" This fundamental
likeness of human nature, despite artificial and superficial cultural
differences, has found a classic expression in Kipling's line: "The
Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins!"

Human nature, then, as distinct from the formal wishes of the individual
and the conventional order of society, is an aspect of human life that
must be reckoned with. Common sense has long recognized this, but until
recently no systematic attempt has been made to _isolate_, describe, and
explain the distinctively human factors in the life either of the
individual or of society.

Of all that has been written on this subject the most adequate statement
is that of Cooley. He has worked out with unusual penetration and
peculiar insight an interpretation of human nature as a product of group
life.

By human nature we may understand those sentiments and impulses
that are human in being superior to those of lower animals, and
also in the sense that they belong to mankind at large, and not
to any particular race or time. It means, particularly,
sympathy and the innumerable sentiments into which sympathy
enters, such as love, resentment, ambition, vanity,
hero-worship, and the feeling of social right and wrong.

Human nature in this sense is justly regarded as a
comparatively permanent element in society. Always and
everywhere men seek honor and dread ridicule, defer to public
opinion, cherish their goods and their children, and admire
courage, generosity, and success. It is always safe to assume
that people are and have been human.

Human nature 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. It
is something more, on the one hand, than the mere instinct that
is born in us--though that enters into it--and something less,
on the other, than the more elaborate development of ideas and
sentiments that makes up institutions. It is the nature which
is developed and expressed in those simple, face-to-face groups
that are somewhat alike in all societies; groups of the family,
the playground, and the neighborhood. In the essential
similarity of these is to be found the basis, in experience,
for similar ideas and sentiments in the human mind. In these,
everywhere, hum