of affairs and the life of action, and spend their lives in
observation and contemplation. Plato and Aristotle regarded
this as the highest type of life; it may have been because they
were themselves both philosophers. In its extreme form it
is exhibited in such men as Spinoza or Kant, spending their
lives in practical obscurity, speculating on time and space and
eternity. But it is apparent in less extreme types. The
"patient observer," the genial spectator of other men's actions
is not infrequent. When he has literary gifts he is a philosopher
or a poet. Lucretius in a famous passage stated the
contemplative ideal, contrasting it with its opposite:

Sweet it is when on the great seas the winds are buffeting, to gaze
from the land on another's great struggles; not because it is pleasure
or joy that any one should be distressed, but because it is sweet to
perceive from what misfortunes you yourself are free. Sweet is it, too,
to behold great contests of war in full array over the plains, when you
have no part in the danger. But nothing is more gladdening than
to dwell in the calm high places, firmly embattled on the heights by
the teaching of the wise, whence you can look down on others, and
see them wandering hither and thither and going astray, as they seek
the way of life, in strife matching their wits or rival claims of birth,
struggling night and day by surpassing effort to rise up to the height
of power and gain possession of the world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lucretius: _De Rerum Natura_ (Bailey translation),
book II, lines 1-12.]

But in the two types it is not the fruit of action or contemplation,
but action and contemplation themselves that the
two types find respectively interesting. The man of action
finds an immediate satisfaction in movement, change, the
clamor of affairs, the contacts with other people, the making
of changes in the practical world. The man of thought finds
as immediate enjoyment in noting the ways of men, and reflecting
upon them.

That contemplation, disinterested thinking, also has its use
goes without saying. The thinker and the dreamer may be
something at least of what the Irish poet boasts:

  "... the movers and shakers
   Of the world, forever, it seems."

The scholar, the thinker, the man who stands aside from
immediate action, may, often does, help the world of action
in a far-reaching way. The researches of a Newton make
possible eventually the feats of modern engineering and
telegraphy; the abstruse study of the calculus helps to build
bridges and skyscrapers.

Both types, in their extremes, have their weaknesses. The
extremely practical man "may cut off the limb upon which
he is sitting," or "see no further than the end of his nose." A
really great administrator is not penny-wise; he thinks far
ahead, around and into a problem. He is concerned for
tomorrow as well as to-day. The contemplative man may
come to be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
There is the hero of one Russian novel who reflects through
three hundred pages on his wasted life, all at the ripe age of
twenty-three.[1] The practical man gains width and insight
by checking himself with reflection; the contemplative finds
thought called home and made meaningful by contacts with
the world. It was something of this balance which Plato
had in mind when he insisted that his future philosopher-king
should, after fifteen years' study, go for fifteen years into the
"cave" or world to learn to deal with men and affairs. The
"mere theorist" is often an absurd if not a dangerous character;
the practical man may come to make the wheels go
round without ever taking note of his direction.

[Footnote 1: Contchareff: _Oblomoff_.]

As pointed out in the beginning of this discussion, no one
of these types is exclusively exemplified in any one individual.
To be exclusively any one of these would be to be a caricature
rather than a character.[2] But to be no one of these types to
any degree at all is to be no character at all, is to be socially a
nonentity, a minus quantity; it is to be determined by the
vicissitudes of chance or circumstance; it is to be a succession
of vacillations rather than a distinctive self-determined
personality. Each of these types, moreover, if not extreme, has
its specific excellences, and their various presence lends
richness and diversity to social life.

[Footnote 2: Dickens's success lay, perhaps chiefly, in his
ability to draw these unforgettable exaggerations, these outstanding
types: "Micawber" waiting for something to turn up; the fiendish
cruelty of "Bill Sikes"; the angelic self-effacement of "Little Nell";
the hypocritical "Mr. Pecksniff"; the gossipy "Sairy Gamp." He had
a unique gift for representing psychological traits in large. The
so-called psychological novelists like Meredith, trace a character
through its moods and fluctuations, making truer, more composite,
though less memorable characters.]

EMOTIONS AROUSED IN THE MAINTENANCE OF THE SELF. These
various types of self may be defended with bitterness and
pertinacity, and in their support the most powerful emotions
may be enlisted. As pointed out in connection with individuality
in opinion, men may be willing to die for their beliefs.
Similarly invasion of one's home, infringement or threat
against what one regards as one's rights or one's possessions,
whether physical or social, may be bitterly contested. And
in this conflict in support of the integrity of the self, anger,
hate, fear, submissiveness, all the nuances of emotion may be
aroused. The themes of great tragedy are built largely on
this theme of insistent selfhood. Any obstruction of the self-integrity
one has set one's self may provoke a violent reaction.
It may be interference with one's love, as in the case of Medea
or Othello, the pain of ingratitude as in Lear, the conflict
between "the lower and the higher self," as in the case of
Macbeth's loyalty and his ambition. These are the staple
materials of drama. In common experience, an insult to one's
wife or friend, an obstacle placed in the way of one's professional
career, deprivation of one's liberty or one's property,
or one's unhindered "pursuit of happiness," are the provocations
to violent emotions in the sustaining of the self. How
violent or what form the reaction will take depends on the
situation of the "self" involved. If one has been grossly
insulted by another upon whom one is utterly dependent
socially and economically, a rankling and impotent rage may be
the only outlet. To a person gifted with humility, the
disillusions of a false friendship may provoke nothing more than
a deep but resigned disappointment. Where passion and
determination run high, and retaliation is feasible, a violent
hate may find violent fulfillment. In earlier and more
bloodthirsty days, the dagger, the duel, and poison were, as
illustrated in the history of the Borgias, ways of maintaining
the self and venting one's anger or revenge. Even in
modern society the still distressingly large number of crimes
of violence may be traced in many, perhaps most cases, to
blind and bitter hate. To any deep personal injury, hate,
whether it takes overt form or not, is still the instinctive
answer; just such hate as Euripides represents in the jealous
Medea, when she, a barbarian captive among the Greeks,
sees Jason, her lover, about to be married to a Greek princess:

  "... But I, being citiless, am cast aside,
   By him that wedded me, a savage bride.
    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  "I ask one thing. If chance yet ope to me
   Some path, if even now my hand can win,
   Strength to requite this Jason for his sin,
   Betray me not! Oh, in all things but this,
   I know how full of fears a woman is,
   And faints at need, and shrinking from the light
   Of battle; but once spoil her of her right
   In man's love, and there moves, I warn thee well,
   No bloodier spirit between Heaven and Hell."[1]

[Footnote 1: Euripides: _Medea_ (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 16.]

In defense of the self in its narrower or broader sense, courage
and heroism may be displayed. The martyr will die
rather than submit; there have been many to whom Patrick
Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me death," was something
more than rhetoric. The self for which we will fight, of course,
varies. A spoilt child will go into a paroxysm of rage if its
toy is taken away. Older people will fight for smaller or
larger points of social position. There is the familiar citizen
who will insist on his rights, often of a petty sort, in a hotel,
theater, or department store. Or a man may display the last
extremity of courage in defense of some ideal, as in a man's
surrender of his life for his country. Something of the same
heroism is displayed by individuals who stand out against
their group in the face of ridicule or persecution. It is the
general sympathy with the desire to preserve one's selfhood
untarnished that gives point to Henley's lines:

  "Out of the night that covers me,
     Black as the pit from pole to pole,
   I thank whatever gods may be
     For my unconquerable soul.
    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  "It matters not how strait the gate,
     How charged with punishments the scroll,
   I am the master of my fate,
     I am the captain of my soul."[2]

[Footnote 2: _Invictus_.]

In the same way as the emotions fear, anger, and hate, and
their variations and degrees, may be aroused by attack or
threat against the self, so help and encouragement of an
individual's selfhood arouse love, affection, and gratitude. Even
our affection for our parents, though in part instinctive, is
undoubtedly increased by the care and persistence with which
they have fostered our own life and hopes, have educated us,
and made possible for us a career. The same motives play a
part in our affection for teachers who have beneficently influenced
our lives, for other older people who "give us a start,"
advice and encouragement or financial aid. Even the love of
God has in religious ritual been colored with gratitude for
God's mercies and benevolences.

THE INDIVIDUALITY OF GROUPS. Groups may display the same
individuality and sense of selfhood as is exhibited by
individuals. And the members of the group may come to regard
the group life as something quite as important and inalienable
as their own personalities and possessions. Indeed in defense
of the integrity of the group life, as in the case, for example,
of national honor, the individual life and possession may come
to be reckoned as naught. Man's gregariousness and his
instinctive sympathy with his own kind make it easy for the
individual to identify his own life with that of the group.
What threatens or endangers the group will in consequence
arouse in him the same emotions as are aroused by threats or
dangers that concern his own personality. An insult to the
flag may send a thrill of danger through the millions who
read about it, just as would an insult to themselves or their
families.

Group feeling may exist on various levels. It may be
nothing more momentous than local pride, having the tallest
tower, the finest amusement park, the best baseball team, or
being the "sixth largest city." It may be a belligerent
imperialism, a "desire for a place in the sun." It may be a
desire for independence and an autonomous group life,
manifested so strikingly recently by such small nationalities as
Poland and Czecho-Slovakia and influential in keeping Switzerland
alive as a nationality through hundreds of years,
though surrounded by powerful neighbors.[1] While a group
does not exist save as an abstraction, looked at as a whole it
may exhibit the same outstanding traits, or the same types
of selfhood as an individual. It may be fiercely belligerent
and dogmatic; it may, like literary exponents of the German
ideal, desire to spread its own conception of Kultur throughout
the world.[2] It may be insistent on its own position, or
its own possessions or its own glory. It may be fanatic in
aggrandizement. It may be interested in the welfare of other
groups, as in the case of large nationalities championing and
protecting the causes of small or oppressed ones, such an ideal
as was expressed, for example, by President Wilson in his
address to Congress on the entrance of America into the
Great War:

[Footnote 1: Group feeling may be displayed under the most
disadvantageous conditions, as in the strong sentiment for
nationalism current among the Jews, even through all the
centuries of dispersion.]

[Footnote 2: Thorstein Veblen has pointed out how the "common man"
comes to identify his interest with that of the group: "The common
man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the
national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind
to gain from the increase of renown that comes to his sovereign,
his language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or
his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual
assets of self-complacency are indeed to be rated as grounds of
high-minded patriotism without afterthought." (_The Nature of
Peace_, p. 56.)]

... We shall fight for the things which we have always carried
nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit
to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the
rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right
by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all
nations and make the world itself at last free.[3]

[Footnote 3: Woodrow Wilson: _Address to Congress_, April 2, 1917.]

The selfhood displayed by various groups varies with the
degree and integration of the individual within the group.
In extreme cases, such as that of Germany under the imperial
régime, the group individuality may completely overshadow
and engulf that of the individual. This ideal was not
infrequently expressed by German political writers:

To us the state is the most indispensable as well as highest requisite
of our earthly existence.... All individualistic endeavor must
be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim.... The state
eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of the individuals
within its jurisdiction. This conception of the state which is as
much a part of our life as the blood in our veins, is nowhere to be
found in the English constitution, and is quite foreign to English
thought, and to that of America as well.[1]

[Footnote 1: Eduard Meyer: _England, Its Political Organization and
Development and the War Against Germany_ (English translation), pp. 30-31.]

While custom-bound and feudal régimes may emphasize
the tendency to suppress development of individuality, and
insist on regimentation in thought and action--an ideal
proclaimed with increasing generality in Germany from Hegel
down[2] there may be on the part of both individuals and
groups the tendency to promote individuality as itself a social
good. In such a case the social structure and educational
systems and methods will be designed to promote individuality
rather than to suppress it. Individual variations, if it be
generally recognized that they are the only source of progress,
will be utilized and cultivated instead of suppressed.[3]

[Footnote 2: See Dewey: _German Philosophy and Politics_.]

[Footnote 3: Individuality is the theme of Montessori kindergarten
methods.]

Throughout the nineteenth century (indeed throughout
the history of political theory), the pendulum swung between
individualism and complete socialization. Spencer long ago
proclaimed the dominance of the individual; T. H. Green,
following the German philosophers, the dominance of the
state. Like the contrast between egoism and altruism, an
emphasis on either side is bound to be artificial. The
individual can only be a self in a social order; the individual is
only an individual in contrast with others. It is doubtful, for
example, whether a man living all his life alone on a desert
island would discover any individuality at all. A man's
character is displayed in action, and his actions are always,
or nearly always, performed with reference to other people.
And a man's best self-realization cannot be achieved save in
congenial social order. A man will not readily grow into a
saint among a society of sinners, and unless the social order
provides opportunities for the highest type of life, it will exist
only in a very fortunate and favored few. One of the charges
that has been laid against democracy is that it fails to
encourage the highest types of scientific and artistic interests,
that it is the gospel of the mediocre.[1]

[Footnote 1: This is the essence of the aristocratic position,
that a choice life lived by a few is better than a vulgar one
shared by the many.]

It is too often forgotten, on the other hand, by those who
emphasize the importance of society, that society is, after all,
nothing more than an aggregate of selves. The "state," the
"social order" is nothing but the individuals who make it up,
and their relations to each other.

The group exists, after all, even as the most completely
socialized political doctrines insist, for the realization of
individual selves, for freedom of opportunity and initiative. It
is when "individualism" runs rampant, when self-realization
on the part of one individual interferes with self-realization
on the part of all others that individualism becomes a menace.
Individuality is itself valuable, in the first place, because as
Mill pointed out in his essay on _Liberty_ earlier quoted:

What has made the European family an improving instead of a
stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in
them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not the cause; but
their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals,
classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another; they have
struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something
valuable; and although at every period those who traveled in different
paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have
thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled
to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development
have rarely had any permanent success, and each has endured in
time to receive the good which the others have offered.[2]

[Footnote 2: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. III.]

Apart from the variations in group customs and traditions,
and their progressive application to changing circumstances
which individuality makes possible, it cannot be too strongly
emphasized that society is the name for the process by which
individuals live together. It is the individuals who are the
realities and the happiness of individuals which is the aim of
social organization. Such happiness is only attainable when
individuals are allowed to make the most of their native
capacities and individual interests. The social group as a group
will be more interesting, colorful, and various when every
experimentation and variety of life are encouraged and promoted.
And the individuals in such a society will be personalities,
not the mere mechanisms of a regimented routine.

CHAPTER IX

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

THE MEANING OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. The major part of
this volume has been devoted to a consideration of those
traits, interests, and capacities which all individuals share, and
which may in general be described as the "original nature of
man." These distinctive inborn tendencies were treated, for
purposes of analysis, in the most general terms, and, on the
whole, as if they appeared in the same strength and variety in
all individuals. When we thus stand off and abstract those
characteristics which appear universally in all individuals,
human nature appears constant. But there are marked variations
in the specific content of human nature with which
each individual is at birth endowed. Put in another way, one
might say that to be a human being means to be by nature
pugnacious, curious, subject to fatigue, responsive to praise
and blame, etc., and susceptible to training in all these
respects. By virtue of the fact that we are all members of the
human race, we have common characteristics; by virtue that
we are _individuals_, we all display specific variations in specific
human capacities. There is, save abstractly, no such thing as
a standard human being. We may intellectually set up a
norm or standard, but it will be a norm or standard from
which every individual is bound to vary.

The fact that individuals do differ, and in specific and definable
respects, has most serious consequences for social life.
It means, briefly, that while general inferences may be drawn
from wide and accurate observations of the workings of human
nature, these inferences remain general and tentative,
and if taken as rigid rules are sure to be misleading. Theories
of education and social reform certainly gain from the general
laws that can be formulated about original human traits,
fatigue, memory, learning capacity, and the like. But they
must, if they are to be applicable, take account also, in a
precise and systematic way, of the variety of men's interests and
capacities. To this fact of variety in the original nature of
different men social institutions and educational methods
must be adapted. Arbitrary rules that apply to human nature
in general do not apply to the specific cases and specific
types of talent and desires. Educational and social organizations
can mould these, but the result of these environmental
influences will vary with individual differences in original
capacities. We can waste an enormous amount of time and
energy trying to train a person without mechanical or mathematical
gifts to be an engineer. We not only save energy and
time, but promote happiness, if we can train individuals so
that their specific gifts will be capitalized at one hundred per
cent. They will be at once more useful to society and more
content with themselves, when they are using to the full their
own capacities. They will at once be unproductive and unhappy
when they find themselves in activities or social situations
where their genuine talents are given no opportunity
and where their defects put them at a conspicuous handicap.

Individuals differ, it must further be noted, not only in
specific traits, but in that complex of traits which is commonly
called "intelligence." In the broadest terms, we mean by an
individual's intelligence his competence and facility in dealing
with his environment, physical, social, and intellectual. This
competence and facility, in so far as it is a native endowment,
consists of a number of traits present in a more or less high
degree, traits, for example, such as curiosity, flexibility of
native and acquired reactions, sociability, sympathy, and the
like. In a sense an individual possesses not a single intelligence,
but many, as many as there are types of activity in
which he engages. But one may classify intelligence under
three heads, as does Thorndike:[1] mechanical intelligence,
involved in dealing with things; social intelligence, involved in
dealing with other persons; and abstract intelligence, involved
in dealing with the relations between ideas. Each of
these types of intelligence involves the presence in a high degree
of a group of different traits. Thus, in social intelligence,
a high degree of sympathy, sensitivity to praise and blame,
leadership, and the like, are more requisite than they are for
intelligent behavior in the realm of mechanical operations or
of mathematical theory. A person may be highly intelligent
in one of these three spheres and mentally helpless in the
others. Thus, a brilliant philosopher may be nonplused by a
stalled motor; a successful executive may be a babe in the
realm of abstract ideas. But what we rate as a person's general
intelligence is a kind of average struck between his various
competences, an estimate of his general ability to control
himself in the miscellaneous variety of situations of which
his experience consists.

[Footnote 1: "Measuring Intelligence," _Harper's Magazine_, March, 1920.]

There have been a number of tests devised for the purpose
of estimating an individual's general intelligence.[1] On a
rating scale such as is used in these examinations most
individuals will come up to a certain standard that may be
called average or normal. There will be a certain number so
far below the normal rating in a complex of traits that go to
produce intelligent (competent and facile) behavior that they
will have to be classed as subnormal, ranging from
feeblemindedness to idiocy. A certain number will be found so
extraordinarily gifted in general traits and in specific
abilities--in given subject-matters, as, for example, in
mathematics and music--that they will be marked out as geniuses.
Following the laws of probability, the greater the inferiority
or superiority, the more exceptional it will be.

[Footnote 1: These, in large part, deal with words and ideas and
are, therefore, weighted in favor of abstract intelligence, and
put at a discount individuals whose experience and whose intelligence
are predominantly social or mechanical in character. Some of the
tests are fairly adequate for mechanical intelligence, but no good
tests have been devised for social intelligence. These tests,
however, as used in the army and for appraising college entrants,
as at Columbia University, have been demonstrated to be fairly
good indices of general intelligence.]

Individual differences are, therefore, seen to be not simply
differences with respect to given mental traits, but differences
with respect to general mental capacity. Experimental
investigation points to a graded difference in mental capacity,
ranging from idiocy to genius, the largest group being normal
or average, the size of the group diminishing with further
deviation from the average in either direction.

Certain important correlations, furthermore, have been
found between the level of intelligence and the level of character.
The great in mind, it may be said briefly, are also great
in spirit. "General moral defect commonly involves intellectual
inferiority. Woods and Pearson find the correlation between
intellect and character to be about .5.... General
moral defect is due in part to a generally inferior nervous
organization."[1]

[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_ (1910), p. 224.]

One other important correlation must be noted. While
gifts and capacities are specific, superiority in a given trait
commonly involves superiority in most others. Exceptional
talent in one direction in most cases involves exceptionality
in many other respects. While talents are not indiscriminately
transferable from one field to another, the same complex
of traits which makes a person stand out preëminently in
a given field, say law, would make him stand out in any one of
half a dozen different fields into which he might have gone.
There seems to be no evidence that extraordinary capacity in
one direction is balanced by extraordinary incapacity and
stupidity in others. The fact that individuals differ not only
in specific traits but in general mental capacity has, also,
certain obvious practical consequences. It means that there are
present in society, in the light of recent tests in the army, an
unexpectedly large number of individuals below the level of
normal intelligence. One in five hundred, Thorndike estimates,
is the "frequency of intellectual ability so defective as
to disturb the home, resist school influence, and excite popular
derision." These are clearly liabilities in the social order.
On the other hand, there is a large number above the level of
average intelligence. The importance of this group for human
progress can hardly be overestimated. As we have seen
in other connections, progress is contingent upon variation
from the "normal" or the accustomed, and such variation
from the normal is initiated in the majority of cases by members
of this comparatively small super-normal group. If
civilization is to advance it must capitalize its intelligence;
that is, educate up to the highest point of native ability. But
in any case, its chief guarantee of progress lies in the
comparatively small group in whom native ability is exceptionally
high. For it is among this group that original thinking,
invention, and discovery almost exclusively occur.

CAUSES OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. Among the chief causes
of individual differences may, in general, be set down the following:
(1) Sex, (2) Race, (3) Near Ancestry or Family,
(4) Environment. The particular fund of human nature
which an individual displays, that is, his specific native
endowments, as they appear in practice, will be a resultant of
these various causes. In the study of each of these characteristics,
we should be able ideally to eliminate all the others
and to consider them each in isolation.

THE INFLUENCE OF SEX. In the case of sex, for example, we
should not confuse individual differences due to the fact of sex
with individual differences due to divergent training given to
each of the sexes. In scientific experiments to determine sex
differences in mental traits, there have been careful attempts
to eliminate everything but the factor of sex itself. Thus in
Karl Pearson's studies of fifty twin brothers and sisters, the
factors of ancestry and difference of training and age were
practically eliminated.

In so far as allowance can be made for other contributing
factors, studies of individual differences due to sex have
revealed, roughly speaking, the following results. There have
been, in the field of sensory discrimination and accuracy of
motor response, slight--and negligible--differences of responses
made by male and female. The subjects stated were,
in most cases, selected so far as possible from the same social
strata, social and intellectual interest, and background.[1]

[Footnote 1: As, for example, the members of the graduating and junior
classes of the co-educational college at the University of Chicago,
studied by Dr. Thompson.]

Thorndike reports the general results of such tests as follows:

The percentages of males reaching or exceeding the median ability
of females in such traits as have been subjected to exact investigation
are roughly as follows:

  In speed of naming colors and sorting cards by color and
   discriminating colors as in a test for color blindness     24
  In finding and checking small visual details such as letters  33
  In spelling                                                   33
  In school "marks" in English                                  35
  In school "marks" in foreign languages                        40
  In memorizing for immediate recall                            42
  In lowness of sensory thresholds                              43
  In retentiveness                                              47
  In tests of speed and accuracy of association                 48
  In tests of general information                               50
  In school "marks" in mathematics                              50
  In school "marks" (total average)                             50
  In tests of discrimination (other than for color)             51
  In range of sensitivity                                       52
  In school "marks" in history                                  55
  In tests of ingenuity                                         63
  In accuracy of arm movements                                  66
  In school "marks" in physics and chemistry                    68
  In reaction time                                              70
  In speed of finger and arm movement                           71

The most important characteristic of these differences is their
small amount. The individual differences within one sex so enormously
outweigh the differences between the sexes in these intellectual
and semi-intellectual traits that for practical purposes the sex
difference may be disregarded. So far as ability goes, there could
hardly be a stupider way to get two groups alike within each group
but differing between the groups than to take the two sexes. As is
well known, the experiments of the past generation in educating
women have shown their equal competence in school work of elementary,
secondary, and collegiate grade. The present generation's experience
is showing the same fact for professional education and business
service. The psychologists' measurements lead to the conclusion
that this equality of achievement comes from an equality of natural
gifts, not from an overstraining of the lesser talents of women.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, briefer course, pp. 345-46.]

That is, so far as experiments upon objectively measurable
traits have been conducted, the specific differences that
individuals display have comparatively nothing to do with the
fact that an individual happens to be a man or a woman.
These experiments have been conducted with boys and girls
as young as seven, and with men and women ranging up to the
age of twenty-five.[2]

[Footnote 2: There seems, as might be expected to be, a slightly
higher differentiation between the two sexes after adolescence
than before.]

These experiments have been conducted to test sensory
discrimination, precision of motor response and some of the
simpler types of judgment, such as those involved in the solution
of simple puzzles with blocks, matches, etc. The fact
of the negligibility of sex difference with regard to certain
minor measurable traits has been adequately demonstrated
by a wide variety of experiments. The fact of sex equality or
mental capacity has been less accurately but fairly universally
noted by popular consensus of observation and opinion of the
work of women in the various trades and professions. There
are differences between men and women in physical strength
and in consequent susceptibility to fatigue. These are
important considerations in qualifying the amount of work a
woman can do as compared with that of a man, and have
justly resulted in the regulation of hours for women, as a
special class. But there do not seem to be, on the average,
significant original differences in mental capacity.[3]

[Footnote 3: On this subject there has been collected a large
amount of accurate experimental data. See Goldmark: _Fatigue
and Efficiency_, part II, pp. 1-22. These refer to
physiological differences.]

There do exist, as a matter of practical fact, some of the
special attributes commonly ascribed to the masculine and
feminine mental life, but it is generally agreed by investigators
that these are to be accounted for by the different environment
and standards socially established for men and for
women. There are radical and subtle differences in training
to which boys and girls are subjected from early childhood.
There are deeply fixed traditions as to the standards of action,
feeling, and demeanor to which boys and girls are respectively
trained and to which they are expected to conform. If a boy
should not live up to this training and expectation, he may be
marked out as "effeminate." If a girl does not conform, she
is defined as a "hoyden" or a "tomboy."

These social distinctions, which are emphasized even in the
behavior of young boys and young girls, grow more pronounced
as individuals grow older. One need hardly call attention
to actions regarded as perfectly legitimate for men
which provoke disapproval if practiced by women. Rigid
training in these different codes of behavior may cause
acquired characteristics to seem inborn. But whether these
general features commonly held to distinguish the mental life
of man or woman are or are not intrinsic and original, they
have been marked out by certain investigators as socially
fundamental. Thus Heymans and Wiersma, two German
investigators, set down as the differentia of feminine mental
life (1) greater activity, (2) greater emotionality, (3) greater
unselfishness of the female.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Thorndike's _Educational Psychology_ (1910), p. 136.]

There are some general differences noted by both layman
and psychologist, which, though not subject to quantitative
determination, yet seem to differentiate somewhat definitely
between feminine and masculine mental activity. These
may be set down in general as occurring in the field of
emotional susceptibility. Thorndike traces them back to the
varying intensity of two human traits earlier discussed: the
fighting instinct, relatively much stronger in the male, and
the nursing or mothering instinct, much stronger in the
female. With this fact are associated important differences in
the conduct of men and women in social relations. The maternal
instinct is held by some writers, for instance, to be in
large measure the basis of altruism, and is closely associated
with sensitivity to the needs and desires of others. Thorndike
writes:

It has been common to talk of women's dependence. This is, I am
sure, only an awkward name for less resentment at mastery. The
actual nursing of the young seems likewise to involve equally
unreasoning tendencies to pet, coddle, and "do for" others. The
existence of these two instincts has been long recognized by
literature and common knowledge, but their importance in causing
differences in the general activities of the two sexes has not.
The fighting instinct is in fact the cause of a very large amount
of the world's intellectual endeavor. The financier does not
think merely for money, nor the scientist for truth, nor the
theologian to save souls. Their intellectual efforts are aimed in
great measure to outdo the other man, to subdue nature, to
conquer assent. The maternal instinct in its turn is the chief
source of woman's superiorities in the moral life. The virtues
in which she excels are not so much due to either any general
moral superiority or any set of special moral talents as to her
original impulses to relieve, comfort, and console.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, pp. 48-49.]

Ordinary observation reveals, as literature has in general
recorded, what Havelock Ellis has called the "greater affectability
of the female mind." There is evidenced in many
women a singular and immediate responsiveness to other
people's emotions, a quick intuition, a precise though non-logical
discrimination, which, though shared to some extent
by all individuals gifted with sympathy and affection, is a
peculiarly feminine quality. Indeed when a man possesses
it, it is common to speak of him as possessing "almost a
woman's intuition." Such emotional susceptibility is manifested
in the higher frequency of emotional instability and
emotional outbreaks among women than among men, and the
decreased power of inhibition which women have over
instinctive and emotional reactions. Further than this, women
more than men may be said to qualify their judgments of persons
and situations by their emotional reactions to them.

The common suspicion that in general women's abilities
are less than those of men has seemed to gain strength from
the greater number of geniuses and eminent persons there
have been among men than among women. Professor Cattell
writes in this connection:

I have spoken throughout of eminent men as we lack in English
words including both men and women, but as a matter of fact women
do not have an important place on the list. They have in all thirty-two
representatives in the thousand. Of these eleven are hereditary
sovereigns, and eight are eminent through misfortunes, beauty, or
other circumstances. Belles-lettres and fiction--the only department
in which woman has accomplished much--give ten names as
compared with seventy-two men. Sappho and Joan d'Arc are the
only other women on the list. It is noticeable that with the
exception of Sappho--a name associated with certain fine fragments--women
have not excelled in poetry or art. Yet these are the departments
least dependent on environment, and at the same time those
in which the environment has been perhaps as favorable to women
as to men. Women depart less from the normal than men--a fact
that usually holds for the female throughout the animal series; in
many closely related species only the male can be readily
distinguished.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cattell: "A Statistical Study of Eminent Men,"
_Popular Science Monthly_, vol. LXII. pp. 375-77.]

In the facts of higher variability among males, and the
hitherto restricted social opportunities provided for women
are to be found the chief reasons for the comparatively high
achievement of the male sex as compared with the female.
But on the average the difference between the two sexes with
respect to mental capacity is slight.

THE INFLUENCE OF RACE. A second factor in determining
individual differences in mental traits is race. There are
certain popular presuppositions as to the inherent differences in
the mental activity of different races. The Irishman's wit,
the negro's joyousness, the emotionality of the Latin races,
the stolidity of the Chinese, are all supposed to be fundamental.
And in a sense they are. That is, in the life and
culture of these groups, such traits may stand out distinctively.
But most psychologists and anthropologists question
seriously whether these traits are to be traced to radical differences
in racial inheritance. For the most part they seem
rather to be the result of radical differences in environment.
"Many of the mental similarities of an Indian to Indians and
of his differences from Anglo-Saxons disappear, if he happens
to be adopted and brought up as an Anglo-Saxon."[1]

[Footnote 1: Thorndike _loc. cit._, p. 52.]

There have been various experimental studies made to
determine how much divergences in the mental activity of
different races are determined by differences in racial
inheritance. Such experiments have been conducted chiefly
upon very simple traits and capacities. The accuracy of
sensory response among different races has, for example, been
examined. There have proved to be, in regard to these, slight
differences in the effectiveness and accuracy of response.
There are racial differences in hearing, as tested by the ticking
of a watch or clock artificially made. In this test, Papuans,
to take an instance, were inferior to Europeans. The sense
of touch has been similarly tested, and comparatively negligible
differences have been found. In regard to the five senses,
their efficiency seems to be about equal in all the races of
mankind. The proverbial keenness of vision of the Indian, for
example, is found to be due to a superior training in its use, a
training made imperative by the conditions of Indian life. In
reaction time tests--that is, tests in the speed of simple mental
and motor performances--the time consumed in response
has been found to be about the same for all races tested. The
results have been similar with regard to certain simple processes
of judgment or inference:

There are a number of illusions and constant errors of judgment
which are well known in the psychological laboratory, and which
seem to depend, not on peculiarities of the sense organs, but on
quirks and twists in the process of judgment. A few of these have
been made the matter of comparative tests, with the result that
peoples of widely different cultures are subject to the same errors,
and in about the same degree. There is an illusion which occurs
when an object, which looks heavier than it is, is lifted by the hand;
it then feels, not only lighter than it looks, but even lighter than it
really is. The contrast between the look and the feel of the thing
plays havoc with the judgment. Women are, on the average, more
subject to this illusion than men. The amount of this illusion has
been measured in several peoples, and found to be, with one or two
exceptions, about the same in all. Certain visual illusions, in which
the apparent length or direction of a line is greatly altered by the
neighborhood of other lines, have similarly been found present in all
races tested, and to about the same degree. As far as they go, these
results tend to show that simple sorts of judgment, being subject
to the same disturbances, proceed in the same manner among various
peoples; so that the similarity of the races in mental processes
extends at least one step beyond sensation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Woodworth: "Racial Differences in Mental Traits,"
_Science_, New Series, vol. 31, pp. 179-81.]

Professor Woodworth also points out that these simple
tests are not adequate to measure general intelligence.

A good test for intelligence would be much appreciated by the
comparative psychologist, since, in spite of equal standing in such
rudimentary matters as the senses and bodily movement, attention
and the simpler sorts of judgment, it might still be that great
differences in mental efficiency existed between different groups of men.
Probably no single test could do justice to so complex a trait as
intelligence. Two important features of intelligent action are
quickness in seizing the key to a novel situation, and firmness in limiting
activity to the right direction, and suppressing acts which are
obviously useless for the purpose in hand. A simple test which calls for
these qualities is the so-called "form test." There are a number of
blocks of different shapes, and a board with holes to match the
blocks. The blocks and board are placed before a person, and he is
told to put the blocks in the holes in the shortest possible time. The
key to the situation is here the matching of blocks and holes by their
shape; and the part of intelligence is to hold firmly to this obvious
necessity, wasting no time in trying to force a round block into a
square hole. The demand on intelligence certainly seems slight
enough; and the test would probably not differentiate between a
Newton and you or me; but it does suffice to catch the feeble-minded,
the young child, or the chimpanzee, as any of these is likely to fail
altogether, or at least to waste much time in random moves and
vain efforts. This test was tried on representatives of several races
and considerable differences appeared. As between whites, Indians,
Eskimos, Ainus, Filipinos, and Singhalese, the average differences
were small, and much overlapping occurred. As between these
groups, however, and the Igorot and Negrito from the Philippines
and a few reputed Pygmies from the Congo, the average differences
were great, and the overlapping small.[1]

[Footnote 1: Woodworth: _loc. cit._, pp. 171-86.]

Equality among races in the various traits that have been
measured by psychologists does not imply that common
observation is wrong in counting one race as intellectually
superior to another. There have, as yet, been no measurements
of such general features of social life as energy, self-reliance,
inventiveness, and the like. But from indications of
experiments already made, these so-called (and for practical
purposes genuine) intellectual differences between the
individuals of different races must be attributed to differences in
environment. Races _as_ races seem to be equally gifted.

Professor Boas points out that civilized investigators traveling
among savage tribes commit one serious fallacy in insisting
on the inferiority of these primitive peoples. They
are said to be irrational, for example, when they are quite
logical in their way of dealing with the material which is at
their disposal. Without any scientific information available,
for example, anthropomorphism, or the tendency to interpret
cosmic phenomena in human terms is quite natural and reasonable.
Again:

The difference in the mode of thought of primitive man and that
of civilized man seems to consist largely in the difference of character
of the traditional material with which the new perception associates
itself. The instruction given to the child of primitive man is not
based on centuries of experimentation, but consists of the crude
experience of generations. When a new experience enters the mind of
primitive man, the same process which we observe among civilized
man brings about an entirely different series of associations, and
therefore results in a different type of explanation. A sudden
explosion will associate itself in his mind, perhaps, with the tales he has
heard in regard to the mythical history of the world, and consequently
will be accompanied by superstitious fear. When we recognize
that neither among civilized men nor among primitive men the
average individual carries to completion the attempt at causal
explanation of phenomena, but carries it only so far as to amalgamate
it with other previously known facts, we recognize that the
result of the whole process depends entirely upon the character of
the traditional material.[1]

[Footnote 1: Boas: _Mind of Primitive Man_, pp. 203-04.]

This may be illustrated by our immediate reactions of pleasure
or disgust at customs or ideas that provoke directly opposite
reactions among races reared in another tradition.

Again primitive races have been accused of lacking self-control.
The fact is that they exhibit self-control about
matters which they regard as important, and lack of it in
respect to matters which they regard as trivial. "When an
Eskimo community is on the point of starvation, and their
religious proscriptions forbid them to make use of the seals
that are basking on the ice, the amount of self-control of the
whole community which restrains them from killing those
seals is certainly very great."[2] The case is similar with
regard to nearly all the alleged inferiorities of primitive man, his
improvidence, unreliability, and the like. In nearly every
instance, it has been found that we are holding him to account
for not being able to persist in courses of action which do not
seem to him, with his training and education, worth persisting
in, and for not conforming to standards which, given his
background, are meaningless.

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_. p. 108.]

But if differences in racial attainments are due to differences
in environment, it might be said that this itself is testimony
to the superiority of the race that has the more complex
and exacting environment. This is not by any means clearly
the case. The "culture" or civilization which a race exhibits
is a very uncertain index of its gifts or its capacities. The
culture found in a race is, it may be said without exaggeration,
largely a matter of accident or circumstance rather than
of heredity.

Some of the environmental causes for differences in culture
may he explicitly noted. Any modern culture is the result
of interminglings of many different cross-streams and cross-borrowings.
Races that have long been isolated as, for example
the African negroes, have no possibility of picking up
all the acquisitions to which races that intermingle have
access. Progress in the developments of arts, sciences, and
institutions depends on fortunate individual variations. The
smaller the race the less the number of variations possible,
including those on the side of what we call genius. Again
fortunate variations depend not so much on the general average
intellectual capacities of the race as on its variability.
So one race may possess a relative superiority of achievement
because of its high variability, just as, as we have already
pointed out, the greater preëminence of the male sex with
regard to intellectual accomplishment is due to the greater
number of variations both above and below the norm which
it displays. The reasons for variability are again, according
to Professor Boas, largely environmental. "We have seen,
when a people is descended from a small uniform group, that
then its variability will decrease; while on the other hand,
when a group has a much-varied origin or when the ancestors
belong to entirely distinct types the variability may be
considerably increased."[1]

[Footnote 1: Boas; _loc. cit._, p. 93.]

Again a race may be placed in such geographical conditions
that a fortuitous variation on the part of one individual may
prove of enormous value in the development of its civilization.
Or fortunate geographical conditions may stimulate
types of activity that lie dormant, although possible, among
other races. Thus by some investigators the flexibility and
emancipation of the Greek genius were attributed to their
access to the sea and their constant intermingling with other
cultures, especially the Egyptian.

On the subject of the fundamental equality of races despite
their seeming disparity, as that at present, let us say, between
whites and negroes, Professor Boas writes:

Much has been said of the hereditary characteristics of the Jews,
of the Gypsies, of the French and Irish, but I do not see that the
external and social causes which have moulded the character of
members of these people have ever been eliminated satisfactorily;
and, moreover, I do not see how this can be accomplished. A number
of external factors that influence body and mind may easily be
named--climate, nutrition, occupation--but as soon as we enter
into a consideration of social factors and mental conditions we are
unable to tell definitely what is cause and what is effect.

The conclusions reached are therefore, on the whole, negative. We
are not inclined to consider the mental organization of different races
of man as differing in fundamental points. Although, therefore, the
distribution of faculty among the races of man is far from being
known, we can say this much: the average faculty of the white race
is found to the same degree in a large proportion of individuals
of all other races, and although it is probable that some of these
races may not produce as large a proportion of great men as our own
race, there is no reason to suppose that they are unable to
reach the level of civilization represented by the bulk of our own
people.[1]

[Footnote 1: Boas; _loc. cit._, pp. 116, 123.]

In contrast must be cited the opinions of a large class of
psychologists and anthropologists who are inclined to regard
racial differences as intrinsic and original. Of such, for example,
is Francis Galton, who claims in his _Hereditary Genius_,
that taking negroes on their own ground they still are inferior
to Europeans by about one eighth the difference, say, between
Aristotle and the lowest idiot. Recent psychological
experiments in the army reveal, again, certain fundamental
intellectual inferiorities of negroes, though whether this is
environmental or to be traced to hereditary causes is open to
question.

The fact remains that there are, despite the lack of evidence
for hereditary mental differences, practical differences in the
mental activity of different races that are of social importance.
These differences, which seem so fundamental, have been
explained primarily by the powerful control exercised over the
individual by the habits which he acquires even before the
age of five years. These, though unconscious, may be, as the
Freudian psychologists maintain, all the more important for
that reason. This would appear to be the only explanation of
significant racial differences. Cultural differences cannot,
biologists are generally agreed, be transmitted in the germs
that pass from generation to generation. One may say, in
effect, that an individual is differentiated in his mental traits
by early association with a certain race, and by his immediate
ancestry or family, rather than by the fact of belonging
physically to a certain race.

THE INFLUENCE OF IMMEDIATE ANCESTRY OR FAMILY. A factor
that is, on experimental evidence, rated to be of high importance
in the determination of the differences of the mental
make-up of human beings, is "immediate ancestry" or family.
Stated in the most simple and general terms this means
that children of the same parents tend to display marked
likenesses in mental traits, and to exhibit less variation among
themselves than is exhibited in the same number of individuals
chosen at random. A great number of experiments have
been conducted to determine how far resemblances in mental
traits are due to common parentage. The correlation between
membership in the same family and resemblances of
social traits has been found to be uniformly high.

The inference was made that children of the same family
would show great resemblances in mental traits, when accurate
experiments showed marked similarity in physical traits
under the same conditions. The coefficient of correlation
between brothers in the color of the eye, is, according to the
results obtained by Karl Pearson, .52.[1] The coefficient of
fraternal correlation in the case of the cephalic index (ratio
of width to length of head) is .40. The correlation of hair
color is found to be .55. The fact of high correlation between
resemblance of physical traits and membership in the
same family is of crucial importance, because these traits
are clearly due to ancestry, and not to environmental
differences. If physical traits show such a correlation, it is likely
that mental traits will also, mental traits being ultimately
dependent on the brain and the nervous system, which are both
affected by ancestry.

[Footnote 1: These facts are based on the reports of Karl Pearson
in his _On the Laws of Inheritance in Man_. What is meant by
coefficient of correlation may be explained as follows: If the
coefficient of correlation between father and son is .3 and the
coefficient of correlation between brother and brother is .5 we
may say: a son on the average deviates from the general trend of
the population by .3 of the amount of his father's deviation, a
brother by .5 of the amount of his brother.]

Measurements of measurable traits and observations of less
objectively measurable ones, have revealed that immediate
ancestry is in itself an influential factor in producing likenesses
and differences among men with respect to mental traits.
One interesting case, interesting because it was a test of a
capacity that might be expected to be largely environmental
in its origins, was that of the spelling abilities of children in
the St. Xavier School in New York. Thorndike thus reports the test:

As the children of this school commonly enter at a very early age,
and as the staff and the methods of teaching remain very constant,
we have in the case of the 180 brothers and sisters included in the 600
children closely similar school training. Mr. Earle measured the
ability of any individual by his deviation from the average for his
grade and sex, and found the co-efficient of correlation between
children of the same family to be .50. That is, any individual is on the
average fifty per cent as much above or below the average for his age
and sex as his brother or sister.

Similarities in home training might theoretically account for this,
but any one experienced in teaching will hesitate to attribute much
efficacy to such similarities. Bad spellers remain bad spellers though
their teachers change. Moreover, Dr. J. M. Rice in his exhaustive
study of spelling ability found little or no relationship between good
spelling and any one of the popular methods, and little or none
between poor spelling and foreign parentage. Yet the training of a
home where parents do not read or spell the language well must be a
home of relatively poor training for spelling. Cornman's more careful
study of spelling supports the view that ability to spell is little
influenced by such differences in school or home training as commonly
exist.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, p. 78.]

In general the influence of heredity may be said far to outweigh
the influence of home training. In all the cases
reported, the resemblances were about the same in traits subject
to training, and in those not subject to training. Thus industry
and conscientiousness and public spirit, which are clearly
affected by environment, show no greater resemblance than
such practically unmodifiable traits as memory, original
sensitiveness to colors, sounds, and distances.

The influence of parentage, it must be added, consists in the
transmission of specific traits, not of a certain "nature" as a
whole. There are in the germ and the ovum which constitute
the inheritance of each individual, certain determinant elements.
The elements that determine the original traits with
which each individual will be born vary, of course, in the
germs produced by a single parent less than among individuals
chosen at random, but they vary none the less. In this
variation of the determining elements in the germs of the
same individual is to be found the cause of the variation in
the physical and mental traits among children of the same
parents.

Since the determining elements, the unit characters that
appear in the sperm or ovum of each individual, do not appear
uniformly even in children of the same parents, brother
and sister may resemble each other in certain mental traits,
and differ in others. "A pair of twins may be indistinguishable
in eye color and stature, but be notably different in hair
color and tests of intellect."

Mental inheritance, as well as physical, is, then, organized
in detail. It is not the inheritance of gross total natures, but
of particular "mental traits." If we had sufficient data, we
should be able to analyze out the unit characters of an
individual's mental equipment, so as to be able to predict with
some accuracy the mental inheritance of the children of any
two parents. In the case of physical inheritance, the laws of
the hereditary transmission of any given traits are known in
considerable detail. The detailed quantitative investigations
of inheritance, following the general lines set by Mendel, have
given striking results.

Physical traits have been found to be analyzable into unit-characters
(that is, traits hereditarily transmitted as units),
such as "curliness of hair," "blue eyes," and the like. Mental
traits, however, do not seem analyzable into the fixed
unit-characters prescribed by the Mendelian laws of inheritance.

The success which breeders have had in the control of the
reproduction of plants and animals, in the perpetuation of a
stock of desirable characteristics and the elimination of the
undesirable, has given rise to a somewhat analogous ideal in
human reproduction. That eugenics has at least its theoretical
possibilities with regard to physical traits, few biologists
will question. However difficult it may be in practice
to regulate human matings on the exclusive basis of the kind
of offspring desired, it is a genuine biological possibility. In a
negative way, it has already in part been initiated in the
prevention of the marriage of some extreme types of the physically
unfit, by the so-called eugenic marriage laws in some
states in this country.[1]

[Footnote 1: There have been laws, as there is a fairly decided
public opinion, adverse to reproduction by the feeble-minded and
the morally defective. But (see Richardson: _The Etiology of
Arrested Mental Development_, p. 9) there have been a number
of cases of feeble-minded parents producing normal children.]

But whether scientific regulation of marriages for the
production of eugenic offspring is feasible, even apart from the
personal and emotional questions involved, is open to question.
No mental trait such as vivacity, musical ability,
mathematical talent, or artistic sense, has been analyzed into
such definitely transmissible unit-characters as "blue eyes"
and "curliness of hair." So many unit-characters seem to be
involved in any single mental trait that it will be long before
a complete analysis of the hereditary invariable determinants
of any single trait can be made.

It is thus impossible to tell as yet with any security or precision
the biological components of any single mental trait.
The evidence at our disposal, however, does confirm us in the
belief that one of the most significant and certain causes of
individual differences, whether physical or mental, is immediate
ancestry or family. Individuals are made by what they
are initially, and, as we shall presently see, therefore largely
by their inheritance. With the latter, environment can do
just so much, and no more. And the most significant and
effective part of an individual's inheritance is his family for
some generations back, rather than the race to which he belongs.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT. Those factors so far
discussed which determine individual differences are independent
of the particular conditions of life in which an individual
happens to be placed. An individual's race, sex, family
are beyond modification by anything that happens to him
after birth. Maturity, in so far as it is mere growth independent
of training, is also largely a fixed and unmodifiable
condition.

The original nature, determined by race, sex, and immediate
ancestry, with which a man starts life is subject to modification
by his social environment, by the ideas, customs, companions,
beliefs, by which he is surrounded, and with which
he comes continuously in contact. Commonly the influence
of environment is held to be very high. It is difficult, however,
accurately to distinguish between effects which are due
to original nature and effects which are due to environment.

Differences in training are important, but the results vary
with the natures trained. Precisely the same environment
will not have the same consequences for two different natures.
Two approximately same natures will show something like
the same effects in dissimilar environments. Human beings
are certainly differentiated by the customs, laws, ideals,
friends, and occupations to which they are exposed. But
what the net result will be in a specific case, depends on the
individual's equipment to start with, an equipment that is
fixed before the environment has had a chance to act at all.
The kindliness and indulgence that save some children
demoralize others. In some people a soft answer turneth away
wrath; in others it will kindle it. Andrew Carnegie starts as a
bobbin boy, and becomes a millionaire; but there were many
other bobbin boys. The sunset that stirs in one man a lyric,
leaves another cold. The same course in biology arouses in
one student a passion for a life of science; it leaves another
hoping never to see a microscope again. On the other hand,
the same types of original capacity thrown into different
environments will yet attain somewhat comparable results, in
the way of character and achievement. The biographies of
a few poets, painters, philosophers, and scientists chosen at
random, show the most diverse antecedents.[1]

[Footnote 1: Taking the social and professional status of a
distinguished man's father as some index of the social environment
to which he was subjected during his youth, we find some
interesting examples: The father of John Keats was a livery
stable-keep; his mother the daughter of one. Byron's father
was a captain in the Royal Guards; his mother a Scottish heiress.
Newton's father was a tanner; Pasteur's, a tanner; Darwin's, a
doctor of considerable means. Francis Bacon's father was Lord
Keeper of the Great Seal; Newton's was a farmer and the headmaster
of a school; Turner was the son of a barber.]

An individual, again, to a certain extent, makes his own
environment. What kind of an environment he will make
depends on the kinds of capacities and interests he has to
start with. Similarity of original tendencies and interests
brings men together as differences among these keep them
apart. The libraries, the theaters, and the baseball parks
are all equally possible and accessible features of their
environment to individuals of a given economic or social class.
Yet a hundred individuals with the same education and
social opportunities will make themselves by choice a hundred
different environments. They will select, even from
the same physical environment, different aspects. The
Grand Cañon is a different environment to the artist and to
the geologist; a crowd of people at an amusement park
constitutes a different environment to the man who has come
out to make psychological observations, and the man who
has come out for a day's fun. A dozen men, teachers and
students, selected at random on a university campus, might
well be expected to note largely different though overlapping
facts, as the most significant features of the life of the
university.

The environment is the less important in the moulding of
character, the less fixed and unavoidable it becomes. If an
individual has the chance to change his environment to suit
his own original demands and interests, these are the less
likely to undergo modification. This is illustrated in the animal
world by the migratory birds, which change their habitations
with the seasons. Similarly human beings, to suit the
original mental traits with which they are endowed, can and
do exchange one environment for another. There are a very
large number of individuals living in New York City, in the
twentieth century, for example, for whom a multiplicity of
environments are possible. The one that becomes habitual
with an individual is a matter of his own free choice. That is,
it is choice, in the sense that it is independent of the
circumstances of the individual's life. But an individual's choice of
his environment must be within the limited number of alternatives
made possible by the original nature with which he
is endowed. As pointed out in connection with our discussion
of "Instinctive Behavior," we do originally what gives
satisfaction to our native impulses, and avoid what irritates
and frustrates them. We may be trained to find satisfactions
in acquired activities, but there is a strong tendency to
acquire habits that "chime in," as it were, with the tendencies
we have to start with.

There is, for example, to certain individuals, intrinsic
satisfaction in form and color; to others in sound. To the
former, pictures and paintings will tend to be the environment
selected; to the latter the hearing and the playing of
music. To those gifted with sensitivity in neither of these
directions, pictures may be through all their lives a bore, and
a piano a positive nuisance.

These facts of original nature, therefore, determine initially,
and consequently in large part, what our environment is
going to be. Once we get into, or select through instinctive
desires, a certain kind of environment, those desires become
strengthened through habit, and that environment becomes
fixed through fulfilling those habitual desires. A man may,
in the first place, choose artists or scholars as companions
because his own gifts and interests are similar. But such an
environment will become the more indispensable for him
when it has the reinforcement of habit to confirm what is
already initially strong in him by birth. "To him who hath
shall be given" is most distinctly true of the opportunities and
environment open to those with native gifts to begin with.

Original nature thus sets the scope and the limits of an
individual's character and achievement. It tells "how
much" and, in the most general way, "what" his capacities
are. Thus a man born with a normal vocal apparatus can
speak; a man born with normal vision can see. But what
language he shall speak, and what sights he shall see, depend
on the social and geographical situation in which he happens
to be placed. Again, if a man is born with a "high general
intelligence," that is, with keen sensory discriminations and
motor responses, precise and accurate powers of analysis of
judgment, a capacity for the quick and effective acquisition
and modification of habits, we can safely predict that he will
excel in some direction. But whether he will stand out as a
lawyer, doctor, philosopher, poet, or executive, it is almost
impossible from original nature to tell.[1]

[Footnote 1: The psychological tests used in the army, and being
used now with modifications in the admission of students to
Columbia College, are "general intelligence" tests. That is, they
show general alertness and intellectual promise, but are not
prophetic of any specialized talents or capacities.]

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES--DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION. The
fact that individuals differ in ability and interest has important
consequences for education and social progress. It
means, in the first place, that while current optimistic
doctrines about the modifiability of human nature are true, they
are true within limits--limits that vary with the individual.
Whether or not we shall ever succeed, through the science or
the practice of eugenics, in eliminating low ability and
perpetuating high exclusively, the fact remains that there are in
contemporary society the widest variations both in the kinds
of interest and ability displayed, and in their relative efficacy
under present social and industrial conditions.

There are, it must be noted at the outset, a not inconsiderable
number of individuals who must be set down as absolute
social liabilities. Even if existing social and educational
arrangements were perfect, these would remain unaffected
and unavailable for any useful purpose. They would have to
be endowed, cared for, or confined. There is the quite
considerable class, who, while normal with respect to sensory and
motor discrimination, seem to be seriously and irremediably
defective in their powers of judgment. These also seem to
offer invulnerable resistance to education, and their original
natures would not be subject to modification even by an
education perfectly adapted to the needs of normal people.

But the more significant fact, more significant because it
affects so many, is the fact that within the ranks of the great
class of normal people, there are fundamental inherited differences
in ability and interest. Next in importance to the fact
that an individual is human is the fact that he is an individual,
with very specific initial capacities and desires. For education
the implications are serious. Education aims, among
other things, to give the individual habits that will enable
him to deal most effectively with his environment. But an
individual can be trained best, it goes without saying, in the
capacities and interests he has to begin with. Education cannot,
therefore, be wholesale in its methods. It must be so adjusted
as to utilize and make the most of the multifarious
variety of native abilities and interests which individuals
display. If it does not utilize these, and instead sets up
arbitrary moulds to which individuals must conform, it will be
crushing and distorting the specific native activities which
are the only raw material it has to work upon.

There have not as yet been many detailed quantitative
studies of individual differences that would enable educators,
if they were free to do so, scientifically to adapt education to
specific needs and possibilities. Beginnings in this direction
are being made, though rather in advanced than in more
elementary education. Professional and trade schools, and
group-electives in college courses are attempts in this direction.
Any attempt, of course, to adapt education to specific
needs and interests, instead of crushing them into _a priori_
moulds, requires, of course, a wider social recognition and
support of education than is at present common. For individual
differences require attention. And where millions are
to be educated, individual attention requires an immense
investment in teaching personnel.

But in this utilization of original interests and capacities
lies the only possibility of genuinely effective education.[1]
In the first place to try in education to give individuals habits
for which they have no special innate tendencies to begin with,
is costly. Secondly, to train individuals for types of life or
work for which their gifts and desires are ill adapted is to
promote at once inefficiency and unhappiness. One reason
why the chance to identify one's life with one's work (as is the
case with the artist and the scholar) is so universally recognized
as good fortune, is because it is so rare. A general and
indiscriminate training of men, as if they were all fitted with
the same talents and the same longings, does as much as
underpayment or overwork to impair the quality of the work
done and the satisfaction derived from it.

[Footnote 1: A beginning in the application of this principle has
been made by the vocational guidance and employment management work
which is being done with increasing scientific accuracy throughout
the United States. Individual differences and interests are studied
with a view to putting "the right man in the right place." This
slogan is borrowed from the Committee on Classification and Personnel,
which during the Great War, through its trade tests and other
machinery of differentiation, utilized for the national welfare
the specific abilities of thousands of drafted men.]

It has latterly been recognized that industry offers the
crucial opportunity to utilize to the fullest individual differences.
By "getting the right man in the right place," we at
once get the work done better and make the man better satisfied.
If adequate attention is given to "placement," to the
specific demands put upon men by specific types of work, and
to the specific capacities of individuals for fulfilling those
demands, we will be capitalizing variations among men instead
of being handicapped by them. As it is, specific differences
do exist, and men enter occupations and professions ignoring
them. As a result both the job and the man suffer; the
former is done poorly, and the latter is unsuccessful and unhappy.

It must be noted that the existence of specific differences
between individuals does not altogether, or often even in part,
imply superiority or inferiority. It implies in each case
inferiority or superiority with respect to the performance of a
particular type of work. Whether scientific insight and
accuracy is better than musical skill, whether a gift for
salesmanship surpasses a gift for mathematics, depends on the
social situation and the standards that happen to be current
among the group. An intensely disagreeable person may be
the best man for a particular job. All scientific observation
can do is to note individual differences, to note what work
makes demands upon what capacities, and try to bring the
man and the job together.

It must be emphasized that, while individual capacities
determine what an individual can do, social ideals and
traditions determine what he will do, because they determine what
he will be rewarded and encouraged to do. There is no
question but that in our industrial civilization certain types
of ability, that of the organizer, for example, have a high
social value. There is no question but that there are other
abilities, which under our present customs and ideals we
reward possibly beyond their merit, as, to take an extreme
case, that of a championship prize fighter. We can through
education and vocational guidance utilize all native capacities.
To make provision for the utilization of all native
capacities is to have an efficient social life. But to what end
our efficient human machinery shall be used depends on the
ideals and customs and purposes that happen to be current in
the social order at any given time.

In the words of Professor Thorndike, "we can invest in
profitable enterprises the capital nature provides." But
what profiteth a man or a society, is a matter for reflective
determination; it is not settled for us, as are our limitations,
at birth.

The net result of scientific observation in this field is the
discovery, in increasingly precise and specific form, that men
are most diverse and unequal in interest and capacity. The
ideal of equality comes to mean, under scientific analysis,
equality of opportunity, leveling all social inequalities; the
fact of natural inequalities and divergences remains incontestable.

There may even be, as recent psychological tests seem to
indicate, a certain proportion of individuals who are not
competent to take an intelligent part in democratic government,
who, having too little intellectual ability to follow the
simplest problem needing coöperative and collective decision,
must eternally be governed by others. If these facts come to
be authenticated by further data, it merely emphasizes the
fact that in a country professedly democratic it is essential
to devise an education that will, in the case of each individual,
educate up to the highest point of native ability.

Where a country is ostensibly democratic, a few informed
citizens will govern the many uninformed, unless the latter
are educated to an intelligent knowledge and appreciation of
their political duties and obligations. Furthermore, the citizens
of a community who are prevented from using their native
gifts will be both useless and unhappy. Certainly this is
an undesirable condition in a society where all individuals are
expected, so far as possible, to be ends in themselves and not
merely means for the ends of others.

CHAPTER X

LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION[1]

[Footnote 1: Much of the technical material for this chapter is
drawn from Leonard Bloomfield's _The Study of Language_, and
W. D. Whitney's _The Life and Growth of Language_.]

It was earlier pointed out that human beings alone possess
language. They alone can make written symbols and heard
sounds stand for other things, for objects, actions, qualities,
and ideas. In this chapter the consideration of language may
best be approached from the spoken tongue, under the influence
of which, except in the simplest type of pictorial writing,
the written form develops.[2]

[Footnote 2: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, pp. 7-8.]

From the point of view of the student of behavior, language,
spoken language especially, is a habit, acquired like walking
or swimming. It is made possible primarily by the fact that
human beings possess a variety and flexibility of vocal reflexes
possessed by no other animal. All the higher animals have a
number of vocal reflexes, which are called out primarily in the
expression of emotion or desire. Cries of pain, hunger, rage,
sex desire or desire for companionship, are common to a great
number of the animal species. But these cries and vocal
utterances are limited, and comparatively unmodifiable.
They are moreover expressed, so far as experimental observation
can reveal, with no consciousness of the specific significance
of particular sounds and are used as the involuntary
expression of emotion rather than as a specific means of
communication.

... The primates have a much larger number of such vocal instincts
than the other mammals, and a much larger number of stimuli
can call them out, _e.g._, injury to bodily tissue calls out one group;
hunger calls out a certain group; sex stimuli (mate, etc.) another;
and similarly cold, swiftly moving objects, tones, strange animals
call out others. When attachments are formed between the female
and her offspring another large group is called into action. There is
no evidence to show in the case of mammals that these vocal instincts
are modified by the sounds of other animals.... These throat habits
may be cultivated to such an extent in birds that we may get an
approximation, more or less complete, to a few such habits possessed
by the human being. Such throat habits, however, are not language
habits.[1]

[Footnote 1: Watson: _Behavior_, p. 323.]

In human beings language, it is clear, may attain extraordinary
refinement and complexity, and may convey extremely
fine shades and subtleties of emotion or idea. This
results from the fact that man is born with a vocal
apparatus far superior in development to that of any of the
animals.

It is pretty clear that the mutant man, when thrown off from the
primate stock, sprang forth with a vocal apparatus different from
that of the parent stock, and possessing abundant richness in reflexes,
even far surpassing that found in the bird. It is interesting to
observe, too, in this connection, that within the narrow space occupied
by the vocal apparatus we have a system of muscular mechanisms
which has within it, looking at it now as a whole, the same possibilities
of habit formation that we find in the remaining portion of bodily
musculature.... It is probable that in a few years we shall undertake
the study of such habits from exactly the same standpoint that
we now employ in studies upon the acquisition of skill in the human
being.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 323-24.]

The human baby starts its expressive habits by emitting
with wide-open mouth an undifferentiated shriek of pain. A
little later it yells in the same way at any kind of discomfort.
It begins before the end of the first year to croon when it is
contented. As it grows older it begins to make different
sounds when it experiences different emotions. And with
remarkable rapidity its repertoire of articulatory movements
has greatly increased.

Speech that begins in the child as a mere vague vocal
expression of emotion soon begins to exhibit a marked element
of mimicry. The child begins to associate the words uttered
by his nurse or parents with the specific objects they point to.
He comes to connect "milk," "sleep," "mother" with the
experiences to which they correspond. The child thus learns
to react to certain sounds as significant of certain experiences.
Unlike Adam, he does not have to give names to animals, or
for that matter to anything else on earth. They all have
specific names in the particular language in which he happens
to be brought up. In the case of other habits, largely through
trial and error, he learns to associate given sounds expressed
by other people about him with given experiences, pleasant
or unpleasant. He learns further to imitate, so far as possible,
these sounds, as a means of more precisely communicating
his wants or securing their fulfillment.

In this connection students of language frequently have
raised the question of how man first came to associate a given
sound-sequence with a given experience. Like fire, language
was once conceived to be a divine gift. Another theory
postulated a genius who took it into his head to give the
things of earth their present inevitable names. One other
theory equally dubious held that language started in onomatopoetic
expressions like "Bow-wow," for dog. Still another
hypothesis once highly credited held that the sounds first
uttered were the immediate and appropriate expressions
called out by particular types of emotional experience. The
validity of the last two theories has been rendered particularly
dubious. The very instances of imitative words cited,
words like "cuckoo," "crash," "flash," were, in their original
forms, quite other than they are now. And that words are
not immediately apposite expressions of the emotions which
they represent, has been generally recognized. In gesture
language, the gesture has to remain fairly imitative or
expressive to be intelligible. But an examination of half a dozen
casual words in contemporary languages shows how arbitrary
are the signs used, and how little appositeness or relevance
they bear in their sound to the sense which they represent.
The detailed study of the perfectly regular changes that so
largely characterize the evolution of language, have revealed
the inadequacy of any of these views. There seems to be, in
fact, no explanation of the origin of the language any more
than there is of the origin of life. All that linguistic science
can do is to reveal the history of language. And in this
history, human language stands revealed as a highly refined
development of the crude and undifferentiated expressions
which, under emotional stress, are uttered by all the animals.

LANGUAGE AS A SOCIAL HABIT. Language, as has repeatedly
been pointed out, is essentially social in character. It is, in
the first place, primarily an instrument of communication
between individuals, and is cultivated as such. In human
speech, interjections like "Oh!" or "Ah!" are still involuntary
escapes of emotion, but language develops as a vehicle of
communication to others rather than as a mere emotional outlet
for the individual. Even if it were possible for the mythical
man brought up in solitude on a desert island to have a
language, it is questionable whether he would use it. Since
language is a way of making our wants, desires, information
known to others, it is stimulated by the presence of and
contact with others. Excess vitality may go into shouting or
song,[1] but language as an instrument of specific utterance
comes to have a more definite use and provocation. Man,
as already pointed out, is a highly gregarious animal, and
language is his incomparable instrument for sharing his emotions
and ideas and experience with others. The whole process
of education, of the transmission of culture from the
mature to the younger members of a society, is made possible
through this instrument, whereby achievements and traditions
are preserved and transmitted in precise and public
terms.

[Footnote 1: Human song is by some linguistic experts, including
Bloomfield, held to have originated in the chant of rhythmic
labor, as in rowing or threshing.]

Secondly, language is social in that, for the individual at
least, it is socially acquired. The child first imitates sounds
without any consciousness of their meaning, just as he imitates
other actions in sheer "physiological sympathy." But
he learns soon, by watching the actions of other people, that
given sounds are always performed when these others do given
actions. He learns that some sounds are portents of anger
and punishment; still others of satisfaction and pleasure. He
learns soon to specify his utterances, to use sounds as specific
stimuli, to attain through other people specific satisfactions.
The child is born with a flexible set of reflexes. In which way
they shall be developed depends entirely on the accident of the
child's environment. Whether he shall call it "bread" or
"pain" or "brod," depends on the particular social environment
in which he from the first hears that particular item of
experience referred to. A child of American missionaries in
Turkey picks up the language of that country as well as that
of his own. An English child brought up under a French
nurse may learn with perfect ease the foreign tongue, and to
the exclusion of that of his native country. Indeed, so completely
subject is one in this regard to one's early environment,
that it is not only difficult in later life to acquire a new
pronunciation, but one finds it impossible to breathe freely,
as it were, in the whole psychological atmosphere of a foreign
language. Its grammatical categories, its spelling, its logic
seem hopelessly irrational. It was perfectly natural of the
Englishman in the story, when he was told that the French
called it "pain," to insist, "Well, it's bread, anyhow." Many
a reader of a foreign language which has become habitual can
still not refrain from translating, as he reads, what seem to
him irrational idioms into the familiar, facile, and sensible
modes of his native tongue.

LANGUAGE AND MENTAL LIFE. The connection of language
with thought has repeatedly been noted. It has even been
questioned whether thought in any effective sense is possible
without words. In general it may be said that thinking demands
clean-cut and definite symbols to work with, and that
language offers these in incomparable form. A word enables
one to isolate in thought the dominant elements of an experience
and prevents them from "slipping through one's fingers."

The importance of having words by which concepts may be
distinguished and isolated from one another will become
clearer by a brief reminder of the nature of reflection. Thinking
is in large part (as will be discussed in detail in chapter
XIII) concerned with the breaking-up of an experience into
its significant elements. But experience begins with objects,
and so far as perceptual experience is concerned, ends there.
We perceive objects, not qualities, actions, or ideas apart from
objects. And the elements into which thinking analyzes an
experience are never present, save in connection with, as
parts of, a sensibly perceived object. Thus we never perceive
whiteness save in white objects; warmth save in warm objects;
red save in red objects. We never, for that matter,
perceive so abstract a thing as an "object." We experience
red houses or red flags; white flowers, white shoes, white
paper; warm stoves, warm soup, and warm plates. Even
houses and stoves and shoes are, in a sense, abstractions. No
two of these are ever alike. But it is of the highest importance
for us to have some means of identifying and preserving
in memory the significant resemblances between our experiences.
Else we should be, as it were, utterly astounded every
time we saw a chair or a table or a fork. Though they may,
in each case in which we experience them, differ in detail,
chairs, tables, forks have certain common features which we
can "abstract" from the gross total experience, and by a
word or "term," define, record, communicate, and recall. The
advantage of a precise technical vocabulary over a loose
"popular" one is that we can by means of the former more
accurately single out the specific and important elements of
an experience and distinguish them from one another. The
common nouns, or "general names" in a language indicate
to what extent and in what manner that language, through
some or other of its users, classifies its experiences. Highly
developed languages make it possible to classify similarities
not easily detected in crude experience. They make it
possible to identify other things than merely directly sensed
objects.

In primitive languages experience is described and classified
only in so far as it is perceptual. In other words, primitive
languages have names for objects only, not for ideas, qualities,
or relations. Thus it is impossible in some Indian languages
to express the concept of a "brother" by the same word, unless
the "brother" is in every case in the same identical
circumstances. One cannot use the same word for "man" in
different relations: "man-eating," "man-sleeping,"
"man-standing-here," and "man-running-there" would all be separate
compound words. Among the Fuegians there is one
word which means "to look at one another, hoping that each
will offer to do something which both parties desire but are
unwilling to do."[1] Marett writes in this connection:

[Footnote 1: Marett: _Anthropology_, p. 140.]

Take the inhabitants of that cheerless spot, Tierra del Fuego,
whose culture is as rude as that of any people on earth. A scholar
who tried to put together a dictionary of their language found that
he had got to reckon with more than thirty thousand words, even
after suppressing a large number of forms of lesser importance. And
no wonder that the tally mounted up. For the Fuegians had more
than twenty words, some containing four syllables, to express what
for us would be either "he" or "she"; then they had two names for
the sun, two for the moon, and two more for the full moon, each of
the last named containing four syllables and having no elements in
common.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 138-39.]

It is easy to see how very little refinement or abstraction
from experience could be made with such a cumbersome and
inflexible vocabulary. The thirty thousand word vocabulary
expressed a poverty of linguistic technique rather than a richness
of ideas.

At the other extreme stands a language like English, which
is, to an extraordinary degree, an "analytic" language. It has
comparatively no inflections. This means that words can be
used and moved about freely in different situations and relations.
Thus the dominant elements of an experience can be
freely isolated. A noun standing for a certain object or relation
is not chained to a particular set of accompanying circumstances.
"Man" stands as a definite concept, whether it be
used with reference to an ancient Greek, a wounded man, a
brave, a wretched, a competent, or a tall man. We can give
the accompanying circumstances by additional adjectives,
which are again freely movable verbally and intellectually.
Thus we can speak of a brave child and a tall tower as well as
a brave man and a tall man. In Marett's words:

The evolution of language then, on this view, may be regarded as a
movement away from the holophrastic [compound] in the direction
of the analytic. When every piece in your playbox of verbal bricks
can be dealt with separately, because it is not joined on in all sorts of
ways to the other pieces, then only can you compose new constructions
to your liking. Order and emphasis, as is shown by English,
and still more conspicuously by Chinese, suffice for sentence-building.
Ideally, words should be individual and atomic. Every modification
they suffer by internal change of sound, or by having prefixes
or suffixes tacked on to them, involves a curtailment of their
free use and a sacrifice of distinctness. It is quite easy, of course,
to think confusedly, even whilst employing the clearest type of
language.... On the other hand, it is not feasible to attain a high
degree of clear thinking, when the only method of speech available
is one that tends toward wordlessness--that is to say, one that is
relatively deficient in verbal forms that preserve their identity in all
contexts.[1]

[Footnote 1: Marett: _loc. cit._, pp. 141-42.]

Languages differ not only in being more or less analytic,
but in their general modes of classification. That is, not only
do they have more or less adequate vocabularies, but in their
syntax, their sentence structure, their word forms, they variously
organize experience. It is important to note that in
these divergent classifications no one of them is more final
than another. We are tempted, despite this fact, to think
that the grammar, spelling, and phonetics of our own language
constitute the last word in the rational conveyance of thought.

THE INSTABILITY OF LANGUAGE. Language being a social habit,
it is to be expected that it should not stay fixed and changeless.
The simpler physiological actions are not performed in
the same way by any two individuals, and no social practice
is ever performed in the same way by two members of a group,
or by two different generations. In this connection writes
Professor Bloomfield:

The speech of former times, wherever history has given us records
of it, differs from that of the present. When we read Shakspere,
for example, we are disturbed by subtle deviations from our own
habits in the use of words and in construction; if our actors
pronounced their lines as Shakspere and his contemporaries did we
should say that they had an Irish or German brogue. Chaucer we
cannot read without some grammatical explanation or a glossary;
correctly pronounced his language would sound to us more like Low
German than like our English. If we go back only about forty
generations from our time to that of Alfred the Great, we come to
English as strange to us as modern German, and quite unintelligible,
unless we study carefully both grammar and lexicon.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 195.]

There are, in general, three kinds of changes that take place
in a language. "Phonetic" changes, that is, changes in the
articulation of words, regardless of the meaning they bear.
This is illustrated simply by the word "name" which, in the
eighteenth century was pronounced ne'm. " Analogic"
changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words under
the influence of words somewhat similar in meaning. The
word "flash," for example, became what it is because of the
sound of words associated in meaning, "crash," "dash,"
"smash." The third process of change in language alters
not only the articulate forms of words, not only their sound,
but their sense. All these changes, as will be presently pointed
out, can easily be explained by the laws of habit early discussed
in this book, these laws being applicable to the habit of
language as well as to any other.

In the case of phonetic change, it is only to be expected that
the sounds of a language will not remain eternally changeless.
A language is spoken by a large number of individuals, no
two of whom are gifted with precisely the same vocal apparatus.
In consequence no two of them will utter words in
precisely the same way. Before writing and printing were
general, these slight variations in articulation were bound to
have an effect on the language. People more or less unconsciously
imitate the sounds they hear, especially if they are
not checked up by the written forms of words. Even to-day
changes are going on, and writing is at best a poor representation
of phonetics. The Georgian, the Londoner, the Welshman
and the Middle Westerner can understand the same
printed language, precisely because it does not at all represent
their peculiarities of dialect. Variant sounds uttered by one
individual may be caught up in the language, especially if the
variant articulation is simpler or shorter. Thus the shortening
of a word from several syllables to one, though it starts
accidentally, is easily made habitual among a large number
of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the classic
example, pre-English, "habeda" and "habedun" became in
Old English, "hæfde" and" hæfdon," and are in present English
(I, we) "had."[1] In the same way variations that reduce
the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves
into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production
of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension
and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to produce
the unstressed syllables "with shortened, weakened
articulations... lessening as much as possible all interference
with the breath stream."[2] Thus "contemporaneous prohibition"
becomes "kntempe'rejnjes prhe'bifn." Sound
changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the
labor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest
positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in
more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech
habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded
that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of
a language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in
English and palatalization in Slavic are examples.[1*]

[Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 211.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 212.]

[Footnote 1*: _Ibid._, p. 218.]

These changes of sound in language so far discussed are
made independently of the meaning of words. Other changes
in articulation occur, as already noted, by analogy of sound or
meaning. That is, words that have associated meanings
come to be similarly articulated. This is simply illustrated in
the case of the child who thinks it perfectly natural to assimilate
by analogy "came" to "come." Thus the young child
will frequently say, until he is corrected, he "comed," he
"bringed," he "fighted." In communities where printing
and writing and reading are scarce, such assimilation by
analogy has an important effect in modifying the forms of
words.

CHANGES IN MEANING. The changes in language most important
for the student of human behavior are changes in
meaning. Language, it must again be stressed, is an instrument
for the communication of ideas. The manner in which
the store of meanings in a language becomes increased and
modified (the etymology of a language) is, in a sense, the
history of the mental progress of the people which use it. For
changes in meaning are primarily brought about when the
words in a language do not suffice for the larger and larger
store of experiences which individuals within the group desire
to communicate to one another. The meanings of old words
are stretched, as it were, to cover new experiences; old words
are transferred bodily to new experiences; they are slightly
modified in form to apply to new experiences analogous to the
old; new words are formed after analogy with ones already
in use.

A simple illustration of the application of a word already
current to a wider situation is the application of the word
"head" as a purely objective name, to a new experience,
which has certain analogies with the old; as when we speak
of a "head" of cabbage, the" head" of an army, the "head"
of the class, or the "headmaster." In many such cases the
transferred meaning persists alongside of the old. Thus the
word "capital" used as the name for the chief city in a
country, persists alongside of its use in "capital" punishment,
"capital" story, etc. But sometimes the transferred
meaning of the word becomes dominant and exclusive. Thus
"disease" (dis-ease) once meant discomfort of any kind.
Now it means specifically some physical ailment. The older
use has been completely discarded. To "spill" once meant,
in the most general sense, to destroy. Now all the other uses,
save that of pouring out, have lapsed. "Meat" which once
meant any kind of nourishment has now come to refer almost
exclusively (we still make exceptions as in the case of sweetmeat)
to edible flesh. Whenever the special or novel application
of the word becomes dominant, then we say the meaning
of the word has changed.

Mental progress is largely dependent on the transfer of
words to newer and larger spheres of experience, the modification
of old words or the formation of new ones to express the
increasing complexity of relations men discover to exist
between things. In the instances already cited some of the
transferred words lost their more general meaning and became
specialized, as in the case of "meat," "spill," etc. Other
words, like "head," though they may keep their specific objective
meaning, may come to be used in a generalized intellectual
sense. One of the chief ways by which a language remains
adequate to the demands of increasing knowledge and experience
of the group is through the transfer of words having
originally a purely objective sense to emotional and
intellectual situations. These words, like "bitter," "sour,"
"sharp," referring originally only to immediate physical
experiences, to objects perceived through the senses, come to
have intellectual and emotional significance, as when we speak
of a "sour" face, a "bitter" disappointment, a "sharp"
struggle. Most of our words that now have abstract emotional
or intellectual connotations were once words referring
exclusively to purely sensible (sense perceptual) experiences.
"Anxiety" once meant literally a "narrow place," just as
when we speak of some one having "a close shave." To
"refute" once meant literally "to knock out" an argument.
To "understand" meant "to stand in the midst of." To
"confer" meant "to bring together." Sensation words
themselves were once still more concrete in their meaning.
"Violet" and "orange" are obviously taken as color names from
the specific objects to which they still refer. Language has
well been described as "a book of faded metaphors." The
history of language has been to a large extent the assimilation
and habitual mechanical use of words that were, when first
used, strikingly figurative.

The novel use of a word that is now a quite regular part
of the language may in many cases first be ascribed to a
distinguished writer. Shakespeare is full of expressions which
have since, and because of his use of them, become literally
household words. Many words that have now a general
application arose out of a peculiar local situation, myth, or
name. "Boycott" which has become a reasonably intelligible
and universal word, only less than fifty years ago referred
particularly and exclusively to Boycott, a certain unpopular
Irish landowner who was subjected to the kind of discrimination
for which the word has come to stand. "Burke"
used as a verb has its origin in the name of a notorious Edinburgh
murderer. Characters in fiction or drama, history or legend
come to be standard words. Everyone knows what we mean when we
speak of a Quixotic action, a Don Juan,
a Galahad, a Chesterfield. To tantalize arises from the
mythical perpetual frustration of Tantalus in the Greek
story. Expressions that had a special meaning in the
works of a philosopher or littérateur come to be generally
used, as "Platonic love."[1] Again words that arise as mere
popular witticisms or vulgarisms may be brought into the
language as permanent acquisitions. "Mob," now a quite
legitimate word, was originally a shortening of _mobile vulgum_,
and was, only a hundred years ago, suspect in polite discourse.

[Footnote 1: Though this is very loosely and inaccurately used.]

Outside the deliberate invention by scientists of terms for
the new relations they have discovered, more or less spontaneous
variation in the use of words and their unconscious
assimilation by large numbers with whose other language
habits they chance to fit, is the chief source of language
growth. One might almost say words are wrenched from
their original local setting, and given such a generalized
application that they are made available for an infinite complexity
of scientific and philosophical thought.

UNIFORMITIES IN LANGUAGE. Thus far we have discussed
changes in language from the psychological viewpoint, that is,
we have considered the human tendencies and habits which
bring about changes in the articulation and meaning, in the
sound and the sense, of words. It is evident from these
considerations that there can be no absolute uniformity in
spoken languages, not even in the languages of two persons
thrown much together. Within a country where the same
language is ostensibly spoken, there are nevertheless
differences in the language as spoken by different social strata, by
different localities. There are infinite subtle variations
between the articulation and the word uses of different
individuals. There are languages within languages, the dialects of
localities, the jargon of professional and trade groups, the
special pronunciations and special and overlapping vocabularies
of different social classes.

But while there are these many causes, both of individual
difference and of differing social environments, why languages
do not remain uniform, there are similar causes making for a
certain degree of uniformity within a language. There is one
very good reason why, to a certain extent, languages do attain
uniformity; they are socially acquired. The individual learns
to speak a language from those about him, and individuals
brought up within the same group will consequently learn to
speak, within limits, the same tongue; they will learn to
articulate through imitation, and, while no individual ever
precisely duplicates the sounds of others, he duplicates them
as far as possible. He learns, moreover, as has already been
pointed out, to attach given meanings to given words, not for
any reason of their peculiar appositeness or individual caprice,
but because he learns that others about him habitually attach
certain meanings to certain sounds. And since one is stimulated
to expression primarily by the desire and necessity of
communication of ideas a premium is put upon uniformity.
It is of no use to use a language if it conceals one's thoughts.
In consequence, within a group individual variations, unless
for reasons already discussed they happen to lend themselves
to ready assimilation by the group, will be mere slips of the
tongue. They will be discarded and forgotten, or, if the individual
cannot rid himself of them, will like stammering or stuttering or
lisping be set down as imperfections and social
handicaps. The uniformity of language within groups whose
individual members have much communication with each
other is thus to a certain extent guaranteed. A man who is
utterly individualistic in his language might just as well have
no language at all, unless for the satisfaction of expressing to
himself his own emotions.[1] Language is learned from the
group among whom one moves, and those sounds and senses
of words are, on the whole, retained, which are intelligible to
the group. Those sounds and meanings will best be understood
which are already in use. No better illustration could
be found of how custom and social groups preserve and enforce
standards of individual action.

[Footnote 1: There have been a few poets, like Emily Dickinson,
or mystics like Blake, some of whose work exhibits almost complete
unintelligibility to most readers, though doubtless it had a very
specific meaning and vividness to the writers concerned.]

The obverse of the fact that intercommunication promotes
uniformity in language is that lack of communication brings
about language differentiation. The less the intercommunication
between groups, the more will the languages of the
groups differ, however uniform they may be within the groups
themselves. The most important factor in differentiation of
language is local differentiation. In some European countries
every village speaks its own dialect. In passing from one
village to another the dialects may be mutually intelligible,
but by the time one has passed from the first village in the
chain to the last, one may find that the dialect of the first
and last are utterly unintelligible to each other. A real break
in language, as opposed to dialect variations, occurs where
there is a considerable barrier between groups, such as a
mountain range, a river, a tribal or political boundary. The
more impenetrable the barriers between two groups the more
will the languages differ, and the less mutually intelligible will
they be.

Looking back over the history of language the student of
linguistics infers that those languages which bear striking or
significant similarities are related. Thus Spanish, Italian,
French, Portuguese, and Roumanian are traceable directly
back to the Latin. This does not mean that all over the areas
occupied by the speakers of these languages Latin was originally
spoken. But the Romans in their conquests, both military
and cultural, were able to make their own language
predominant. The variations which make French and Roumanian,
say, mutually unintelligible, are due to the fact that
Latin was for the natives in these conquered territories
assimilated to their own languages. So that, in the familiar
example, the Latin "homo" becomes "uomo" in Italian,
"homme" in French, "hombre" in Spanish, and "om" in
Roumanian. Similarly related but mutually unintelligible
languages among the American Indians have been traced to
three great source-languages.

The history of European languages offers an interesting
example of differentiation. English and German, for example,
are both traceable back to West-Germanic; from that
in turn to a hypothecated primitive West-Germanic. All
the European languages are traceable back to a hypothecated
Primitive Indo-European.[1] The theory held by most
students of this subject is that the groups possessing this
single uniform language spread over a wider and wider area,
gradually became separated from each other by geographical
barriers and tribal affiliations, and gradually (and on the
part of individual speakers unconsciously) modified their
speech so that slight differences accumulated, and resulted
finally in widely different and mutually unintelligible
languages.

[Footnote 1: By the word "primitive" the linguistic experts
mean a language the existence of which is inferred from common
features of several related languages, of which written records
are current, but of which no actual records exist. Thus, if
there were no written records of Latin the approximate
reconstruction of it by linguists would be called "Primitive
Romance."]

The process of differentiation in the languages of different
groups is very marked. We find, for example, in the early
history of Greece and Rome, a number of widely different
dialects. There seems every evidence that these were derived
from some more primitive tongue. We find, likewise, on the
American continent, several hundred different languages,
which--to the untrained observer--bear not the slightest
resemblance to each other. This welter and confusion can
also be traced back to a few primitive and uniform languages.

Thus the history of civilization reveals this striking
differentiation in the language of different groups, a
counter-tendency making for a wider uniformity of particular
languages. One "favored dialect" becomes standard, predominant
and exclusive. Thus out of all the French dialects, the
one that survives is the speech of Paris; Castilian becomes
standard Spanish, and in ancient Greece the language of
Athens supersedes all the other dialects. The reasons for the
survival of one out of a great welter of dialects may be various.
Not infrequently the language of a conquering people has, in
more or less pure form, succeeded the language of the conquered.
This was the case in the history of the Romance
languages, which owe their present forms to the spread of
Roman arms and culture. There was, as is well known, a
similar development in the case of the English language. The
Norman Conquest introduced, under the auspices of a socially
superior and victorious group, a language culturally superior
to the Anglo-Saxon. The latter was, of course, not entirely
replaced, but profoundly modified, especially in the enrichment
and enlargement of its vocabulary. One has but to
note such words as "place," "choir," "beef," etc., which
came entirely to replace in the language the indigenous Anglo-Saxon
names for those objects.

Colonization and commercial expansion may bring about
the replacement of the native language of special localities by
the language of the colonizers, at least in hybrid form. The
spread of English through Australia, and through the larger
part of North America, the spread of Spanish through South
America, in each instance practically replacing the native
tongues, are cases in point.[1]

[Footnote 1: Dialects and jargons are often the result of the
partial assimilation by the speakers of one language of another
language to which they are exposed. French-Canadian and
Pennsylvania Dutch are examples of such a mixture.]

STANDARDIZATION OF LANGUAGE. At the present time, and for
some time in the past, the differentiation of language has been
greatly lessened by the stabilizing influence of print. The
printed word continually recalls the standard pronunciation
and meaning, and the changes in language (save those deliberately
introduced by the addition of scientific terms, or the
official modifications of spelling, etc., as in some European
countries[2]) are much less rapid, various, and significant than
hitherto. It is true that differences in articulation and usage,
especially the former, do still, to a degree, persist and develop.
Our Southern accent, with its drawling of words and slurring
of consonants, our Middle-Western accent, with its stressed
articulation of "r's" and its nasalizing tendencies, are
instances of this persistence.

[Footnote 2: In France the Ministry of Education from time to time
settles points of orthography definitely.]

But the printed language--English, for example--the
official language, which is published in the newspapers, periodicals,
and books, which is taught in the schools, and spoken
from the pulpit, the platform, on the stage, in cultivated
society, is more or less alike all over the United States and
wherever English is spoken. It is, of course, only a standard,
a norm, an ideal, which like the concept of the circle, never
quite appears in practice. The language which is spoken,
even in the conversation of the educated, by no means conforms
to the ideal of "correct usage." But the important
fact is that the standard language _is_ a standard, that it is,
moreover, a widely recognized and effective standard. The
dictionaries and the grammars become authoritative, and are
referred to when people consciously set about discovering
what _is_ the accepted or correct meaning or pronunciation.
But a more effectual authority is exerted by the teaching they
receive at school, and the continuous, though unnoticed,
influence of the more or less standard language which they read
in print.

Even phonetic changes, though they persist, are checked
from spreading to the point of mutually unintelligible dialects
by the standards enforced in print. The "accents" in various
parts of the United States, for example, differ, but not to
the point of becoming absolutely divergent languages. The
Southerner and the Westerner may be conscious in each
other's speech of a quaint and curious difference in pronunciation,
but they can, except in extreme cases, completely
understand each other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Some of the isolated districts in the Kentucky mountains
reveal dialects with some important differences in vocabulary and
construction. These are shown most strikingly in some of the ballads
of that region which have been collected by William Aspinwall Bradley,
and by Howard Brockway. Rural schools and the breakdown of complete
isolation will probably in time eliminate this divergence.]

The most important stabilizing influence of print, however,
is its fixation of meanings. It makes possible their maintenance
uncorrupted and unmodified over wide stretches in
which there are phonetic variations. These variant articulations
in different parts of a large country where the same language
is spoken, would, if unchecked, eventually modify the
sense of words. Print largely prevents this from happening.
One can read newspapers published in Maine, California,
Virginia, and Iowa, without noticing any significant, or, in
many cases, even slight differences in vocabulary or construction.
There are, of course, local idioms, but these persist in
conversation, rather than in print, save where they are caught
up and exploited for literary purposes by a Bret Harte, a
Mark Twain, or an O. Henry.

COUNTER-TENDENCIES TOWARD DIFFERENTIATION. While the
_standard_ language does become fixed and stable, there are,
in the daily life of different social groups, varying actual
languages. Every class, or profession, every social group,
whether of interest, or occupation, has its slight individuality
in articulation or vocabulary. We still observe that members
of a family talk alike; sometimes households have literally
their own household words. And on different economic
and social levels, in different sports, intellectual, professional,
and business pursuits, we notice slightly different "actual"
languages. These partly overlap. The society lady, the
business man, the musician, the professor of literature, the
mechanic, have specializations of vocabulary and construction,
but there is, for each of them, a great common linguistic
area. Every individual's speech is a resultant of the various
groups with whom he associates. He is affected in his speech
habits most predominantly, of course, by his most regular
associates, professional and social. In consequence we still
mark out a man, as much as anything, by the kind of language
he speaks. The mechanic and the man of letters are
not likely to be mistaken for each other, if overheard in a
street car. Many literary and dramatic characters are memorable
for their speech habits. Such types are successful when
they do hit upon really significant linguistic peculiarities.
Their frequent failures lie in making the language of a particular
social type artificially stable. No one ever talks quite
as the conventional stage policeman, stage professor, and
stage Englishman talk.

These actual variations in the language, as it is used by
various groups who are brought up under the same standard
language, operate to prevent complete stabilization of language.
Such variations are remarkably influential, considering
the conservative influences upon language of the repeated
and continuous suggestion made by the printed page. The
language is, in the first place, being continually enriched
through increments of new words and modifications of old
ones, from the special vocabularies of trades, professions,
sciences, and sports. Through some accidental appositeness
to some contemporaneous situation, these may become generally
current. A recent and familiar example is the term
"camouflage," which from its technical sense of protective
coloration has become a universally understood name for
moral and intellectual pretense. The vocabulary of baseball
has by this time already given to the language words that
show promise of attaining eventual legitimacy. An increasingly
large source of enrichment of the native tongue comes
from the "spontaneous generation" of slang, which, starting
in the linguistic whimsicality of one individual, gets caught
up in conversation, and finds its ultimate way into the language.
Important instruments, certainly in the United
States, in spreading such neologisms are the humorous and
sporting pages of the newspapers, in which places they not
infrequently originate.[1] Whether a current slang expression
will persist, or perish (as do thousands initiated every year),
depends on accidents of contemporary circumstances. If the
expression happens to set off aptly a contemporary situation,
it may become very widespread until that situation, such as a
political campaign, is over. But it may, like the metaphor
of a poet, have some universal application. "Log-rolling,"
"graft," "bluff," have come into the language to stay.
Roosevelt's "pussy-foot," and "Ananias Club" are, perhaps,
remembered, but show less promise of permanency. "Movies"
has already ceased to be a neologism, its ready adoption
illustrating a point already mentioned, namely, that a variation
that facilitates speech (as "movies" does in comparison with
"moving pictures," or "motion pictures ") has a high potentiality
of acceptance.

[Footnote 1: H. L. Mencken in his suggestive book, _The American
Language_, sees in this upshoot of phrases indigenous to the
soil and the temper of the American people, and of grammatical
constructions also, symptoms of the increasing divergence of
the American from the English language. That there are a large
number of special expressions exclusively used in the United
States, and parts of the United States, that are not found in
use in England, goes without saying. Everyone knows that the
Englishman says "lift" where we say "elevator," "shop," where
we are likely to say "store." There are significant differences
to be found even in the casual expressions of American and
English newspapers. But it is doubtful whether the divergence
can go very far, in view of the constant intercommunication,
the rapidity of travel between the two countries, and the
promiscuous reading of English books in America, and American
books in England.]

LANGUAGE AS EMOTIONAL AND LOGICAL. Since language is
primarily useful as an instrument of communication, it should
ideally be a direct and clean-cut representation of experience.
It should be as unambiguous, and immediate, as telegraphy,
algebra, or shorthand. But language has two functions,
which interfere with one another. Words not only represent
logical relations; they provoke emotional responses. They
not only explicitly tell; they implicitly suggest. They are not
merely skeletons of thought; they are clothed with emotional
values. They are not, in consequence, transitive vehicles of
thought. Words should, from the standpoint of communication,
be mere signals to action, which should attract attention
only in so far as they are signals. They should be no more
regarded as things in themselves than is the green lamp which
signals a locomotive engineer to go ahead. They should be as
immediate signals to action as, at a race, the "Ready, set, go"
of the starter is to the runner. Yet this rarely happens in the
case of words. They frequently impede or mislead action by
arousing emotions irrelevant to their intellectual significance,
or provoke action on the basis of emotional associations rather