an nature comes into existence. Man does not
have it at birth; he cannot acquire it except through
fellowship, and it decays in isolation.[55]

3. Classification of the Materials

With the tacit acceptance by biologists, psychologists, and sociologists
of human behavior as a natural phenomenon, materials upon human nature
have rapidly accumulated. The wealth and variety of these materials are
all the greater because of the diversity of the points of view from
which workers in this field have attacked the problem. The value of the
results of these investigations is enhanced when they are brought
together, classified, and compared.

The materials fall naturally into two divisions: (a) "The Original
Nature of Man" and (b) "Human Nature and Social Life." This division
is based upon a distinction between traits that are inborn and
characters socially acquired; a distinction found necessary by students
in this field. Selections under the third heading, "Personality and the
Social Self" indicate the manner in which the individual develops under
the social influences, from the raw material of "instinct" into the
social product "the person." Materials in the fourth division,
"Biological and Social Inheritance," contrast the method of the
transmission of original tendencies through the germ plasm with the
communication of the social heritage through education.

a) _The original nature of man._--No one has stated more clearly than
Thorndike that human nature is a product of two factors, (a)
tendencies to response rooted in original nature and (b) the
accumulated effects of the stimuli of the external and social
environment. At birth man is a bundle of random tendencies to respond.
Through experience, and by means of the mechanisms of habit and
character, control is secured over instinctive reactions. In other
words, the original nature of man is, as Comte said, an abstraction. It
exists only in the psychic vacuum of antenatal life, or perhaps only in
the potentiality of the germ plasm. The fact of observation is that the
structure of the response is irrevocably changed in the process of
reaction to the stimulus. The _Biography of a Baby_ gives a concrete
picture of the development of the plastic infant in the environment of
the social group.

The three papers on differences between sexes, races, and individuals
serve as an introduction into the problem of differentiating the aspects
of behavior which are in _orig