ed readjustments and controls.51 Says Professor Cooley: "Human functions are so numerous and intricate that no fixed mechanism could provide for them: they are also subject to radical change, not only in the life of the individual, but from one generation to another. The only possible hereditary basis for them is an outfit of indeterminate capacities which can be developed and guided by experience as the needs of life require."52

In sex, especially, man has in his conduct almost infinite possibilities for enhanced harmonization and refinement of expression.53 And, if this is so, it is rather the socially maintained conditions and opportunities and the socially inculcated ideals and controls than the mere "leading out" of innate equipment, or the giving impulses "natively spontaneous expression," that can effect it.

57

The fact is that the so-called instincts, in themselves, are actually no more than "instinctive emotions," or simply "impulses," as Professor Cooley and Professor Dewey respectively, prefer to call innate predispositions to behavior. They are, according to Professor Dewey, only "highly flexible starting-points for activities which are diversified according to the ways in which they are used. Any impulse may become organized into almost any disposition, according to the way it interacts with surroundings.' 1958 The actual expression in acts and practices that they get depends not upon innate equipment alone, but also upon how they are inter

51

1 John Dewey, The Study of Ethics, pp. 15 ff.; E. A. Ross, The Principles of Sociology, chap. xliv; also L. M. Bristol, Social Adaptation, esp. pp. 3-11; John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, p. 131; E. C. Hayes, Sociology and Ethics, chap. v; also L. T. Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution, pp. 5-6, etc.

52 Human Nature and the Social Order, p 21.

53

Cf. J. I. Dealey, The Family in Its Sociological Aspects; E. T. Devine, The Family and Social Work; Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chapter on "The Family"; H. Drummond, The Ascent of Man; C. A. Ellwood, The Reconstruction of Religion, chap. vii; Anna Galbraith, The Family and the New Democracy; T. W. Gallaway, The Sex Factor in Human Life; J. M. Gillette, The Family and Society; Anna G. Spencer, The Family and Its Members; J. H. Tufts, "The Ethics of the Family," in Int. Jour. Ethics, XXVI, 223-40, etc.

54

"Cf. Havelock Ellis, Little Essays of Love and Virtue, p. 131.

59

woven, systematized, given direction, relation, and human meaning in social life. In themselves, if we want to view them abstractly," they must be conceived as being mere urges, in their nature plastic and organizable, yet blind and precipitant."

60

9961 it would seem,

The alleged "gracious equilibrium of Nature, is a fact, if a fact at all, only if man's life is seen, as contemporary sociology sees it to be, a social or collective human process with its inevitable molding, controlling, and reciprocities in men's conduct. Only if heredity and environment-to use the common phrase, if biological equipment and social heritage are viewed as essentially complementary, that is, if man's social life is seen as no less primary, as no less an inescapable part of nature than is his biological life, can man control his own development.

Without the social life as an inherent phase in the human lifeprocess, nature has no "norms," whether of monogamy or anything else, nor any “equilibrium" of acts and practices. And any speculation as to a freedom sought without regard to the existing environment finds, in the words of Professor Dewey, "a terminus in chaos. "'62

CONDUCT NECESSARILY SOCIAL

We may conclude, therefore, that alongside the stream of biological heredity, with its continuous flow of germ plasm endowing men and women with aptitudes, lines of teachability, and with instinctive impulses 63 runs the necessary and supplementing stream of social inheritance, or social life, which, through communication and suggestion and through the various special forms of social control,* molds the behavior of men and determines their acts and practices.

Fitted out biologically with capacities and impulses to communicate, to be sociable, sympathetic, responsive, appreciative,

"Cf. C. H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, pp. 19 ff., 29 ff., etc.

** Cf. E. A. Ross, Social Control, a Survey of the Foundations of Order, esp. Part II.

and so on, the human offspring is born into family life. His first reactions and expressions, accordingly, take place in a group situation. The family home, where, as a matter of fact, social life is most intimate, complete, and effective, is the only place where the child can thrive physically and mentally." It is here, in face-toface association and co-operation, that the individual acquires his fundamental attitudes, his life-long sentiments and interests, and the host of primary habits or fundamental ways of doing things."7

Indeed, man's very human nature, so important as a basis in all his conduct, can only here have its genesis. In these primary groups of the family, the playground, and the neighborhood, somewhat alike in all societies, says Professor Cooley, "human nature comes into existence. Man does not have it at birth; he cannot acquire it except through fellowship, and it decays in isolation."68 "Human nature," he continues, "is not something existing separately in the individual, but a group-nature, or primary phase of society, a relatively simple and general condition of the social mind."69

The primary ideals of human living, such as the ideals of truth, service, loyalty, lawfulness, freedom, moral unity, and so onwithout which, what can sex conduct be?-find their original source and ever continued renewal in primary group life. And the typical characteristics of human nature so fundamental in human life, such as affection, ambition, vanity, resentment, are inconceivable apart from life with others.70 "A congenial family life," Professor Cooley points out, "is the immemorial type of moral unity, 65 Cf. esp. E. C. Hayes, Introduction to the Study of Sociology (1921 ed.), pp. 218 ff.

6 Cf., among others, Henry D. Chapin, in Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., LXIV (January 2, 1915), No. 1; Edward T. Devine, The Normal Life, pp. 66 ff. Conclusions of the White House Conference of 1909, and of the Children's Bureau Conference of 1919 on child-welfare standards.

31 ff.

7 Cf. Charles A. Ellwood, The Reconstruction of Religion, chap. vii.

Social Organization, p. 30; see also Human Nature and The Social Order, pp.

and source of many of the terms-such as, brotherhood, kindness, and the like-which describe it. The members become merged by intimate association into a whole, wherein each age and sex participates in its own way. Each lives in imaginative contact with the minds of the others, and finds in them the dwelling-place of his social self, of his affections, ambitions, resentments, and standards of right and wrong. Without uniformity there is yet unity, a free, pleasant, wholesome, fruitful common life."""1

Whether individuals are conscious of it or not, the fact is that their reference to self," their anticipations, sentiments, attitudes, as well as their actual acts and practices, have each a double aspect, purporting both social and individual life. A man's whole conduct, indeed, can be seen as the result of group influences, either of direct suggestion, social interstimulation, and co-operation, or, no less truly, as a phase of the social process, as molded and controlled through memories of group standards and ideals inculcated, of acts previously approved, of sentiments and attitudes built up.

Always and necessarily individuals are guided in one way or another by the activities of others, by social ties and personal relations affording each other a source of renewed radiation and psychic reinforcement. Thus, as Professor J. M. Baldwin puts it, "Man is always in his greatest part also someone else. When he acts quite privately, it is with a boomerang in his hand; and every use he makes of this weapon leaves its indelible impression both upon the other and upon him."73

This conclusion, namely, that man's mental life is completely, inherently, and unavoidably social, that while individuals depend upon biological heredity for capacity they must get conduct from society, does not, however, it is clear, deny the specifically individual aspect in human conduct. It only denies that the "naturally" biological is self-sufficient, or that conduct can ever be, whether in its content or effects, individual alone.

"Ibid., p. 34.

72 Cf. C. H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, chaps. v. and vi. Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, pp. 87-88.

Man's mental life and sex conduct is inherently social, even though acts and practices, in a sense, issue immediately from persons, and though each person does in a way form a unique organization of life, unique both in the germ plasm," and in the “number, variety, and quality of social contacts."" It is quite true that an individual's fund of knowledge, his specific developmental experiences, and conduct can never be identical with that of his fellows. The quality of his personal expressions, of his outlooks, of his attitudes, and so on is, in a way, his own. In democratic and more enlightened civilized life, moreover, with its stress upon the higher principle of unity of underlying meaning rather than mere outward conformity of acts and practices" as its basic form of social organization, men and women are infinitely more than mere "chips of the block." In fact, nowhere are they mere "pieces of society," nor do they ever altogether mechanically accept, or blindly follow, group

ways.

However, to perceive that modern life is relinquishing the uniform solidarity attributed to primitive life," and that the present tendency is toward an increased amount of individual choice and rational control rather than mere acceptance and external authority, should not obscure the fact of its inevitable social nature and its fundamentally collective working. Individual organizations of life, no matter how desirable, are still but participating phases in a total common situation. No individual can, after all, be conceived in his sexual conduct as a separable independent agent. Nor are his acts and practices ever without social effects upon the general human life.

Indeed, the more human, as distinguished from merely animal or sensuous, individuals' acts and practices are, the more, that is "Cf. T. H. Morgan, A Critique of the Theory of Evolution, chap. ii.

" Cf. E. S. Bogardus, "Man's Margin of Uniqueness," Jour. Applied Sociol., XVII, No. 4, 207.

10 Cf. A. H. Lloyd, Amer. Jour. Sociol., VIII, 337-59.

"Cf., however, John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 103 ff.; also "Interpretation of Savage Mind," Psychol. Rev., IX, 221, 223 ff.