random, even in such highly trained acts as the golf drive or the tennis service. Our make-up is not highly specialized; we are Jacks-of-all-trades. As a consequence we seldom secure a high degree of precision in our responses. We have come to realize this somewhat, and so we rely more and more on machines and instruments for really delicate work. But whatever we do, whether it be loafing or running a race or thinking or hating or whatnot, we do it with all we are.

(4) In the course of development, responses to a certain extent become ordered. Some appear more frequently than others and in preference to others. This is a result, purely and simply, of the action and interaction of impulses. No one part of our nature, of course, performs this function exclusively.

There is no agency exclusively devoted to selection, no factor of selection that is nothing more than that. Selectiveness is a property of any tendency or interest, and not the property of some one general agency existing alongside of the specific tendencies. 15

This function of control has often been assigned to reason or to the soul. This, of course, is quite proper if these terms are regarded merely as names for the fact that some kind of organization is attained: but organization is attained, if at all, by the interaction of impulses and not by the promulgation of decrees from a central seat of authority. The tendency to reason things out is but one impulse among many in the human being; and its rôle in determining the contours of our lives both is and should be a relatively minor

one.

What we call personality is nearly always a surprisingly loose and even contradictory array of frequently functioning tendencies that have to some degree come to terms with each other, and which determine the peculiarities of a person's responses and attitudes. Certain insane persons, it is true, give one the impression of being controlled throughout by one or a very small number of selective agencies. Their personalities are much more thoroughly integrated than those

of the normal individual. A high degree of personal integration, therefore, does not argue a high degree of adaptation to life conditions, although perhaps the two things do commonly go together.

(5) Individuals differ from one another. This is true from the very beginning; the whole story of development merely serves to emphasize this fact and drive home its many social consequences. What one person does easily another cannot do no matter how hard he tries. Whole aspects of human life are closed to many men, not because they are prohibited from participating in them by any external restraints, but because these things mean literally nothing to them. In the smallest matters as in the most important, the manner in which one man differs from another will help to determine loyalties and aversions, successes and failures, happiness and misery. In any culture, an enormous gulf separates the few best from the general level of mankind. Many of the members of every culture are almost entirely out of touch with its achievements, and are thoroughly unable to participate in their creation, their appreciation and their preservation.

REFERENCES

1 See A. E. Shipley, Life, A book for elementary students (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1923); E. B. Wilson, The Cell in Development and Heredity (3 ed., Macmillan, 1925); G. R. DeBeer, Growth (London, Arnold, 1924).

2 For data on Mendelism and other recent developments in biology, see T. H. Morgan, A Critique of the Theory of Evolution (Princeton University Press, 1916); T. H. Morgan, The Theory of the Gene (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1926). For a good summary of the situation with respect to the inheritance of acquired characters, see the essay by J. A. Detlefsen in Our Present Knowledge of Heredity, A series of lectures given at the Mayo Foundation and the Universities of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and Washington (St. Louis), 1923-1924 (Philadelphia, Saunders, 1925), 75-99. The accompanying bibliography will be found helpful.

4 H. S. Jennings, Prometheus, or Biology and the Advancement of Man (N. Y., Dutton, 1925). Consult also C. M. Child, Physiological Foundations of Behavior (N. Y., Holt, 1924), and C. J. Herrick, Neurological Foundations of Animal Behavior (N. Y., Holt, 1924), for suggestions as to contemporary tendencies in biology centering around the points discussed in the text.

Carl Kelsey, The Physical Basis of Society (N. Y., Appleton, 1916), 20–21. This book contains much curious and valuable information not otherwise easily available.

• Graham Wallas, Our Social Heritage (New Haven, Yale University Press,

1921), Chapter 2. See also R. Austin Freeman, Social Decay and Regeneration (London, Constable and Co., 1921), 1–2.

7 See R. E. Park and E. W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (2 ed., University of Chicago Press, 1924), 239-243, 271-272, 276, for data and bibliography covering the interesting subject of "feral man."

J. B. Watson, Behaviorism (N. Y., Peoples Institute Publ. Co., 1925), 90–99. For one of the best of the lists, see E. L. Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man (Vol. 1 of his Educational Psychology, 1913). For criticism of Thorndike's list, see J. B. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (2 ed., Phila., Lippincott, 1924), 275-282. For criticism of the concept of instinct, see Knight Dunlap, Are there any instincts? Journ. of Abnorm. Psych., Vol. 14 (1919–1920), 307-311. For an amusing account of how one list of instincts was constructed, see the article by H. C. Warren, Psych. Rev., Vol. 26 (1919), 199–203.

10 Jennings, 51.

11 D. F. Harris, Nerves (N. Y., Holt, 1913), esp. 146-9.

12 John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (N. Y., Holt, 1922), 118-119.

13 G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence (N. Y., Appleton, 1905), Vol. 1, xi-xii.

14 Quoted from a review by M. W. Peck of Kempf's Psychopathology, in the Amer. Journ. of Psychiatry, Vol. 1 (1921-2), 128.

15 R. S. Woodworth, Dynamic Psychology (N. Y., Columbia University Press, 1918), 125-126.

Chapter II

THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

The culture concept 1

Anthropologists engaged in the comparative study of human societies use the term culture as a general name for the entire round of life activities exhibited by a group. The term is employed without the intention of conveying praise since every group possesses a culture, no matter how simple or degraded it may appear to the members of other groups. The pattern of its culture enters into and affects almost everything that is done within the group, whether by single individuals, by aggregates of individuals, or by the entire society.

The activities of even seemingly simple societies are very numerous. There is the daily routine of tasks and duties, with its seasonal and other variations; there are the movements from place to place, the goings and comings for business and for pleasure; there are the innumerable ways of expressing the feelings and emotions, and all the activities of thought, creation, and communication. All these goings on, these ways of looking at things and ways of doing them, together with the tools and devices required to make them possible, collectively constitute the culture of the group. But two kinds of activity are not included under the term:

(1) Purely physical processes, i.e., such phenomena as storms, the fall of heavy bodies, etc., into the occurrence of which there enter no components of social derivation. Many physical processes, of course, are more or less directly connected with social activities, and therefore form part of the culture complex, as when the firing of siege guns causes a storm (if, indeed, a storm can be caused this way), or when a lumber company fells trees.

(2) Processes of purely individual origin. That purely idiosyncratic actions occur seems beyond question, although

28

they are not always easy to designate and are certainly much less numerous than we commonly believe. Efforts to retain one's balance after stumbling, the watering of the eyes when they are irritated, drowsiness and lethargy after hard work, the recurrent need for food, and other similar phenomena, however, depend only very indirectly (if at all) upon social structures for their existence and therefore do not belong to the category of culture.

The distinction between processes of purely individual origin and processes affected by social components is seldom easy to make. With respect to our metabolic requirements, for example, the general need for something to eat at intervals is an organic matter, but the need for a particular food or for three meals a day is socially derived. The meal as we know it is a culture phenomenon peculiar to our own group, and of fairly recent origin. The household ordinances of Henry the Eighth of England, for example, provide for but two meals during the day, a dinner at ten o'clock and supper at four. Many primitive peoples eat when they can and as long as the food holds out. Among the islanders of the Torres Straits,3

There are two main meals in the day, one in the early morning and the other at sunset, but in addition they eat at all times of the day. . . . There is an old saying, . . . "Miriam and Dauar men you begin food to eat small daylight and at night (are) finishing," in other words, owing to the abundance of food, the Murray Islanders eat from sunrise to sunset or even later. A Murray Islander informed Dr. C. S. Myers, "Sun he come up, sun he go down, eat and drink all day before missionary come. Missionary he make him eat, breakfast sun there, dinner sun up there, and supper sun down there."

If the purely biological components of so simple an activity as eating are difficult to determine, the situation becomes obscure to the point of making analysis almost impossible in the case of more complex behaviors. Who could say, for example just how much of a man's religious activity goes back to the individual considered in isolation from his group?