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For it is this plurality of contact that vitalizes, and he who has not drawn his universals of character out of the particulars of everyday life is a cloistered theorist, aloof from reality.
the mass of mankind generates its mood either in the tissues of the body or in the circumstances of life.
What is character if it is not interest and curiosity, friendliness and love, obedience and trust, cheerfulness and courage?
We are not surprised if digestion affects thinking and mood, and we need not be surprised if thought and mood disturb or improve digestion. And we may substitute for digestion any other organic function.
It is true that he failed to take into account the facts of SOCIAL heredity, in that a gifted man establishes a place for himself and a tradition for his family that is of great help to his son.
In short, at least the potentialities, the capacities for character, are transmitted together with other qualities as part of the capital of heredity.
Though the force of the water remain the same, the nature of the land determines whether the water shall collect as a river, carrying the produce of the land to the sea, or as a stagnant lake in which idlers fish.
No one can read the stories of travelers or the writings of anthropologists without concluding that codes of belief and action arise out of the efforts of groups to understand and to influence nature and that out of this practical effort AND seeking of a harmonious reality arises morality.
"Man seeks the truth, a world that does not contradict itself, that does not deceive, that does not change; a real world,—a world in which there is no suffering.
Macro level thinking (Adam Smith via Hume via Nietzsche)
intelligence and knowledge both are imperfect,
Unless the home combines interest and freedom, together with teaching, certain children become violent rebels, and, seeking freedom and interest outside of the home, find themselves in a conflict, both with their home teaching and the home teachers, that shakes the unity and the happiness of parent and child.
Children are usually more conservative and greater sticklers for form and propriety than even men are; only now and then a freer mind arises whose courage and pertinacity change things.
The environment in the form of tradition, social ideal, social status, economic situation, race, religion, family, education is thus on the one hand the directing, guiding, eliciting factor in character and on the other is the repressing, inhibiting, limiting factor.
From birth to death the pleasure of reward and praise and the pain of punishment and blame are immensely powerful human motives.
Men are not born equal in any respect. This inequality extends to every power, possibility and peculiarity and has its widest range in the mental and character life.
and the hero and the genius are the men and women of
"greatest variability" in powers.
One child eagerly responds to all, is moved by praise, loves reward, fears punishment and hates blame. Another child responds mainly to reward, is but little moved by praise, fears punishment and laughs at blame.
Those who are attempting to introduce the ideal of intelligence as a goal to women need of course to balance it with other ideals, but if successful they will revolutionize the attitude of women toward life and change the trend of their character.
Mankind has been praising unselfishness for thousands of years, and all men hate to be called selfish, but selfishness still rules in the lives of most of the people of the world.
Conscience thus represents the power of the permanent purposes and ideals of the individuals, and it wars on the less permanent desires and impulses, because there is in memory the uneasiness and anxiety that resulted from indulgence and the pain of the feeling of inferiority that results when one is hiding a secret weakness or undergoing reproof or punishment.
There are only a few who love knowledge for its own sake, but there are many who become eager for learning when it is made practical.
The man who has a poor memory may become very successful if he develops systems of recording, filing, indexing, but his possibilities of knowledge are greatly reduced by his defect.[1]
Graham Wallas
There is a low-grade intelligence type, without purpose and energy, and there is a high-grade intelligence type, seeking the ideal, restless under imperfection and restraint, disdaining the commonplace and the habits that go with it.
What one man seeks in work, another man seeks in religion, another finds in self-flagellation, and still others seek in alcohol, morphine, sexual excesses, etc.
With the increasing excitement and tension of our times there is a constant search for relief,
I am not at all sure that it is best in all cases for a man to know his own weakness; in fact, I feel convinced to the contrary in some cases.
The human being will always need a confessor and a confidante, and he who is struggling with a habit is in utmost need of such help.
In the first place it is best in the majority of instances to avoid the particular stimuli and associations that set off the habit.
Further, a substitution of habit, of purpose, is necessary.
Third, harness a friend, a superior or a respected equal to the yoke with you.
The main activities of life are to be classed as "averting" and "acquiring," for if life showers us with the things we would or need to have, it also pelts us with the things we fear, hate or despise.
While there are certain things that "naturally"[1] are deemed good or bad, there are more that are so regarded through training and education.
I place in quotations NATURALLY because it is difficult to know what is "natural" and what is cultural.
The stimuli that thus pour in upon the individual, and to which he must react, must find an organism ready to respond in some way or other.
Throughout life there are factors in the internal life of the organism instantly changing one's reaction to things of physical, mental and moral significance.
There must be a coincidence of stimulus, readiness and opportunity for the full, successful response to take place.[1] [1] A slang epigram puts it better: The time, the place, and the girl.
From the beginning of life to the end there is choice.
From infancy one sees the war of purposes and desires and the gradual rise of one purpose or set of purposes into dominance,—in short, the growth of unity, the growth of personality.
If will is organic it cannot be free, but is conditioned by health, glandular activity, tissue chemistry, age, social setting, education, intelligence.
In reality, man is a mosaic of wills; and the will of each instinct, each desire, each purpose, is the intensity of that instinct, desire or purpose.
