es
trained to a reflective appreciation of the end of his work. A
habit of alert and conscious attention, if it is really habitual,
will enable one to persist at work in the face of tempting distractions.
Learning to "tend to business" by an intelligent
application to the aims of the work to be done, will be a
healthy antidote against that yielding to every dissuading
impulse which so often passes for mental weariness.

CHAPTER V

THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN

MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING. Man has long been defined as the
"social animal," and it is certainly characteristic of human
activity that it takes place largely with reference to other people.
Many of man's native tendencies, such as those of sex,
self-assertiveness, and the like, require the presence and
contact of other people for their operation. Nineteenth-century
philosophers attempted frequently to explain how individuals
who were natively self-seeking ever came to act socially. The
solution to this problem was usually found in the fact that precisely
those self-seeking and self-preservation instincts which
governed man's activity could not find satisfaction except
through cooeperation with a group. All man's social activity
was conceived as purely instrumental to the gratification of
his own egoistic desires. Man got on with his fellows simply
because he could not get on without them. We shall see that,
in the light of the specific and natural tendencies toward
social behavior which are part of man's original equipment, this
sharp psychological isolation between the individual and the
group is an altogether unwarranted assumption. For it is
just as native to man to act socially as it is for him to be
hungry, or curious, or afraid. The element of truth in the
nineteenth-century exaggeration of man's individuality lies in the
fact that social activity is partly brought about in the
satisfaction of the more egoistic impulses of the individual. "The
fear motive drives men together in times of insecurity; the
pugnacity motive bands them together for group combat; the
economic motive brings industrial cooeperation and organization;
the self-assertive and submissive tendencies bring emulation
as well as obedience; the expansion of the self to cover
one's family, one's clique, one's class, one's country contributes
to loyalty; while the parental instinct, expanding its
scope to cover others besides children who are helpless, leads
to self-sacrifice and altruism.