descriptions of human behavior, if inadequate and
unscientific, at least recognized that an understanding of human nature
was a precondition to social reorganization. The fact that philosophical
conceptions and ideal constructions are themselves social forces and as
such frequently represent vested interests, has been an obstacle to
social as well as physical science.

Comte's notion that every scientific discipline must pass through a
theological and metaphysical stage before it assumed the character of a
positive science seems to be true as far as sociology is concerned.
Machiavelli shocked the moral sense of his time, if not the moralists of
all time, when he proposed to accept human nature as it is as a basis
for political science. Herbert Spencer insisted upon the futility of
expecting "golden conduct from leaden instincts." To the utopian social
reformers of his day he pointed out a series of welfare measures in
England in which the outcome was the direct opposite of the results
desired.

This negative criticism of preconceived notions and speculations about
human nature prepared the way for disinterested observation and
comparison. Certain modern tendencies and movements gave an impetus to
the detached study of human behavior. The ethnologists collected
objective descriptions of the behavior of primitive people. In
psychology interest developed in the study of the child and in the
comparative study of human and animal behavior. The psychiatrist, in
dealing with certain types of abnormal behavior like hysteria and
multiple personality, was forced to study human behavior objectively.
All this has prepared the way for a science of human nature and of
society based upon objective and disinterested observation.

2. Literature and the Science of Human Nature

The poets were the first to recognize that "the proper study of mankind
is man" as they were also the first to interpret it objectively. The
description and appreciation of human nature and personality by the poet
and artist preceded systematic and reflective analysis by the
psychologist and the sociologist. In recent years, moreover, there has
been a very conscious effort to make literature, as well as history,
"scientific." Georg Brandes in his _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century
Literature_ set himself the task to "trace first and foremost the
connection between literature and life." Taine's _History of English
Literature_ attempts to delineate British t