The Project Gutenberg EBook of Human Traits and their Social Significance, by
Irwin Edman

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Title: Human Traits and their Social Significance

Author: Irwin Edman

Release Date: August 13, 2007 [EBook #22306]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMAN TRAITS ***

Produced by Robert J. Hall

HUMAN TRAITS

AND THEIR

SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE

BY

IRWIN EDMAN, Ph.D.

INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE

FOREWORD

This book was written, originally and primarily, for use in
a course entitled "Introduction to Contemporary Civilization,"
required of all Freshmen in Columbia College. It is
an attempt to give a bird's-eye view of the processes of human
nature, from man's simple inborn impulses and needs to the
most complete fulfillment of these in the deliberate activities
of religion, art, science, and morals. It is hoped that the
book may give to the student and general reader a knowledge
of the fundamentals of human nature and a sense of the possibilities
and limits these give to human enterprise.

Part I consists of an analysis of the types of behavior, a
survey of individual traits and their significance in social
life, a brief consideration of the nature and development of
the self, individual differences, language and communication,
racial and cultural continuity. Those fruits of psychological
inquiry have been stressed which bear most strikingly on the
relations of men in our present-day social and economic
organization. In consequence, there has been a deliberate
exclusion of purely technical or controversial material, however
interesting. The psychological analysis is in general based
upon the results of the objective inquiries into human behavior
which have been so fruitfully conducted in the last twenty-five
years by Thorndike and Woodworth. To the work of
the first-mentioned, the author is particularly indebted.

Part II is a brief analysis, chiefly psychological in character,
of the four great activities of the human mind and imagination--religion,
art, science, and morals