This chapter dealt with the instincts. The following chapters will deal with the social environment, the group phenomenon in society, the process of crystalizing public opinion, and lastly with the relation of the press as the leader par excellence in this process, with society and especially with our mental behavior. CHAPTER II ALONG THE PAVED HIGHWAY If man is born into the world with instincts from which motives of social behavior are based but if his instincts, on the other hand, must yield to group needs, how much, then, in the totality of human conduct is due to biological and how much to social heritage? A man is not only born with specific instincts; he is born into a world compact with institutions and customs. The interaction between the instincts and the environment, natural and social, is therefore of interest to us. To be able approximately to ascertain the part played by each is to discover the nature of human behavior and, understanding this, the way will be cleared for the study of the formation of public opinion. There are, in general, two extreme views of the relation of the instincts to environment. One school of psychologists asserts that "the only way to change institutions is for men to purify their own hearts and that when this has been accom plished, change of institutions will follow of itself"? The other school, conceives of the of the instincts as perfectly malleable and that man is born helpless and utterly dependent into a world which he did not seek and from which it is not in 2 his power to escape. 1. John Dewey. Human Nature and Conduct, p.9 2. Ibid, P.9. The first school, on the one hand, bases its assertion on a belief as old as St. Augustine that human nature is innately depraved; that evil intentions and desires are born, not acquired. The second, on the other hand, founds its theory on the conception that human impulses are plastic and impressionable and that customs and institutions are channels for man's energies and molds for his behavior from his first weak cry to his last gasp. John Dewey seems to state the most sane theory of the relationship of man's biological and sociological heritage when he says, 1 There are in truth forces in man as well as Thus, while repudiating the two extreme conceptions, Dewey virtually concedes the irresistible dominance of environment over instincts, since, as we shall see later, "intelligence" which would, in his theory, make up for the "frailty" of human impulses, does not play a very large part in human conduct. Indeel, at the outset, he is forced to admit that "when we look at the problem as one of adjustment to be intelligently attained, the issue shifts from within personality to an engineering issue, the establishment of arts of education 2 and social guidance". 1. John Dewey. Human Nature and Conduct, p.15 2. Ibid, p.10. |