what will be. The "I" of every one of us is largely a volition -it always includes much that we really are not, but would like to be. A refined and developed will is always largely a social product. 20 We are taught what parts of our activities to call really ourselves, and we are encouraged to develop these impulses at the expense of others. In this manner all the members of a group will tend to develop personalities which display the same general contours. The conditions of modern civilization require from us rather unusual degrees of regularity and permanence in many activities which seem better adapted to intermittent use. This is the case, for example, with work, and especially with mental work. The human system seems capable either of intense exertion over a short period of time or of a rather low degree of exertion over long periods of time. But under social pressures, a high degree of exertion may be exacted over long periods of time, and habits of restlessness and constant activity may even be developed, in opposition to basic human needs. In such circumstances our desires become unhealthy, and the development of a sound self is difficult and sometimes impossible. And it is just at such a time, also, that self-will becomes especially prominent. Well-rounded selfhood disappears, and its place is taken by the cult of the self. (7) Thought. The life of thought will be considered at some length in a later chapter, when an attempt will be made to state in detail what goes on when men think. Here, therefore, it need only be remarked that both the subjectmatter of thought and the occasion or need for thinking nearly always arise outside the thought process itself. Thinking is called upon to play a part in a game which it did not devise, with implements not of its own construction, and for reasons which it must in the end take for granted. It is in the life of the feelings that one must search for an explanation of thinking. REFERENCES 1 George H. Green, The Daydream, A Study in development (Univ. of London Press, 1923). 2 Green, 79. 3 For a bibliography of gangs, see R. E. Park and E. W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (2 ed., Univ. of Chicago Press, 1924), 657. For fuller details, see J. B. Watson, Behaviorism (N. Y., People's Institute Publ. Co., 1925), 90–99. 'J. B. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (2 ed., Phila., Lippincott, 1924), 219–221. Cf. Watson, Psychology, etc., 265–266, 296–302; William Stern, The Psychology of Early Childhood up to the Sixth Year of Age (3 ed., N. Y., Holt, 1924), 81; Kurt Koffka, The Growth of the Mind, An introduction to child psychology (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1924), 74. 7 Stern, 142. 8 Stern, 376. The grammar of this citation has been slightly clarified. 'Knight Dunlap, The Elements of Scientific Psychology (St. Louis, Mosby, 1922), 358. 10 Stern, 377f (the story about the little boy and his fingers is on p. 382); Koffka 334-335. 11 Stern, 353. 12 William James, The psychology of belief, Mind, Vol. 14 (1889), 334-335. 13 Charles Waldstein, The Balance of Emotion and Intellect (London, 1878), 7. 14 Anatole France, Penguin Island (London, Lane, 1909), 204-205. 15 See reference 5 above; also Mary Cover Jones, The elimination of children's fears, Journ. of Exper. Psych., Vol. 7 (1924), 382-390. 18 See A. F. Shand, The Foundations of Character, Being a study of the tendencies of the emotions and sentiments (2 ed., London, Macmillan, 1920). 17 R. W. Livingstone, The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to Us (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912), 78. 18 H. C. Warren, Human Psychology (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1919), 303–304. 19 Gustav Spiller, The Mind of Man, A textbook of psychology (London, Sonnenschien, 1902), 302. 20 Graham Wallas, Our Social Heritage (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1921), 25. Chapter VI ADOLESCENCE AND MATURITY The importance of sex Our culture offers no paradox more puzzling than its attitude towards sex. Here is a tremendous human force, the direct or indirect theme of most of the world's greatest literature, the subject matter of a large proportion of the daily thoughts and feelings of the average man, the strongest urge to human activity, a scorching flame which is capable of revealing a man's nature from top to bottom, the very wellspring of life and over this great focus of human energies is spread an almost impenetrable blanket of silence, innuendo, and ignorance. With all the talk and thought that hovers about sex, little of really primary significance has as yet been uttered and mankind seems determined, if possible, always to flirt with this most interesting and dangerous of all subjects. This fact alone is responsible for most of the problems raised by sex in our lives. Suppose that eating and drinking was never spoken of openly, save in veiled or poetic language, and that no one ever ate food publicly, because it was considered immoral and immodest to reveal the mysteries of this natural function. We know what would occur. A considerable proportion of the community, more especially the more youthful members, possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. They would have so many problems to puzzle over: How often ought I to eat? What ought I to eat? Is it wrong to eat fruit, which I like? Ought I to eat grass, which I don't like? Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed in eating reasonably and wholesomely. The sexual secrecy of life is even more disastrous than such a nutritive secrecy would be; partly because we expend such a wealth of moral energy in directing or misdirecting it, partly because the sexual impulse normally develops at the same time as the intellectual impulse, not in the early years of life, when wholesome instinctive habits might be formed. And there is always some ignorant and foolish friend who is prepared still further to muddle things: Eat a meal every other day! Eat twelve meals a day! Never eat fruit! Always eat grass! The advice emphatically given in sexual matters is usually not less absurd than this. When, however, the matter is fully opened, the problems of food are not indeed wholly solved, but everyone is enabled by the experience of his fellows to reach some sort of situation suited to his own case. And when the rigid secrecy is once swept away a sane and natural reticence becomes for the first time possible.1 The primary need in connection with sex, then, is for the removal of the taboos and restrictions, not all of them external by any means, which hinder attempts to understand this subject. Human beings must learn to approach the problems of sex with the same freedom and desire to discover the truth that they often exhibit in other realms. Few things, certainly, are nearer to human happiness than an early and adequate understanding of sexual life. This need becomes crucial at puberty, but it exists before and after that period as well. Men are sometimes loath to admit the great place of sex in life. Could anything be plainer? Even a cursory glance at human institutions and activities is enough to settle the question. In some men, of course, the fire of life burns low, or with a flickering flame, and these persons are by no means always among the most weakly endowed of our kind. But thought and activity thus removed from the close and vitalizing touch of passion is generally doomed to be esoteric, and ever tends towards sterility. As for the great mass of mankind, no one can doubt that the feelings connected with sex are the preeminent driving forces. "The main principle of enjoyment for the human race is not art, nor thought, nor the practice of virtue, but for man, woman, and for woman, man." Love in very truth makes the world go round. An ethics or a code of life which ignores this fact condemns itself to essential triviality from the very start. The biological significance of sex Sex is apparently not necessary for reproduction, since many kinds of plants and animals reproduce without reliance on its mechanisms. One celled animals like the ameba, for example, simply subdivide, the parent animal thus perpetuating itself in the creatures which take its place. In the case of many animals both sexes are present in some generations, and but one in others. In fact, the arrangements whereby new organisms are brought into being are many, although it is the rule among the higher animals that a male and a female must have sexual intercourse for the production of new members of the species. Though sex is not everywhere necessary for reproduction, and may some day be dispensed with in the case of man, it is of considerable biological importance as a guarantee of variability. Two hereditary strains are mixed in sexual reproduction wherever inbreeding-mating between closely related members of the same family group-does not occur. It has frequently been suggested that the population of isolated islands deteriorates when new blood is not available to vitalize the indigenous stocks. Barring external accident, a similar stagnation would also seem to be the fate of unsexed animals, whereas new qualities may now and then be expected to appear whenever two individuals of different heredity mate. That this possibility is of considerable social importance is indicated by the new combinations of qualities noted whenever peoples who have previously been separated begin to interbreed. The mating of peoples of different stocks is not always fortunate from the sociological point of view, however, especially when one of the groups is laboring under social prejudices and disabilities, as is the case, for example, with negroes at the present time in many parts of the white world. The sex history of the individual The human being undergoes great changes at puberty, for it is then that his sexual powers mature and he becomes able to reproduce his kind, but it must not be thought that sexual influences are unimportant until that time. The |