Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/615

Rh the issues of the interplay of desires, capacities and beliefs, by which to interpret our own and (with allowance) foreign natures. Culture acquired a more real and a richer meaning as a psychological product, and therewith conferred a new insight and a new obligation upon the psychologist. The diversity of men was thus related to their divergent solutions of the problem of shaping their lives to satisfy needs, impulses and desires; and the environment, so largely a psychological one, acquired its full significance. The study of human nature embraced more than that of one time and region and status. The still more recent and independent emphasis of the sociological aspects of life is in the larger view an issue of the anthropological interpretation, but is yet more characteristic of the attitude now dominant, and properly called modern. The psychology of the social relations was thereby made an integral part of the study of human character.

Two further aspects of the qualities of which character and temperament form the realistic composite, are the genetic aspect, and the abnormal—the pathological aspect. The growth of traits is an essential part of their nature. It implies a reference to the setting in which they operate, to which they are adapted, by which they have been shaped. It implies equally the reference to the vital course, the maturing unfoldment of native endowment, which makes the biological aspect of human nature the most comprehensive and the most elemental. Within this compass the determination of hereditary forces and their mode of operation assumes a special importance. The traits forming the composite of Character and Temperament are part of the biological inheritance, are the issues of forces whose fundamental significance is the biological one. Accordingly (despite or in addition to our more detailed interests in other aspects) they must reflect and conserve the allegiance to this underlying relation. More specifically, the genetic aspect differentiates the outlines of the stages of growth; in its terms are described the orbit of the psychological cycle. It yields the psychology of infancy, of adolescence, of maturity, of senescence, and presents the course of the included qualities in mutual illumination. The genetic argument emphasizes a progressive environment and a progressive purpose; it enlarges the scope of adaptation, and it interprets the impetus and goal of varying interests and endeavors. It was never absent from the accredited psychology of human nature, but in the modern view it assumes an explicitness and a directive position that constitutes it a notable factor among the available resources. It has powerfully affected our entire view of human qualities, has extended our data and enriched their interpretation.

A parallel statement may be made of the argument from the decay, the faulty development, the inherent liability to perversion, of natural qualities, which are responsible for the pathological, the abnormal, the divergent aspects thereof. Useful adaptation, due proportion,