call a symphony a nuisance."
James: _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 311.]
Again, codes of action remain formally accepted long after
they have ceased to be taken seriously. In States that went
"dry" where there was no majority public sentiment in their
favor, "bootlegging," the illicit making and selling of whiskey,
was practiced freely, because not many people regarded
prohibition as a serious matter, or its infringement as a serious
crime. Legal codes remain not infrequently a generation
behind public opinion, and many ideas are verbally professed
that nobody takes quite seriously.
THE SOCIAL EFFECTIVENESS OF PRAISE AND BLAME. How far the
social estimates of approval and disapproval affect the conduct
of the individual depends on the degree to which, through
education, public opinion, and law, he is made part of the
group. In primitive society, even the slightest details of
conduct were regulated by the group, through an elaborate system
of punishments for slight infringements. In civilized
society, the development of a sense of personal selfhood and
social recognition of its importance has to a degree freed
individual action from complete domination by the group. This
has in part been compensated by the education of the contemporary
citizen to national interests, and social sympathy,
which render him susceptible to the praise and blame of public
opinion.
The effectiveness of praise and blame in determining action
depends also on the explicitness with which they are expressed.
In contemporary life the control of public opinion
is made precarious because there is so rarely complete or
palpable unanimity on any subject among the variety of groups
that constitute a modern society. In a large city there are so
many groups, so many sets of opinion, that an individual may
not feel any great pressure of praise and blame except from the
small circle of people with whom he is associated. In small
communities action is restrained by the fear of ostracism or
contempt of the whole group among whom one is living. But
in large cities, where one may not be known by one's next-door
neighbor, this restraint is much reduced. The temptations
of a metropolis, so often referred to in the lurid literature
of the day, consist not in temptations more numerous than or
different from those in smaller places, but in the marked
absence of social control as compared with small villages where
every one knows everyone else's business.
The influence of the social estimate on individual conduct
depends finally on individual differences in suggestibility.
In normal individuals susceptibility to the praise and blame
of others is very high, especially among the close circle of
friends, professional and business associates among whom one
moves. This susceptibility is heightened when the praise or
blame comes from persons superior in social status, though
here the element of fear of the consequences of displeasing is
perhaps more important than the responsiveness to the praise
and blame itself. To the praise and blame of close associates
most men are also highly suggestible, not less so when there
is equality in social status. "Birds of a feather flock together,"
but humans tend to _become_ similar _because_ they flock together.
There are few men who can withstand the pressure of doing
what their group approves, and refraining from doing what it
disapproves.
In some men susceptibility to the attitudes of others is
extremely low, and of such are both criminals and martyrs
made. In the prisons of this country there are a large number
of men absolutely indifferent to the usual social standards,
completely undeterred by the codes of conduct by which
other people cannot help but be governed. Such absolute
callousness to the feelings which govern the majority of
mankind as we read of every now and then in the trial of some
desperate criminal, is not infrequently associated with
abnormally low intelligence, the sodden stolidity of the traditional
criminal type. Where it appears, as it sometimes does, in
criminals of high intelligence, it is regarded by psychiatrists
as a specific abnormality, comparable to color-blindness or a
physical deformity.
There are, on the other hand, individuals whose apparent
low suggestibility is of the highest social value. There are
striking instances, throughout the long struggle toward human
liberty, of persons who could withstand the public opinion
of their own day in the light of some ideal which they cherished,
of men who needed no other approval than their consciences,
their better selves, or their god. Socrates drinking
the fatal hemlock, Christ upon the cross, the Christian saints,
Joan of Arc, the extreme dissenters of every generation, are
instances of men and women seemingly unmoved by the
praise and blame of their contemporaries. Sustained by their
deep inner conviction of the justice and significance of their
mission, they have been content to suffer scorn, ridicule, and
martyrdom at the hands of their own generation in a persistent
devotion to what in their eyes constituted the highest good of
mankind.
SOCIAL ESTIMATES AND STANDARDS OF CONDUCT. Individuals
are early habituated to the customs of the society in which
they live, and come to approve, as might be expected from
the power of men's habits and from their instinctive gregariousness,
those things which they or their companions have
always done. That "people don't do such things," or that
"everybody does them," is a frequently assigned reason for
the approval or condemnation of an act. Social approvals
thus become affixed to acts which are regularly done by the
majority, and divergences are subjected to varying degrees
of censure. In civilized societies variations from customs
that are not legally enforced are punished mainly by social
ostracism. There is no law against walking down a crowded
city street in Elizabethan costume, yet few would indulge
their taste for beautiful but archaic dress in the face of all the
ridicule they would incur. The whole system of etiquette,
of the standard of living of respectable society, is maintained
in large part because of the approvals and outward marks of
admiration that go to some types of life and the contempt in
which others are held. Much of the economic activity of the
leisure class, as Professor Veblen has so well pointed out, is
devoted to wasting time and spending money conspicuously
as outward indications that the individual is living up to
established and approved standards.[1]
[Footnote 1: Veblen: _Theory of the Leisure Class._]
The more significant folkways, standards of importance and
unimportance, of the admirable and the despicable, the noble
and the base, are determined by approvals and disapprovals
that have become socially habitual. When we speak of a
country being imperialistic or materialistic, we mean that
most individuals in it, or at least those who are articulate or
influential, perform or approve of actions leading to national
or individual aggrandizement. The amount of money, time,
and energy that is spent on amusement, public works, education,
the army and navy is a fairly accurate gauge of the relative
group approvals they have respectively secured. In the
same way the professions and occupations in which men engage
are determined by the social prestige attaching to them
no less than by economic considerations. The pay of stenographers
is no less than that of primary-school teachers; it is
often much more; yet many a girl remains a teacher for the
gentility which is traditionally associated with the profession.
In the same way many girls, in spite of the fact that they are
economically and physically better off in domestic service
than in factory work, still prefer the latter because of the
social inferiority which is associated with the servant's position.
Approvals and disapprovals become fixed to acts, in the
first place, because of some supposed danger or utility they
possess. But whether the acts are really socially useful or not,
approvals and censures once fixed tend to remain habitual,
even though the conditions which first called them forth are
utterly changed. We are to-day still more shocked by errors
in etiquette than in logic; we are still horrified by the infringement
of a law which, if we stopped to consider it, is not now,
if it ever was, of any genuine service to mankind.
In advanced societies approvals are not always reserved for
the habitual. Certainly in science original research and
discovery are generally welcomed. In art originality is
cherished, at least by the discriminating.[1] Variation in action is
for reasons discussed in other connections less generally welcomed.
But in advanced societies, criticism and reflection
upon social institutions and habits may themselves come to be
sanctioned and encouraged. Already we are beginning to
endow the scientific study of government and industrial
relations, and regarding with favor genuine inquiry into the
possibilities of progress.
[Footnote 1: Even in art most people's approvals and disapprovals
are fixed by what is called "good taste," which consists not
infrequently in approving what other people approve. Æsthetic
approval thus becomes approval of the customarily recognized.
It took a Ruskin to make the neglected genius of Turner
fashionable. Keats and Byron were bitterly attacked by the
orthodox critics of their generation.]
IMPORTANCE OF RELATING PRAISE AND BLAME TO SOCIALLY IMPORTANT
CONDUCT. What people approve and disapprove, if their
approval becomes sufficiently emphatic, is fixed by law. Law
is the official and permanent preservation and enforcement
of public approval and condemnation. When certain acts are
regarded as of crucial importance, the group does not depend
on the precarious effectiveness of public opinion, but deliberately
attaches punishments to the performance of undesired
acts, and, more infrequently, rewards to the practices of others.
Most of our laws are enforcement of social condemnations,
for the performance or the non-performance of specific acts,
rather than direct encouragements of action. But which laws
will be passed depends in the first place on social approval or
public opinion. And if, as happens in our complicated political
machinery, laws are passed which have not the sanction
of widespread public approval, they remain "dead letters."
Outside the field of legal control, individual action is controlled
primarily by public opinion. There are many practices,
strictly speaking "within the law," that an increasingly
enlightened public opinion will not sanction; there are many
practices encouraged by an enlightened public which no law
compels. There is no law forcing business establishments to
close every Saturday during the summer, yet many now do.
There are many courtesies practiced by them which are not
ordained by law. That adverse public opinion may have
economic consequences if disregarded is evidenced by the
powerful instrument the Consumers' League found in advertising
against firms that maintained particularly unsanitary
and morally degrading working conditions for their employees,
or the dread that hotels and department stores have for
adverse publicity. The phenomenal development of modern
advertising is an instance of the direct economic values that
have been found in winning public approval. There is more
than metaphor in the statement made during the war that
Lord Northcliffe, as owner of a chain of English newspapers
with an immense circulation, was a "cabinet minister without
portfolio."
The growth of humanitarian sentiment has frequently enforced
the improvement of labor and social conditions before
improvements were made compulsory by law. And in that
field of personal relations, which constitute so large a part of
our daily life, our conduct is controlled almost entirely by
the force of the public opinion with which we come in contact.
There is much more courtesy and kindliness and coöperation
manifested in the ordinary contacts of life of a modern city
than is required, or ever could be secured by statute.
EDUCATION AS THE AGENCY OF SOCIAL CONTROL. There is
enormous power in the habits of approval or disapproval to which
we have, in our early days, been subjected by our parents,
teachers, and companions. It is through education, in the
broadest sense, that the young come to learn, and hence to
practice, those actions which are socially approved, and by
the same token to avoid those acts which are socially condemned.
Through formal education the adult members of a
society impress upon the plastic minds of the immature those
habits of thought and action which are currently recognized
as desirable. Education thus becomes the crucial instrument
by which social standards are established and transmitted.
Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as
biological life. The transmission occurs by means of communication
of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling, from the older to the
younger. Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations,
standards, opinions, from those members of society who are
passing out of the group life to those who are coming into it, society
could not survive.[1]
[Footnote 1: Dewey; _Democracy and Education_, pp. 3-4.]
Society survives through education. Just as truly might
it be said that the kind of society, art, culture, industry,
religion, science that does survive depends on the kind of likes
and dislikes that are through education made habitual in the
young.
Education, however, may not only transmit existing standards,
but can be used to inculcate newer and better expectations
and ideals. In the adult, habits are already set physiologically,
and kept rigid by the demands of economic life. In
the young there is a "fairer and freer" field. Through education
the immature may be taught to approve ways of action
more desirable than those which have become habitual with
their adult contemporaries. The children of to-day may
acquire habits of action, feeling, and thought that will be their
enlightened practice as the adults of to-morrow. All great
social reformers, from Plato to our own contemporaries like
Bertrand Russell, have seen in education, therefore, the chief
instrument, as it is the chief problem, of social betterment.
We may train the maturing generation to approve modes of
behavior which the best minds of our time may have found
reason to think desirable, but which could not be substituted
immediately for the fixed habits of the already adult generation.
SOCIAL ACTIVITY, AND THE SOCIAL MOTIVE. In our analysis of
the social nature of man we have, thus far, been dealing with
his specific social tendencies. But apart from these, or rather
as an outgrowth of these, men exhibit what Professor Woodworth
has well described as a gift for "learning" social behavior.
Possessing, as he eminently does, the capacity for group activity,
man is interested in such activity. He needs no ulterior motive to
attract him to it. It is play for him.... The social interest is part
and parcel of the general _objective_ interest of man.[1]
[Footnote 1: Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, pp. 202, 203.]
In other words, the activity of man as an individual is
not simply deflected a little by man's native gregariousness,
sympathy, and susceptibility to praise and blame. Rather,
group activity becomes to the gregarious human, born into an
environment where he must act with and among other human
beings, an interesting and exciting activity in and for itself.
Men enjoy working in a group or a society for joint and common
objects just as they enjoy food or musical composition
or golf.
The social motive is of the same order as the musical or mathematical
motive. Just as one who has the musical gift takes to music
naturally and finds it interesting for its own sake, so the socially
gifted individual understands other people, sees the possibilities of
collective activity, and the ways of coördinating it, and enters
into such doings with gusto.... The social gift is a capacity for
_learning_ social behavior. Individuals differ in degree in the social
gift, as in other capacities; some are capable of becoming creative
artists or inventors along social lines.[1]
[Footnote 1: Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, p. 203.]
The social behavior of man is thus seen to be no curious
anomaly and contradiction in the life of an otherwise thoroughly
egoistic individual. Man is instinctively social; he
finds social activity useful in the satisfaction of his own
desires, and he comes from his native tendencies and acquired
habits of social behavior to enjoy and take part in social
activities for their own sake. The individual does not have
to be coerced into social activity; he finds in such behavior
the same pleasure that attends the fulfillment of any of his
native or acquired reactions. Society has been variously
pictured as a force holding the individual in check, as an
organism of which he is a part, as a machine of which he is a
cog. Society consists rather as the collective name for the
coöperative and associated activities of human beings who
find such activity, by nature and by habit, interesting for its
own sake.