not only because the elements of human behavior will thus
stand out more clearly, but because in certain individuals one
or another of these-traits may be natively of especial strength.
And further, in differing social situations, the possession or
the cultivation of one or another of these native endowments
may be of particular social value or danger. And in any given
situation, one or another of them may be predominant, as
when a man is intensely angry, or curious, or tired. Thus an
individual may have a marked capacity for leadership, or an
extraordinarily tireless curiosity, or an abnormally developed
pugnacity or acquisitiveness. The capacity for leadership,
as will later be discussed in some detail, will be of particular
social value in large enterprises; patient and persistent inquiry
may produce science; pugnacity when freely expressed may
provoke quarrels, bickerings, and war. In the following
discussion, the continual interpenetration and qualification of
these traits by one another in a complex situation must be
recognized. Else it may appear in the discussion of any single
trait, as if by means of it all human action were being explained.
Rather the aim is to trace them as one might the
elements in the pattern of a tapestry, or the recurrent themes
in the development of a symphony. But as the symphony is
more than a single melody, the tapestry more than one element
of line or color, so is human life more than any single
trait.[1]

[Footnote 1: Philosophers and others have time and again made the
mistake of simplifying human life to a single motive or driving
power. Hobbes rested his case on fear; Bain and Sutherland on
sympathy; Tarde on imitation; Adam Smith and Bentham on enlightened
self-interest. In our own day the Freudians interpret everything
as being sexual in its motive. And most recently has come an
interpretation of life, as in Bertrand Russell and Helen Marot,
in terms of the "creative impulse."]

THE FIGHTING INSTINCT. Almost all men exhibit in varying
degrees the "fighting instinct"; that is, the tendency, when
interfered with in the performance of any action prompted by
any other instinct, to threaten, attack, and not infrequently,
if successful in attack, to punish and bully the individual
interfering.

The most mean-spirited cur will angrily resent any attempt to
take away its bone, if it is hungry; a healthy infant very early
displays anger if its meal is interrupted, and all throug