FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123  
124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>   >|  
nd ideals. In the adult, habits are already set physiologically, and kept rigid by the demands of economic life. In the young there is a "fairer and freer" field. Through education the immature may be taught to approve ways of action more desirable than those which have become habitual with their adult contemporaries. The children of to-day may acquire habits of action, feeling, and thought that will be their enlightened practice as the adults of to-morrow. All great social reformers, from Plato to our own contemporaries like Bertrand Russell, have seen in education, therefore, the chief instrument, as it is the chief problem, of social betterment. We may train the maturing generation to approve modes of behavior which the best minds of our time may have found reason to think desirable, but which could not be substituted immediately for the fixed habits of the already adult generation. SOCIAL ACTIVITY, AND THE SOCIAL MOTIVE. In our analysis of the social nature of man we have, thus far, been dealing with his specific social tendencies. But apart from these, or rather as an outgrowth of these, men exhibit what Professor Woodworth has well described as a gift for "learning" social behavior. Possessing, as he eminently does, the capacity for group activity, man is interested in such activity. He needs no ulterior motive to attract him to it. It is play for him.... The social interest is part and parcel of the general _objective_ interest of man.[1] [Footnote 1: Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, pp. 202, 203.] In other words, the activity of man as an individual is not simply deflected a little by man's native gregariousness, sympathy, and susceptibility to praise and blame. Rather, group activity becomes to the gregarious human, born into an environment where he must act with and among other human beings, an interesting and exciting activity in and for itself. Men enjoy working in a group or a society for joint and common objects just as they enjoy food or musical composition or golf. The social motive is of the same order as the musical or mathematical motive. Just as one who has the musical gift takes to music naturally and finds it interesting for its own sake, so the socially gifted individual understands other people, sees the possibilities of collective activity, and the ways of cooerdinating it, and enters into such doings with gusto.... The social gift is a capacity for _learning_ social behavior. Indiv
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123  
124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

social

 

activity

 

behavior

 

habits

 

musical

 

motive

 

contemporaries

 

individual

 
interesting
 

SOCIAL


approve

 

learning

 
Woodworth
 
capacity
 

action

 

desirable

 

interest

 

education

 

generation

 

susceptibility


sympathy
 

simply

 

gregariousness

 
deflected
 

native

 

praise

 

attract

 

ulterior

 

parcel

 

general


Psychology

 

Dynamic

 

objective

 
Footnote
 

naturally

 
mathematical
 

socially

 
gifted
 
enters
 

doings


cooerdinating
 

collective

 
understands
 

people

 

possibilities

 

beings

 

exciting

 

environment

 
Rather
 

gregarious