Understanding Human Conduct and Social Relations

UNDERSTANDING HUMAN CONDUCT AND SOCIAL RELATIONS H. w. WRIGHT THE inquiring student of a generation ago who wished to find out what conclusions systematic human thinking had reached regarding the proper guidance of life, in view of the nature of man and his relation to his fellows and the physical world, would unhesitatingly have been referred to the science of ethics. His dean or faculty adviser, particularly if drawn from the Department of Philosophy, might have given his reasons for recommending to such an aspirant the study of ethics. Ethics, he would have said, compares the different objects which men pursue as ends of action, decides which ones furnish the fullest and most enduring satisfaction, and considers how these most worthy ends can be realized in everyday conduct. Since it might thus be claimed for ethics that it alone among the sciences undertakes to say how the whole nature of man in its distinctively human and social capacity can obtain satisfaction, it is small wonder that in the older type of North-American college and university with its definitely religious bent the course in ethics, with perhaps one on "Christian evidences," was a culminating feature of the curriculurn. The student of to-day who desires light on the practical problems of human life and human association finds the field formerly assigned to ethics in great part occupied by other sciences. The social sciences have enlarged their scope and improved their methods with a consequent gain in influence and prestige. Psychology has had an amazing growth and has risen to a position 321 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY of commanding importance. ·As the result of scienti£c progress in these two lines, there has emerged a new science of comprehensive character, social psychology, which includes within its content not only a large amolint of general psychology and physiology and sociology., but also a considerable portion of the subject-matter of ethics as well. A striking impression of the rapid development of social psychology is gained by comparing a treatise or text-book of thirty years ago in the subject with the kind of books now being written and published for students' use._ To the former class belong such books as McDougall's or Ross's Social Psychology, relatively slender volumes of some three hundred pages, confining themselves to the mental dispositions and activities which in definite ways determine the social behaviour of men. The latter class of present-day text-books run to six and seven hundred pages and treat of such a variety of topics as the processes of human heredity, the physiology of the nervous system, the native action-tendencies of men and their early organization, the methods of language acquisition, the processes of imitation and suggestion, of wish-frustration and sublimation, of social conflict and a~justment, the psychology of social culture, of public opinion and propaganda, of social control and progress. It is not surprising that the student of the present day who has assimilated the contents of one of these compendious volumes feels that he has little or nothing more to learn about the guidance and conduct of life. If the question were merely one of names and titles, it need trouble us not at aU. The essential thing is to make headway in understanding human nature and conduct, and whether we call the ·resulting knowledge ethics or social psychology does not much matter. And 322 UNDERSTANDING HUMAN CONDUCT if traditional boundary lines between the different sciences are overstepped or obliterated, this may be cause for congratulation rather than misgiving. B.ut much more is here at stake than merely names or timehonoured distinctions of subject-matter. For contemporary social psychology is annexing the territory of ethics in behalf, and by the authority, of a special method of investigation-the objective, experimental method of natural science. It confidently expects its explanations of social behaviour to supplant and supersede those of ethics because it believes that the triumphant advance of modern natural science has demonstrated their superiority to those advanced by moralists in the past. Historical ethics in its attempt to explain human conduct has always conceived of man as a voluntary agent whose actions are...