iduals differ in degree in the social
gift, as in other capacities; some are capable of becoming creative
artists or inventors along social lines.[1]

[Footnote 1: Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, p. 203.]

The social behavior of man is thus seen to be no curious
anomaly and contradiction in the life of an otherwise thoroughly
egoistic individual. Man is instinctively social; he
finds social activity useful in the satisfaction of his own
desires, and he comes from his native tendencies and acquired
habits of social behavior to enjoy and take part in social
activities for their own sake. The individual does not have
to be coerced into social activity; he finds in such behavior
the same pleasure that attends the fulfillment of any of his
native or acquired reactions. Society has been variously
pictured as a force holding the individual in check, as an
organism of which he is a part, as a machine of which he is a
cog. Society consists rather as the collective name for the
cooeperative and associated activities of human beings who
find such activity, by nature and by habit, interesting for its
own sake.

CHAPTER VI

CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE

THE INTERPENETRATION OF HUMAN TRAITS. This chapter is devoted
to a consideration of a number of individual human
traits--curiosity, pugnacity, leadership, fear, love, hate,
etc., and some of their more important social consequences.
These are seldom present in isolation. A man is not, under
normal circumstances, simply and solely pugnacious, curious,
tired, submissive, or acquisitive. One's desire to own a
particular house at a particular location may be complicated by
the presence of several of these traits at once. The house
may be wanted simply as a possession, a crude satisfaction of
our native acquisitiveness. It may be sought further as a
mode of self-display, an indication of how one has risen in the
world. Its attractiveness may be heightened by the fact that
it is situated next door to the house of a rather particularly
companionable old friend. It may be peculiarly indispensable
to one's satisfaction because it is also being sought by a
detested rival. Moreover, as we shall see in the discussion
of the Self, these traits are interwoven with each other and
attain varying degrees of power as motive forces in an individual's
character.

But while these distinctive human traits are seldom apparent
in isolation, it is worth while to consider them separately,