institutional development of the Romans made further changes in the kind of regulation effected by society. Though men have come and men have gone, the character of social regulation has continued to develop through the making of new purposes and ideas to the present age with its industrial factories and governmental institutions, its schools, libraries, art galleries, and churches. III The individual factor is the medium in which purposes and ideas What is the nature of the individual factor in human development? If, under conditions in which only the individual and the social factors are involved, we can in imagination take away the social, we have left the individual factor alone. For example, the human being known as Martin Luther may be imagined to have grown up in civilizations different from that in which he actually lived. If he had grown up among the Chinese, he would have eaten with chop sticks, and, having grown a cue, would have felt humiliation at the thought of losing it. Also, he would have thought in the Chinese language, understood only primitive methods of agriculture, if any, and would have entertained oriental religious ideas. In Athens at the time of Pericles, in Rome at the time of Cæsar Augustus, in France at the time of the Crusades, he would have had different purposes and ideas, and therefore would have acted differently. That which would have been present in Luther under one civilization and not under another is obviously social in its nature, since it would have depended entirely upon the society in which he lived; that which would have been present in him under any civilization is obviously individual in its nature, since it would not have depended upon the society in which he lived. Eliminating, then, the purposes and ideas which he might have acquired in any particular civilization, there is left a being capable of producing purposes and ideas in accordance with patterns set by society. The individual as thus distinguished is the factor through which purposes and ideas are produced under social guidance. In this way, the individual is seen to be the agent through which society functions, the medium in which social purposes and ideas are realized. Individuals vary greatly in their abilities to appropriate social purposes and ideas by reproducing them in their own experience and thus making them guides for conduct. Idiots and insane persons are largely wanting in this ability, whereas geniuses possess it to a conspicuous degree. Some individuals, furthermore, are more capable of appropriating social purposes and ideas in one field than in another. Consequently, one excels in manual arts, commerce, or politics, while another excels in science, music, or religion. The individuals of one race may differ from those of another in the ability to appropriate social purposes and ideas. IV An understanding of both the social and the individual factors, although they are abstractions, is necessary to the control of human development. The individual and society are two abstractions; i.e. things that can be separated in imagination, but not in reality, as in the case of whiteness and the substance which is white. There can be no society without individual human beings, and there can be no individual human beings without society. Even when some anchorite monk retires to his solitary life in the desert and when some Robinson Crusoe is lost on a far-away island, they cannot get rid of the social factor in experience, but take with them purposes and ideas which, before their isolation, they got from society and could never have acquired in any other way. Although the social and the individual factors are known only as abstractions, the recognition of both of them is essential to the understanding and control of human development, and has, therefore, important practical consequences. The law of gravitation, too, is an abstraction; but the builder of air ships who neglects it is bound to meet failure or even disaster in the world of practical affairs. Two illustrations may be given which show serious consequences in the control of human development that have come from a failure to recognize the full importance of one or the other of these factors. V The neglect of the individual factor, as exemplified in the thought In his study of human nature, Plato neglected the individual factor in human development. He lived at a time when loss of faith in social tradition had in a conspicuous measure abandoned men to the guidance of undisciplined and capricious individual desires. Disintegration of the state and degeneration of the individual were resulting. Some authoritative regulator of human action was needed. Under such conditions, it was a very natural mistake for Plato, in seeking this, to turn from a direct study of the more or less undisciplined, capricious, and therefore chaotic nature of the individual, and to center his attention upon only the regulative or social factor in human life. Plato said that the nature of the individual appeared to be so small and intricate that direct study of it was difficult. With the thought that one who sees something written in large letters can afterwards read more easily the same thing written in small letters, because he knows what to look for, Plato assumed that society is the individual written large; and that by studying the nature of society, he could read in big letters the nature of the individual man. Thus he failed to make a direct study of the individual process and based his understanding of human nature upon the study of the social factor alone. The study of the social factor does not reveal how ideas come into being. This is true, because, as we have learned, the process for making ideas in accordance with social patterns is peculiarly individual; the individual is the agent through which society functions, the medium in which social purposes and ideas are realized. Plato could not, therefore, understand how ideas are made; and, not understanding this, he naturally assumed that they were not made at all, but always existed. Having decided that ideas are eternal, he found an easy step to the conclusion that eternal ideas are more valuable than the changing, perishing things of the world, and consequently that in order to secure the highest development, man should turn away from temporal things of the world and look with the "eye of the soul" upon eternal ideas. This conclusion means that ideas are purer and more divine in nature in the degree that they are free from connection with the temporal practical affairs of life, which are supposed to contaminate them. According to Plato's philosophy, the highest development of men required, therefore, that they live as much as possible in a realm of pure abstract thought rather than in the world of practical action. The heavenly halos of these ideas, as seen in his poetic fancy, had blinded him to the importance of the very world of practical affairs in which, as shown above, his problem originated. In a word, because Plato, through a failure to find the true nature of the individual process, failed to understand how ideas are actually made, he was led logically to separate the realm of thought from the world of practical action; or, to state it more briefly, to separate theory and practice. Plato believed, it is true, that ideas should control the practical affairs of life, but he separated ideas from these affairs by attributing to them (1) a noble origin independent of the practical world, and (2) an intrinsic value that made the pursuit of them preeminently worth while, apart from their practical application. He says that the ideal men, the philosophers, who have been trained by years of abstract thinking, "must be constrained to lift up the eye of the soul, and fix it upon that which gives light to all things; and having surveyed the essence of good, they must take it as a pattern, to be copied in that work of regulating their country and their fellow-citizens and themselves, which is to occupy each in turn during the rest of life; - and though they are to pass most of their time in philosophical pursuits, yet each, when his turn comes, is to devote himself to the hard duties of public life, and hold office for his |