s, nations, have been extremely unlike one another; they have
struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something
valuable; and although at every period those who traveled in different
paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have
thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled
to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development
have rarely had any permanent success, and each has endured in
time to receive the good which the others have offered.[2]

[Footnote 2: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. III.]

Apart from the variations in group customs and traditions,
and their progressive application to changing circumstances
which individuality makes possible, it cannot be too strongly
emphasized that society is the name for the process by which
individuals live together. It is the individuals who are the
realities and the happiness of individuals which is the aim of
social organization. Such happiness is only attainable when
individuals are allowed to make the most of their native
capacities and individual interests. The social group as a group
will be more interesting, colorful, and various when every
experimentation and variety of life are encouraged and promoted.
And the individuals in such a society will be personalities,
not the mere mechanisms of a regimented routine.

CHAPTER IX

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

THE MEANING OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. The major part of
this volume has been devoted to a consideration of those
traits, interests, and capacities which all individuals share, and
which may in general be described as the "original nature of
man." These distinctive inborn tendencies were treated, for
purposes of analysis, in the most general terms, and, on the
whole, as if they appeared in the same strength and variety in
all individuals. When we thus stand off and abstract those
characteristics which appear universally in all individuals,
human nature appears constant. But there are marked variations
in the specific content of human nature with which
each individual is at birth endowed. Put in another way, one
might say that to be a human being means to be by nature
pugnacious, curious, subject to fatigue, responsive to praise
and blame, etc., and susceptible to training in all these
respects. By virtue of the fact that we are all members of the
human race, we have common characteristics; by virtue that
we are _individuals_, we all disp