transmit established standards, but it is the chief source of any far-reaching progress. In the adult, habits are already set physiologically and kept rigid by the demands of economic life. In the young, there is a 'fairer and freer field'. Their habits are plastic and their tastes unformed. Through education they can learn to practise those actions which have been discovered or thought to be desirable and to approve those actions in others. There is enormous power in the habits of approval and disapproval to which we have in our early days been subjected by our parents, teachers, and companions. It is this power of early education that gives point to the traditional Jesuit saying, that if they could train a child till he was twelve years old, his later training mattered little.

CHAPTER VII

CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE

The Interpenetration of Human Traits

This chapter is devoted to a consideration of a number of individual human traits, curiosity, pugnacity, leadership, fear, love, and hate, etc., and some of their more important social consequences. These are seldom present in isolation. A man is not under normal circumstances simply and solely pugnacious, curious, tired, submissive, or acquisitive. One's desire to own a particular house at a particular location may be complicated by the presence of several of these traits at The house may be wanted simply as a possession, a crude satisfaction of our native acquisitiveness. It may be sought further as a mode of self-display, an indication of how one has risen in the world. Its attractiveness may be heightened by the fact that it is situated next door to the house of a rather particularly companionable old friend. It may be peculiarly indispensable to one's satisfaction because it is also being sought by a detested rival.

But while these distinctive human traits are seldom apparent in isolation, it is worth while to consider them separately. Not only because the elements of human behavior will thus stand out more clearly, but because in certain individuals one or another of these traits may be natively of especial strength. And further in differing social situations, the possession or the cultivation of one or another of these native endowments may be of particular social value or danger. And in any given situation, one or another of them may be predominant, as when a man is intensely angry, or curious, or tired. Thus an individual may have a marked capacity for leadership, or an extraordinarily tireless curiosity, or an abnormally developed pugnacity or acquisitiveness. The capacity for leadership,

as will later be discussed in some detail, will be of particular social value in large enterprises; patient and persistent inquiry may produce science; pugnacity when freely expressed may provoke quarrels, bickerings, and war. In the following discussion, the continual interpenetration and qualification of these traits by one another in a complex situation must be recognized. Else it may appear in the discussion of any single trait, as if by means of it all human action were being explained. Rather the aim is to trace them as one might the elements in the pattern of a tapestry, or the recurrent themes in the development of a symphony. But as the symphony is more than a number of melodies, the tapestry more than the separate elements of line and color, so is human life more than any single trait.1

The Fighting Instinct

Almost all men exhibit in varying degrees the 'fighting instinct', that is, the tendency when interfered with in the performance of any action prompted by any other instinct, to threaten, attack, and not infrequently, if successful in attack, to punish and bully the individual interfering. "The most mean-spirited cur will angrily resent any attempt to take away its bone if it is hungry; a healthy infant very early displays anger if its meal is interrupted, and most men find it difficult to suppress irritation on similar occasions. In the animal world the most furious excitement of this instinct is provoked in the male of many species by any interference with the satisfaction of the sexual impulse.”2

This original tendency to fight is very persistent in human beings, but is susceptible of direction, and is not, in civilized life frequently revealed in its crude and direct form, save among children and among adults under intense provocation and excitement. Occasionally, however, pugnacity is displayed

1 Philosophers and others have time and again made the mistake of simplifying human life to a single motive or driving power. Hobbes rested his case on fear; Bain and Sutherland on sympathy; Tarde on imitation; Adam Smith and Bentham on enlightened selfinterest. In our own day the Freudians interpret everything as being sexual in its motive. And most recently has come an interpretation of life, as in Bertrand Russell and Helen Marot, in terms of the 'creative impulse'.

2 McDougall, p. 60.

in its simple animal form. "Man shares with many of the animals the tendency to frighten his opponent with loud roars and bellowings. "Many a little boy has, without example or suggestion, suddenly taken to running with open mouth, to bite the person who has angered him, much to the distress of his parents. As the individual grows older, he learns to control the outward and immediate expression of this powerful and persistent human trait. He learns in his dealings with other people not to give way, when frustrated in some action or ambition, to mere animal rage. The customs and manners to which a child is early subjected in civilized intercourse are effective hindrances to uncontrolled display of anger and pugnacity; superior intelligence and education find more refined ways than kicking, pummelling, and scratching of overcoming the interferences of others. But even in gentle and cultured persons, an insult, a disappointment, a blow will provoke the tell-tale signs of pugnacity and anger, the flushing of the cheeks, the flash of the eye, the incipient clenching of the fists, the compressing of the teeth and lips, and the trembling of the voice. We substitute sarcasm for punching, and find subtly civilized and, in the long run, more terrible ways than bruises of punishing those who oppose us in our play, our passions, our professions. But our ancestors were beasts of prey, and there is still 'fighting in our blood'.

The fighting instinct is aroused by both personal and impersonal situations, and is occasioned even by very slight interferences, and even when the author of the interference is neither human nor animate. Perfectly intelligent men have been known to kick angrily at a door as if from pure malice it refused to open. Irate commuters have glared vindictively at trains they have just missed. The glint of anger is roused in our eye by an insolent stare, an ironic comment, or an impertinent retort. The 'boiling point' varies in different individuals and races, and pugnacity is generally more readily roused in men than in women. There are some persons, like the proverbial Irishman, who seeing the slightest opportunity for a fight, 'want to know whether it is private, or whether anyMcDougall, p. 61; ibid., p. 62.

body can get in'. In most men pugnacity is more intense when it is provoked by persons; except for a moment, one does not try to fight a chair struck in the dark.

Under the conditions of civilized life, the primitive expression of pugnacity in physical combat has been outlawed and made unnecessary by law and custom. Individuals are prevented by the fear of punishment, besides their early training and habits, from settling disputes by physical force. But as the instinct itself remains strong, it must find some other outlet. This it secures in more refined forms of rivalry, in business and sport, or, all through human history, in fighting between groups, from the squabbling and perpetual raids and killings, and the extermination of whole villages and tribes in Central Borneo, to the wars between nations throughout European history. In the words of McDougall, written before the great war:

In our own age the same instinct (pugnacity), makes of all Europe an armed camp occupied by twelve million soldiers, the support of which is a heavy burden on all peoples; and we see how, more instantly, than ever before, a slight to the British flag, or an insulting remark in some foreign newspaper, sends a wave of angry emotion sweeping through the country, accompanied by all the characteristics of crude collective mentation, and two nations are ready to rush into a war that cannot fail to be disastrous to both of them. The most serious task of modern statesmanship is perhaps to discount and control these outbursts of collective pugnacity.

Pugnacity a Menace when Uncontrolled

This quotation calls attention to the very serious menace this human tendency may be when uncontrolled or when fostered between groups. Like all the other instincts, and more than most, it is frustrated and continually checked in the normal peace-time pursuits of contemporary civilization. Participation, imaginative at least, in a great collective combat undoubtedly holds some fascination for the citizens of modern industrial society, despite the large scale horror which war is in itself, and the desolation it leaves in its wake. Dur4 McDougall: Social Psychology, p. 281.