can," all men may be put in class two, just as if their
heights were measured on a scale of one yard, two yards, or three yards,
nearly all men would alike be called two yards high. But whenever the
scale of measurement is made fine enough, differences at once appear.
Their existence is indubitable to any impartial observer. The early
psychologists neglected or failed to see them precisely because the
early psychology was partial. It believed in a typical or pattern mind,
after the manner of which all minds were created, and from whom they
differed only by rare accidents. It studied "the mind," and neglected
individual minds. It studied "the will" of "man," neglecting the
interests, impulses, and habits of actual men.

The differences exist at birth and commonly increase with progress
toward maturity. Individuality is already clearly manifest in children
of school age. The same situation evokes widely differing responses; the
same task is done at differing speeds and with different degrees of
success; the same treatment produces differing results. There can be
little doubt that of a thousand ten-year-olds taken at random, some will
be four times as energetic, industrious, quick, courageous, or honest as
others, or will possess four times as much refinement, knowledge of
arithmetic, power of self-control, sympathy, or the like. It has been
found that among children of the same age and, in essential respects, of
the same home training and school advantages, some do in the same time
six times as much, or do the same amount with only one-tenth as many
errors.

B. HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL LIFE

1. Human Nature and Its Remaking[65]

Human beings as we find them are artificial products; and for better or
for worse they must always be such. Nature has made us: social action
and our own efforts must continually remake us. Any attempt to reject
art for "nature" can only result in an artificial naturalness which is
far less genuine and less pleasing than the natural work of art.

Further, as self-consciousness varies, the amount or degree of this
remaking activity will vary. Among the extremely few respects in which
human history shows unquestionable growth we must include the degree and
range of self-consciousness. The gradual development of psychology as a
science and the persistent advance of the subjective or introspective
element in literature and in all fine art are tokens of this change. And
as a further indication