CHAPTER II

THE LARGER FACTORS IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

The larger factors in human development are (1) the social factor, which determines the purposes and ideas available for controlling conduct; (2) the individual factor, in which these purposes and ideas are realized; and (3) the educational factor, which unites the other two by providing conditions favorable to the development of social purposes and ideas in the individual life.

I

The social and individual factors are revealed superficially through opposition between them.

"Civilized man is born, lives, and dies in a state of slavery; at his birth he is sewed up in swaddling clothes, and at his death he is nailed in a coffin; so long as he preserves the human form, he is fettered by various institutions." This extreme statement by Rousseau, provoked by conditions preceding the French Revolution, calls attention to the individual and the social factors in human development by showing them in opposition to each other. Since the dramatic element of strife commands attention, the prevalent ideas of these factors have been developed largely out of opposition between them. The maxim "Spare the rod and spoil the child," would make it appear that the individual should be whipped into lines of activity approved by society. The business man who violates the generally accepted ideas of fair dealing and the husband whose treatment of his family does not accord with his

neighbors' standards of kindness, are made to feel the indignation of the community. Because not controlled by ideas commonly accepted, the polygamist is imprisoned and the murderer is put to death. Socrates, accused of denying the gods recognized by the state and of teaching the youth ideas which Athenians generally did not accept, was compelled to drink the fatal hemlock. Giordano Bruno asserted that the world moves, and a society with whose fundamental beliefs this idea conflicted burned him at the stake; while, shortly afterwards, Galileo also would have been sacrificed on the altar of social regulation, had he not recanted a similar belief. John Huss suffered martyrdom for his religious ideas and Martin Luther probably escaped a similar fate by concealment in the castle of Wartburg. Truly did the three crosses on Calvary symbolize the fact that both the reformer and the criminal are transgressors of social beliefs and customs, and that, in exercising a regulative influence to enforce its own standards, society has made the way of the transgressor hard.)

II

The social factor determines the purposes and ideas essential to the development of men; this social regulation varies in different groups at the same time and in the same group at different times; and the story of the changes of this social regulation is the history of civilization.

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In the contrast between the individual and society made apparent by such instances as those noted above, society seems to regulate in an arbitrary way the ideas and purposes of the individual; it seems artificially to impose man-made restrictions upon him. Rousseau expresses this idea very well in his "social contract" theory, which holds that men, having lived only as inde

pendent individuals, made a contract to live together as a society, because they saw that selfish advantages could thereby be gained. A ruler was then provided for and the machinery of state established to enforce the regulations of the contract upon those who would seek to evade them.

By placing authority thus with the masses and by making the king and his officers appear to be merely agents of the masses in enforcing the social contract, Rousseau's theory exercised a strong influence in overcoming the belief in the divine right of kings. In this way it played a prominent part in opening the floodgates of human passion so that outgrown and pernicious social regulations were swept away in the French Revolution. But however valuable these results may have been, Rousseau's theory of the nature of the social factor in human development is superficial.

Man, to translate the words of Aristotle, is a social animal." Indeed, even lower animals, down to the bees and the ants, have forms of social organization, though they certainly know nothing about contracts and do not understand that advantages come from social organization. A human being becomes a member of society for the same reason that he breathes air and eats food, it is his nature to do so. Development of the purposes and ideas which control his conduct is as much dependent upon life in society as his physical development is dependent upon air and food. Every worthy purpose and every valuable idea which the individual acquires is social in its origin and is acquired by him from society. Indeed, the idea of a contract, the ideas of advantages coming from social organization, although assumed by the "social contract" theory to antedate social relations, would

never have been known, had not man been living a social life for countless generations. As Professor Baldwin says: "Man is not a person who stands up in his isolated majesty, meanness, passion, or humility, and sees, hits, worships, fights, or overcomes, another man, who does the opposite things to him, each preserving his isolated majesty, meanness, passion, humility, all the while, so that he can be considered a unit' for the compounding processes of social speculation. On the contrary, a man is a social outcome rather than a social unit. He is always, in his greatest part, also someone else. Social acts of his that is, acts which may not prove anti-social -are his because they are society's first; otherwise he would not have learned them nor have had any tendency to do them. Everything that he learns is copied, reproduced, assimilated, from his fellows; and what all of them, including him, all the social fellows, do and think, they do and think because they have each been through the same course of copying, reproducing, assimilating, that he has." 1

In the light of this explanation of man as a "social animal," it becomes evident that the headsman's axe and the hangman's noose, the prison and the whipping post, and popular disapproval and indignation, are incidental in social regulation. For the most part, since it. is his nature to do so, the individual willingly acquires from society the purposes and ideas that control his action. He cannot get in any other way the purposes and ideas that are necessary to satisfy his own needs and to promote his own personal development. Only after thousands of generations, of coöperative struggle has

1 Baldwin, James Mark, Social and Ethical Interpretations, 1906,

p. 96.

society attained these purposes and ideas; they have been bought with the sweat and blood of centuries. But they are free to the individual for the taking. If he were denied the advantage of this vicarious struggle of society, his puny mind and short life span would make personal development impossible. Without this social inheritance

he could never be a man.

Different nations at the same time and the same nations at different times have varied greatly in their accumulated store of purposes and ideas available to individuals within the social group. In this respect, the Spartans differed from the Athenians, the Germans from the French, and the subjects of Queen Elizabeth from those of George V. Volumes have been filled with records of the important changes which the Roman invasion brought about in the purposes and ideas of western Europe, and within a half century Japanese purposes and ideas have been remade.

The history of civilization is but the record of the changes in social regulation brought about by the development of new purposes and ideas which control men's conduct. In primitive times, human beings under social guidance found their highest satisfaction in the mere gaining of food, shelter, and protection against enemies, used the crudest of tools, saw spirit doubles in stones and trees, and regarded fire with superstitious awe. When the forces of nature were harnessed, and, with the use of fire, better tools were made, when habitations became settled and division of labor more complex, individuals were brought to the realization of higher, more complex purposes and ideas. In the Western World, the religious development of the Hebrews, the literary, artistic, and philosophical development of the Greeks, and the